How to lengthen/shorten spoken word recordings?

[BlueRidge]

I have a new assignment preparing recorded talk-show-style interviews for broadcast on AM radio. One of the basic challenges is to increase or to decrease the length of the recorded segment to exact time specs -- say, to shorten a 31 minute talkfest to 28:15 exactly.

I know there are programs (Serato?) out there that do this, but hey, this is spoken word, at low-quality AM levels. Can Live 4 do it all by itself?

Any observations, ruminations, obfuscations, or other overtures fully welcomed, I'm starting from scratch.

Thanks

Blue Ridge

[pepezabala]

well, when I was working for a radio we still used tape and edited it by cutting. This was fun!! Then it was a pure editing job to trim an interview to a required length. Now you've got timestretching algorythms and this will help you a lot.

First you edit all coughing, noises and nonsense out (in ableton most likely in arrangement view by old school editing, warp and quantisation off, cut with ctrl e). When done, select all the parts and consolidate. Now you can have a look at the length. Then warp the clip and change the length by changing the "tempo". I would use complex mode. Listen to the result. If the length of the clip has changed drastically it will sound odd (speaking too fast or too slow). Then you have to unwarp the file and edit more out or in again.

What's really fun is to keep somewhere all the tiny bits that you edited out and use them for other stuff. At the radio station we had a reel full of people saying "In my opinion...", "I think that...", "krchkrch, oorrps, sorry, hatschi, err, what did I say?" and stuff like that and used it for jingles.

[BlueRidge]

I like the desk-drawer full of out-takes.

Thanks for the advice, I will now experiment per your very helpful particular recommendations.

Testing, testing ...

Blue Ridge

[xeb]

if simply cutting and pasting bits in or out doesn't work or isn't an option then what about using recycle to chop up into sections then play back at faster or slower bmp to effectivly increase or decrease the length of time between those sections? (think justification in a word document... increases the spaces between words across a whole line to stretch the line to fit the page... so long as your page is wide enough and the words short enough, the increase in space between each word is small enough not to e noticable)

[DJ VAKIS]

if simply cutting and pasting bits in or out doesn't work or isn't an option then what about using recycle to chop up into sections then play back at faster or slower bmp to effectivly increase or decrease the length of time between those sections? (think justification in a word document... increases the spaces between words across a whole line to stretch the line to fit the page... so long as your page is wide enough and the words short enough, the increase in space between each word is small enough not to e noticable)

Recycle does not load more than 5min files.

[brightonalex]

Why not just speed the whole thing up, so they sound like Pinky and Perky? Or slow it down, so they sound like that bloke that eats badness and blows out flies in The Green Mile.

"Why I'd do most anything for a piece of your wife's delicious cornbread".

[DJ VAKIS]

I have a new assignment preparing recorded talk-show-style interviews for broadcast on AM radio. One of the basic challenges is to increase or to decrease the length of the recorded segment to exact time specs -- say, to shorten a 31 minute talkfest to 28:15 exactly.

I know there are programs (Serato?) out there that do this, but hey, this is spoken word, at low-quality AM levels. Can Live 4 do it all by itself?

Any observations, ruminations, obfuscations, or other overtures fully welcomed, I'm starting from scratch.

Thanks

Blue Ridge

Come on man this is basic editing.Cut and Paste

[Michael-SW]

I would do it it in an audio editor like Sound Forge or Audacity (free). Cut out coughs, pauses etc and do a small fade out/in. Using Live sounds just...dumb.

If you are ever so off the mark when done, you could use the built in time stretch to adjust it exactly to length.

[Sales Dude McBoob]

I agree with Vakis. Ableton rocks as an audio editor. All you would have to do is go through the material and trim it together.

I edit my friend's podcasts all the time with Live. Editing a long talkshow is time consuming just because the show itself is long. If it's a 35 minute show it takes that long just to listen to it and make editing notes. But I wouldn't want to use any other software to edit audio. Ableton is all about getting things done quickly. Use Ableton without a doubt.

[Sales Dude McBoob]

I would do it it in an audio editor like Sound Forge or Audacity (free). Cut out coughs, pauses etc and do a small fade out/in. Using Live sounds just...dumb.

If you are ever so off the mark when done, you could use the built in time stretch to adjust it exactly to length.

How does Live sound dumb

[Sales Dude McBoob]

You shouldn't time stretch at all. That will be disruptive for the listener with any audio software. Edit edit edit.

[Machinate]

editing down from 31 to 28.15 is really easy, imo. Editing down from 31 to 5 is where it starts to get tricky