This chapter contains a step-by-step, hands-on introduction to using VFEdit. Since you will be working with the program, be sure that you have:
If you are running VFEdit under Microsoft Windows 3.x, simply double-click on the VFEdit icon in the VFEdit Prompt Editor Group.
If you are running VFEdit under Microsoft Windows 95, use the Start Programs menu item to select the VFEdit Program entry.
When you start VFEdit for the very first time, the program will ask you what type of audio device you would like to use. For the purposes of these exercises, select "waveaudio". (You can change the audio device at any time by using the Options Device Select menu command.)
Note that multimedia hardware does not require any special drivers to be loaded before running Windows. Telephony audio hardware, however, does have some special requirements.
If you choose to use multimedia audio hardware with VFEdit, you can skip right to the next section. If, however, you chose to use your telephony audio hardware, then you must start the telephony audio Terminate-and-Stay-Resident (TSR) driver before starting Microsoft Windows. This driver allows you to play and record audio files with your telephony hardware. If you have already started Windows, you must exit in order to load the driver as an MS-DOS "global TSR driver".
You start the driver by entering a command such as:
d40drv.exe -H5 -I62
See Appendix B, Configuration, for more information on settings for your telephony audio driver.
Windows 95 users must load the telephony audio TSR drivers in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file (top level directory) or WINSTART.BAT file (located in the Windows directory).
When you select a telephone interface audio board, VFEdit activates VISI’s Telephone Interface Dynamic Link Library (TI/F DLLÔ ). TI/F DLL interfaces to the telephony audio Terminate-and-Stay-Resident (TSR) driver.
TI/F DLL is a set of programs that manage the telephony audio Terminate-and-Stay-Resident (TSR) driver and enables it to communicate with other Windows programs.
The TI/F DLL "Tel I/F Control" program should appear as the following icon:
This program controls your telephony hardware. If VFEdit reports an error,please see Appendix B, Configuration, and Appendix C, Troubleshooting & Recovery for additional information.
The Title Bar appears across the top of the main window, and displays the VFEdit program name. The name of the file you are editing appears in the Title Bar of individual windows. If you have not yet named the file, or have opened a "new" file, VFEdit will show it as "Untitled #n". For indexed files, the index number appears in brackets as "[INDEX]". If the file has changed since the last time it was edited, a "*" will appear to the right of the name.
The Menu Bar appears directly below the title bar, and provides pull-down menus for editing functions. Menu commands may be selected using the keyboard or mouse. These functions are covered in detail in the chapters that follow.
The Tool Bar appears directly below the Menu Bar, and provides icons for rapid access to common menu items. These icons may only be selected using the mouse. Tool Tips are small text boxes that appear to tell you the purpose of a particular icon.
The Audio Graph displays the current waveform image in graph form. The vertical axis displays the minimum and maximum signal values. The horizontal axis displays time. The vertical axis resolution is based upon the currently selected data format. The horizontal axis resolution varies according to the currently selected display resolution. The screen display shows the waveform as it would appear on a laboratory oscilloscope.
The Selection Bar displays editing information for the current file. When you select a portion of a file with the mouse, the Selection Bar shows the current segment extents. The Selection Bar also shows the length of the file (or index) in seconds.
The Status Line displays useful operating information. The first panel contains progress reporting information during long operations. The second panel shows the current audio file format. The third panel shows the current hardware in use.
The At Position provides graphical control of cursor position for play, record, and paste operations. The triangular At Position specifies the position in the current file at which to insert the new audio data.
The Scroll Bars are used to reposition the display image. Scroll Bars may be used by either selecting the highlighted bar (press and hold the mouse button), by clicking within the scroll bar region with the mouse, or with the keyboard direction keys.
The keyboard arrow keys permit scrolling without need for the mouse:
For extremely large files or extremely high resolutions, the scroll bar wraps back to the beginning as you scroll past each major section. Use the <CTRL><RIGHT ARROW> and <CTRL><LEFT ARROW> keys to move from section to section.
Let’s Take a Look (And a Listen)As we said earlier, we’re going to offer a few "just out of the box" exercises. With this short initiation you’ll become familiar with VFEdit, and find you’re having fun too!
When you installed VFEdit, the installation program asked you to select a default file type. Since we selected a file type of "Wave" during our installation, our screen displays may look slightly different (but not very much different) from yours. If you would like to change your default file type to "Wave", use the File New menu command to display the File New dialog box. Use the button to the side of the "File Type" selection to choose "Wave Audio (*.wav)" if you want your screen displays to exactly match ours.
During installation we loaded some sample files onto your hard disk, and we’ve given you two files to use. We’ll tell you how to bring both to the screen at the same time, to see and listen to the FIXED (correct) one, then to compare it with the FAULTY one that obviously needs fixing. There’ll be examples of hesitations and dead air time that you can easily tighten up for more effective listening. We’ll show you how to save those files with different names so that you can go back as often as you want to practice fixing the deliberately botched recordings.
First, we’ll need those sample audio files. During the installation process we set up two different files: FIXED.WAV, and FAULTY.WAV.
Point and click the mouse on the File Menu located in the upper left-hand corner of the screen, then move down to Open and click again. The figure below shows the File Open dialog box. You’ll notice under File Name a blank space with *.wav and below that the names of the promised files.
Point and click on FIXED.WAV. After you’ve selected FIXED.WAV, move the mouse to the OK box and click on it. (You’re telling the computer you want to examine that file.)
VFEdit displays graphical view of the FIXED.WAV audio. Notice the shape of the blue-line squiggles. That’s the "waveform" of the message recorded there. You can see that the title bar now reads "FIXED.WAV". The selection bar at the bottom indicates the current length of the file in seconds. The selection bar does not show any active selection since we have not yet chosen an audio segment with the mouse. Over at the left end of the waveform is the red At Position triangle, blinking away, telling you it’s waiting to talk to you. O.K.¾ Let's listen .
Move the mouse up to Play Menu and click on Loop. You should now hear FIXED.WAV through your telephone or audio connection. Note that the Tool Bar displays the elapsed time in seconds.
When you select Play Loop, the file will play over and over forever, ad nauseum. Play Loop is especially useful if you need to listen to a particular snippet to identify a problem. If you are having trouble with your audio connections, you can use Play Loop to have VFEdit generate speaker output while you check audio connections.
The quickest way to STOP is to press either the spacebar or Enter key on the keyboard. You can also use either the mouse or keyboard to select Stop under the Play Menu or the Record Menu. You can also use the Tool Bar to select the Stop Icon or Stop Button.
At this point you know what FIXED.WAV looks like and sounds like, as well as how to stop playback. Now let’s see and hear the file you’re going to edit by opening FAULTY.WAV as shown below.
After opening FAULTY.WAV, notice how the Audio Graph windows are stacked: This is the default "Cascade" window arrangement, and can be selected using the Window Menu. For this exercise, however, we’re going to use a different layout for these windows.
Use the Mouse to select the Window Menu, then select "Tile". The files are now arranged so that they are easy to see and compare.
You’ll notice that there are At Position indicators (inverted red triangles) at the beginning of each file. One will be pulsing, which indicates that file is active. But imagine for the moment that you want to listen to another file instead. Just move the mouse to the one you want to hear and click (anywhere on the Title Bar), and you’ll see its indicator start pulsing; the window will then be active.
Now we’ll fix FAULTY by shortening and transposing elements. These operations are referred to as cutting and pasting.
But suppose something goes wrong, and we cut too much of the good part away? Not to worry¾ that’s what the Edit UnDo, Edit ReDo, and File Revert menu commands are for. These commands are used to put things back the way they were at the start.
First, play FAULTY and you should hear:
Next, play FIXED and you should hear:
We start repairing FAULTY by taking out some rubbish ("...ahh...") and dead air. In short, we’ll cut.
First we’ll remove an objectionable piece of the file: "...ahh...". Move the mouse to the upper right of the screen. Notice how the arrow becomes a miniature marker when VFEdit is ready to draw a box. Now position the marker to the left side of the "...ahh..." sound, press and hold the left mouse button while dragging the mouse to the right side, then let go. Notice that a red box has been formed where we pointed and dragged with the marker.
Now move the mouse up to the Edit Menu, then select "Cut" and Poof!¾ The red box and "...ahh..." are gone. At this point our FAULTY file says, "Thank you for choosing vee eff edit...hello.". When you’re done removing the extra word and silence, your file should look something like the following.
This is a big improvement, but still not quite where we want to be.
Now let’s put the word "Hello" up front where it belongs. With the miniature marker, draw a box around the word "Hello", then select the Edit Cut menu command. You have now "cut" the word "Hello" from the file and placed it into a special saved area. Next move the mouse pointer to the center axis line and click near the beginning of the file where we want "Hello" to start. Notice that when the marker is near the center axis line that the pointer becomes an "I-bar". This indicates that you can move the triangular At Position to that spot in the file. Now select the Edit Paste menu command and Presto!¾ "Hello" is at the beginning of the file.
If you did not select a default file type of "Wave" during your installation, you may get an additional dialog box before VFEdit completes the paste operation. This dialog box asks you some technical information about how you want VFEdit to handle the conversion between one file type to another. You can use the default values (which work well for most situations) by clicking on "OK".
Now that the word "Hello" is stored in a special saved area, we can paste into another file. First use the mouse to select the Title bar of the Audio Graph window named "Untitled: 1". Next move the mouse pointer to the center axis line and click near the beginning of the file where we want "Hello" to start. Notice that when the marker is near the center axis line that the pointer becomes an "I-bar". Now select the Edit Paste menu command and Voila!¾ "Hello" is at the beginning of the new file.
Now that you’ve pasted the word "Hello" into a new (empty) file, you can store that sound onto the hard drive. We would like, however, to keep the original files intact, so we’ll use the Save As command. Save As lets you save the newly created file under a new name.
Use the mouse to select Edit Save As. When the File Save As dialog box appears, enter "HELLONEW" in the "File Name" entry field.
After selecting "OK", the audio data containing the word "Hello" will be permanently stored on your hard disk. Remember, the files on your hard disk remain unchanged until you select Save or Save As. VFEdit maintains a separate copy of the file, and does not update your original until a Save or Save As operation.
The red selection box determines however small or large a part of a single file you might need to inspect. Draw a little red box over the spoken words, use the mouse to select Play Loop, and you can listen to a tiny part of the file over and over again.
You can stretch or shrink the box around a previously selected audio segment by first positioning the mouse at the edge of the dashed boxed. Notice that the mouse cursor changes shape to a right/ left arrow. Press and hold the mouse button while moving the mouse to the new position of interest. You can clear a previously selected segment by pointing and clicking the mouse at any point away from the edge of the selection box. (Remember when clearing a selection to hold the mouse steady while you click and release. Otherwise, if you move the mouse between up and down clicks, you will have simply selected a small segment of sound and you’ll need to try again.)
VFEdit
lets you tune your display resolution for you particular editing needs. VFEdit comes configured for three common editing resolutions. Select the View High Resolution command to display HELLONEW at a higher resolution.
You can now see more specific sound waves within the file. Experiment by using the arrow keys on the keyboard to scroll left and right. You can also use the keyboard up and down arrow keys to zoom in and out to see more or less waveform detail.
Sometimes you’ll need to edit a specific section of a file. This task can be made easier by telling VFEdit to adjust the display resolution so that the selected segment fills the screen. For example, if you select the word "Hello" from HELLONEW by drawing a box around it, and then select View Zoom To Fit, the single word "Hello" will fill the Audio Graph window.
Sometimes you may want to close a particular file to give you more room to work on the screen. First select the file you want to close by clicking on the Title Bar of the window. Then select File Close to remove the window from your work area.
When you are done editing your files, you can exit VFEdit by selecting the File Close menu item. Since we modified the file FAULTY, VFEdit will warn us that the file has not been saved. Since we don’t want to save this file (so that it will remain unchanged for the next person to practice this sample session), select "No" from the dialog box.
If you decide that you don’t want to leave the Sample Session, you can select "Cancel" and return to working with VFEdit.