[PROJECT HAS ENDED] The "Crowds" Library
-
- Intern
- Posts: 3
- Joined: October 17th, 2013, 4:59 pm
- Location: Edinburgh
- Occupation: Sound Designer
Re: The "Crowds" Library
Hi Alex,
Thanks for your help. That's all really helpful. I tend to edit recordings down to what's useful and try to keep processing to a minimum but I wanted to confirm whether there were any specific guidelines for this library.
Meant to ask this in the original post. What is the average audio level range I should be aiming for on the submitted files? Obviously it will vary depending on the environment recorded but I wondered if there was a ballpark you'd recommend metering to?
Thanks again for your help.
Cheers,
Richard
Thanks for your help. That's all really helpful. I tend to edit recordings down to what's useful and try to keep processing to a minimum but I wanted to confirm whether there were any specific guidelines for this library.
Meant to ask this in the original post. What is the average audio level range I should be aiming for on the submitted files? Obviously it will vary depending on the environment recorded but I wondered if there was a ballpark you'd recommend metering to?
Thanks again for your help.
Cheers,
Richard
- axk
- Critical Listener
- Posts: 22
- Joined: September 30th, 2013, 4:23 pm
- Location: Los Angeles, CA
- Occupation: Sound Editor
- Location: Los Angeles, CA
- Contact:
Re: The "Crowds" Library
Of course! Always happy to share whatever I can. The sounds I record/master/catalogue vary in loudness depending on what the sound source is. For ambiences, I usually try to keep average program level running around -40 to -30 dBFS in Pro Tools. Any one-shot effects (impacts, whooshes, doors, etc) get normalized to a -6 to -2 dBFS peak depending on what frequencies are most prevalent (high-end heavy files get -6, low-end heavy files get -2).argyllrb wrote:Hi Alex,
Thanks for your help. That's all really helpful. I tend to edit recordings down to what's useful and try to keep processing to a minimum but I wanted to confirm whether there were any specific guidelines for this library.
Meant to ask this in the original post. What is the average audio level range I should be aiming for on the submitted files? Obviously it will vary depending on the environment recorded but I wondered if there was a ballpark you'd recommend metering to?
Thanks again for your help.
Cheers,
Richard
Since we're using Soundminer exclusively, we have to work within the constraints of the software in certain cases. The Waveform Overview display doesn't really show anything useful when previewing quiet sounds, so I try to master files at levels that allow for a good representation of what's happening in each one.
That being said, everyone has a completely different approach to this aspect of the mastering process and as your library grows, you'll find that there's no uniform level that anyone follows; it's more about what works best for them.
-
- Intern
- Posts: 3
- Joined: October 17th, 2013, 4:59 pm
- Location: Edinburgh
- Occupation: Sound Designer
Re: The "Crowds" Library
That's great. Thanks again.
Richard
Richard
- samueljustice
- Critical Listener
- Posts: 24
- Joined: August 21st, 2013, 2:04 pm
- Contact:
Re: The "Crowds" Library
Hey Alex and guys,
I've been sorting through my stuff and adding metadata - is it worth being a little more comprehensive with our descriptions on the metadata? Purely for the reason that this is a crowd sourced library from all over the world, so being quite granular with description is not such a bad thing (as the whole point of this is to collect as many weird and wonderful crowds from all over the world).
For example my naming for the files is simple and follows the guidelines -
CROWD_Zoo_ENGLAND_UK_Penguin_Exhibit_EXT
Then for the metadata I have put the following -
Audible Worlds Crowd Walla - Top of Penguin Exhibit Hilltop. Facing down to crowd with children. Water fountain heard - Marwell Zoo UK England - Samuel Justice - SONY M10 - 20140731
Thoughts?
I've been sorting through my stuff and adding metadata - is it worth being a little more comprehensive with our descriptions on the metadata? Purely for the reason that this is a crowd sourced library from all over the world, so being quite granular with description is not such a bad thing (as the whole point of this is to collect as many weird and wonderful crowds from all over the world).
For example my naming for the files is simple and follows the guidelines -
CROWD_Zoo_ENGLAND_UK_Penguin_Exhibit_EXT
Then for the metadata I have put the following -
Audible Worlds Crowd Walla - Top of Penguin Exhibit Hilltop. Facing down to crowd with children. Water fountain heard - Marwell Zoo UK England - Samuel Justice - SONY M10 - 20140731
Thoughts?
- joe_griffin
- Audio Specialist
- Posts: 78
- Joined: June 7th, 2013, 4:23 pm
- Location: Chicago
- Occupation: Recording engineer
- Location: Chicago
- Contact:
Re: The "Crowds" Library
samueljustice wrote:Hey Alex and guys,
I've been sorting through my stuff and adding metadata - is it worth being a little more comprehensive with our descriptions on the metadata? Purely for the reason that this is a crowd sourced library from all over the world, so being quite granular with description is not such a bad thing (as the whole point of this is to collect as many weird and wonderful crowds from all over the world).
For example my naming for the files is simple and follows the guidelines -
CROWD_Zoo_ENGLAND_UK_Penguin_Exhibit_EXT
Then for the metadata I have put the following -
Audible Worlds Crowd Walla - Top of Penguin Exhibit Hilltop. Facing down to crowd with children. Water fountain heard - Marwell Zoo UK England - Samuel Justice - SONY M10 - 20140731
Thoughts?
I think that's great.
- axk
- Critical Listener
- Posts: 22
- Joined: September 30th, 2013, 4:23 pm
- Location: Los Angeles, CA
- Occupation: Sound Editor
- Location: Los Angeles, CA
- Contact:
Re: The "Crowds" Library
Absolutely! There's a balance to be had between not enough and too much info, of course. Every editor uses a different workflow, search terminology, and sound design process. For our own personal purposes, obviously you'd taylor things to your own style. For general libraries, however, there are certainly bits of info that are more useful to include than others.samueljustice wrote: ...is it worth being a little more comprehensive with our descriptions on the metadata? Purely for the reason that this is a crowd sourced library from all over the world, so being quite granular with description is not such a bad thing (as the whole point of this is to collect as many weird and wonderful crowds from all over the world).
This is a great example. If I were to sort a bunch of files with this naming convention alphabetically, they'd line up according to:samueljustice wrote: For example my naming for the files is simple and follows the guidelines -
CROWD_Zoo_ENGLAND_UK_Penguin_Exhibit_EXT
- Library
- Specific Location
- Broad Location
- Short Description
- Interior/Exterior
One thing I've been trying to advocate more is the use of pipes instead of hyphens in metadata. Putting "||" between sections instead of "-" makes things a little more modern/clean-looking to me, translates fine in all the DAWs I've tried it in up to this point, and frees up hyphens to be used in other ways. Definitely a matter of personal taste, but I find myself replacing every hyphen with pipes in the Uni library here.samueljustice wrote: Then for the metadata I have put the following -
Audible Worlds Crowd Walla - Top of Penguin Exhibit Hilltop. Facing down to crowd with children. Water fountain heard - Marwell Zoo UK England - Samuel Justice - SONY M10 - 20140731
Soundminer has specific fields for library, mic, location, recordist, and date, so I'd only include those in the Description field if you didn't have access to that piece of software. Also, instead of "Water fountain heard", I might but "Gentle water fountain in background" or something along those lines. I assume I'll be hearing anything that makes it into the description, so no need to specify!
-
- Intern
- Posts: 6
- Joined: September 30th, 2013, 3:22 pm
Re: The "Crowds" Library
I'm in too. The ambient library was very helpfull and inspiring. Is really good to share some fx.
- samueljustice
- Critical Listener
- Posts: 24
- Joined: August 21st, 2013, 2:04 pm
- Contact:
Re: The "Crowds" Library
Thanks again for all the great info Alex, the pipe solution actually makes a lot of sense. Hyphens can definitely only go so far!axk wrote:Absolutely! There's a balance to be had between not enough and too much info, of course. Every editor uses a different workflow, search terminology, and sound design process. For our own personal purposes, obviously you'd taylor things to your own style. For general libraries, however, there are certainly bits of info that are more useful to include than others.samueljustice wrote: ...is it worth being a little more comprehensive with our descriptions on the metadata? Purely for the reason that this is a crowd sourced library from all over the world, so being quite granular with description is not such a bad thing (as the whole point of this is to collect as many weird and wonderful crowds from all over the world).
This is a great example. If I were to sort a bunch of files with this naming convention alphabetically, they'd line up according to:samueljustice wrote: For example my naming for the files is simple and follows the guidelines -
CROWD_Zoo_ENGLAND_UK_Penguin_Exhibit_EXT
The only thing I'd say is that it might be worthwhile to put the "Penguin_Exhibit" tag before the "ENGLAND_UK" tag, since people will usually be concerned with the description first, then the broad location (in most instances, at least).
- Library
- Specific Location
- Broad Location
- Short Description
- Interior/Exterior
One thing I've been trying to advocate more is the use of pipes instead of hyphens in metadata. Putting "||" between sections instead of "-" makes things a little more modern/clean-looking to me, translates fine in all the DAWs I've tried it in up to this point, and frees up hyphens to be used in other ways. Definitely a matter of personal taste, but I find myself replacing every hyphen with pipes in the Uni library here.samueljustice wrote: Then for the metadata I have put the following -
Audible Worlds Crowd Walla - Top of Penguin Exhibit Hilltop. Facing down to crowd with children. Water fountain heard - Marwell Zoo UK England - Samuel Justice - SONY M10 - 20140731
Soundminer has specific fields for library, mic, location, recordist, and date, so I'd only include those in the Description field if you didn't have access to that piece of software. Also, instead of "Water fountain heard", I might but "Gentle water fountain in background" or something along those lines. I assume I'll be hearing anything that makes it into the description, so no need to specify!
Re: The "Crowds" Library
Sign me up please!
-
- Intern
- Posts: 4
- Joined: September 9th, 2014, 12:49 pm
- Location: Sao Paulo, Brazil
- Occupation: Audio Producer
Re: The "Crowds" Library
Hi, guys. Just found about this project through Designing Sound blog. Great idea and great expectations towards it!
My 2c on the subject of file naming is to make sure that the file has an initial description (like crowd size, interior/exterior) in caps, followed by a more detailed info in lower case. This proves very helpful during a quick hunt for the right crowd. For example I'm naming one of mine as "CROWD_SMALL_INT_Fastfood_Restaurant_Busy_Noon_BRAZIL".
And a quick question: approximately how many people should we consider a Small/Medium/Large crowd? I know the crowd "performance" impacts on the way we perceive its size, so the headcount isn't an exact reference. But an approximation would be nice =].
Greetings from Brazil!
Guile Oliveira
My 2c on the subject of file naming is to make sure that the file has an initial description (like crowd size, interior/exterior) in caps, followed by a more detailed info in lower case. This proves very helpful during a quick hunt for the right crowd. For example I'm naming one of mine as "CROWD_SMALL_INT_Fastfood_Restaurant_Busy_Noon_BRAZIL".
And a quick question: approximately how many people should we consider a Small/Medium/Large crowd? I know the crowd "performance" impacts on the way we perceive its size, so the headcount isn't an exact reference. But an approximation would be nice =].
Greetings from Brazil!
Guile Oliveira