As one of the winners I hope you will accept this point of view from me.

Please, we MUST all start rating the comps AND in a proper way. The only people who can rate the comps are users who can log on (us). I was very surprised to get anything for this piece. It was a test piece, first attempt.

I do thank 4laughs for their editorial opinion that must have got me second place because it surely wasn't the votes. Or were there just two entries and was I the only voter?

Don't get me wrong I am not turning the points away - at least I had a go! But I got one rating of below average and I think that was me voting for myself (I'm not sure, can't remember) but anyway I thought it was a fair rating!

At last I have now got broadband at home so I shall start diligently rating as much as I can and trying to be as fair as I can. I don't rate something brilliant as below average. I don't want to win or influence the comps in that way.

Otherwise I'll never know if I'm any good or not and finding out whether I am any good at comedy is the main reason I came on this site. It's also why I joined Junk Males and we DO reject our own stuff if we don't think it's up to par... er, especially mine funnily enough! !!

Thanks for reading,
Yer pal,
Frankie xxx

Yes, well done to yourself and Wimmy for placing in this one... However, you're right, it does imply there were only two entries.

This was not the case, as myself and MidgetGems both had entries in within the time limit as well... They were not cleared in time to be rated (although mine was waiting for over a week), which I think was somewhat unfair.

If there's going to be a rating system, it should not begin until all the entries have been published to give everyone a fair run at it.

I'm not sure if they can reopen it now, to get all the entries rated properly, but it would be nice.

We'll see.

Hey Seth. I personally check to see if we get any new video or audio uploads at least twice a day. If it hasn't been put on site then it'll probably be to do with a technical fault which has prevented it from reaching us in time. Our technical team are constantly working on these problems. Please don't hesitate to email us if your videos and audio uploads haven't appeared on site within a day.

Frankie's right though. Users need to rate more, but at the same time they need to be vigilant and rate at set intervals (say at the start of the comp, in the middle, and just before the closing date of rating). I appreciate that users are rating more than once - which leads to rating your own work more than once - in order to rate everything, but rating your own material over 20 times, as some users did, is a bit excessive. Davina talks about this in the 'image winners' thread.

Regards

Chris

Thanks for that, Chris... I did word that slightly wrong though, sorry. What I meant to say was that the audio was published on the site in time, but for one reason or another never recieved a rating. I think it probably was just a case of not enough people voting.

I realised too, shortly after posting, that this one was running during all the technical trouble. So there could well have been a glitch or two involved somewhere. But nevermind...

On the plus side, I noticed earlier that a new audio comp has opened, so I got it in for that instead... Onwards and upwards...

Good on ya Seth!

Hi guys, I was wondering if anyone can give me some advice. We have a microphone at home with our computer, but I have no idea how to record something to put on the site. Is there any special software you need to record an audio clip, and how do you guys record your stuff? Any help would be really appreciated.

Hi Butter SD,

Windows usually has a built in recorder, but it's very limited (I think you're restricted to 60 seconds only).

You could search through one of the freeware sites or you could simply google 'Audacity'.

Audacity's about the best free sound mixer, and it allows for easy and direct recording.

I got Audacity on Yieldings reccomendation and it's great.. for free. I would also reccomend getting a digital usb microphone, I did and it's much much better. I have just recorded one audio piece which I will upload once I have found a bit of music to stick on it.

Good luck with it.

Cheers for the advice guys, much appreciated. Hopefully I should have some audio stuff ready in a week or so, so keep your ears pealed.

Butter: I use the audio recorder software that came bundled with the soundcard - one by Creative... You may have a similar program available with whatever card you're using... The one Creative give you is very simple to use, but saves things in WAV, I believe, so I then use another piece of software to convert to MP3 (to dramatically reduce the file size and facillitate an easier upload), which is also fairly simple.

And to Sabriel, Re: putting a piece of music on your audio... You need to be careful it's a piece that's royalty free or one you've written yourself, otherwise they can't use it.

Okay, good luck to you both, and hope to see your stuff appearing soon...

Cheers Geth I've got my composer working on it.

Cheers for the advice Seth. Ive been experimenting a bit and actually windows movie maker has a good section for recording 'narration', which saves voice files as WMA and doesnt restrict you to a limit. Will WMA be small enough to make transfer onto the site?

As long as you're keeping around the minute mark (or just over) as they suggest, it should be fine - the file should still only be about 10mb or so.

But my connection is slow, so MP3 seems to work better, as it drops a 10mb down to about 2.5mb without any noticeable dip in quality.

Hope that helps.

If you're looking for music samples (and a variety of sound effects) that are 'free stock' use apple's GarageBand software. They have stings, loops etc that are free to use so long as you are not using them commercially.

See legal stuff here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93762

Bon Chance!