Introducing Connextras: Sights and Sounds

Loved it! With headphones your stereo experiment in the video sounded much better to me. Sounded more natural and "full".

Project A118

I know its a first video, and its a great idea. I know it would be difficult to pace while audio recording; but a couple times you explained what you were doing AS you were doing them. I think a great way forward would be to take inspiration from audio cassette demonstrations and put the audio first (such as RCAs or BelCanto). Otherwise, a fabulous idea and I anticipate future entries.

AmpSmashed Music

"Warming up". I really miss that one. Whenever I make a digital device, I always include display"warming up" and an unnecessarily heavy pause in the boot sequence.

Kent Scipione

I'm not sure if it's in the same cannon, but when I think of sounds and technology, I think first of Sequencers, mixers, etc. You're already halfway there with the turntable science. I would love to see the gap between modern music and the turntable bridged.

Kent Scipione

Not about captions and I'm not sure if maybe it's not the point of having all the sounds there, but would it be possible to remove the very high-pitched noises? The TV is already pretty bad but the laserdisc is quickly beeping instead of just a single note (or maybe it's the beat interference of the two high-pitched noises close together) and it's very painful to listen to.

I'm not sure. I know that my VO seems loud but I deliberately didn't normalize the audio here. It wouldn't give someone looking for what these machines actually sound like a good impression of, well, what they sound like if I boosted the quiet sounds they make. So I didn't. And then the other problem is simply that, if I were to reduce my VO volume, then when the machine actually is loud, *that* would be jarring. I decided to go with "these machines are mostly pretty quiet, so we'll represent them that way, and set the peak level based around their loudest operations" and I honestly feel like that's the most objective way to do it. Now as far as something without voiceover? I suppose that wouldn't be hard to do (I could literally just delete the track and re-export it) but the pacing will be very, very slow and I don't know how interesting those would be. I'll play around with the formula as time goes on, but I'm happy to say that the person whose idea this was is pleased with the result as it is. I think, being largely a project of accessibility, it's going to be really hard to make a "for everyone" kind of thing, and recycling old B-roll (much of which isn't actually seen in the original videos featured) will, I hope, make it interesting for all.

Technology Connections

Is there a chance you can make a non-voiceover, only captions version? The audio description is way louder than the actual audio of the machines and is distracting from the quiet noises the devices make. I'd still like a description of what you're doing, but I think captions would work better than voice over, though it would impact accessibility, hence the request for a separate version.

Richard Hicks

After the bike ride: I found it pleasant to listen to Alec demonstrate the players, but found myself wanting to see the things he's describing, which is easy enough to do afterwards. Also, why does Headquarters now remind me of a 1960s TV Batman villain's lair? ;-)

Mark Hesse

While I certainly think these are valid concerns, I actually had deliberate reasons for both cases. Regarding audio balance: I didn't want to be artificially boosting anything. The recordings of the devices are set so that their loudest sounds are loud, but the rest are as they would be relative to that. My goal was accurate representation of the machine, not normalizing the audio. With that in mind, if I simply lowered the VO volume, there would be certain noises that would be way too loud. The second things is aligned with the first: this goal of this project is to make my videos more accessible to the blind (and to provide a more relaxed view at whatever I may be covering). It's difficult to balance the desires of everyone in a single video, and while I could have perhaps done some sort of summary for what happened, descriptive audio was what I was going for. Frankly this project is conceived as audio-first, and may be more enjoyable without visuals. And while normalizing the volume to be more loud overall would perhaps make this a better casual listening experience, I wanted to represent these devices exactly as they are.

Technology Connections

That's lovely! But IMO 2 issues: firstly the commentary should be WAY quieter. When you adjust volume to get the machine sounds correctly the commentary 'splodes your ears every time. Second the commentary in the middle just interrupts the whole enjoyment IMO. Would rather have an explanation of everything you're going to do before starting, then that uninterrupted, then whatever comments about it once it's all done.

Kilrah

Same -- I blame it on my ADHD

Erik Granlund

I would really appreciate captions. 🙏🏻

So oddly enough my hearing is fine, but processing and comprehending dialogue in real time is where I suffer. CC helps a lot with that.

troublebot

Captions are definitely something that I use, and the refined captions make it easier to share with hearing impaired friends. We really appreciate the captions!

RGB

I think the captions are worth having, especially if they don't add a significant burden or amount of overhead for you. For example, folks for whom English isn't a native or sufficiently fluent language, if there's a service or feature out there that can translate the caption text. I'm certain that would be more reliable than an automated/computerized audio translation service

Hugo Dahl

You have freaky timing. I literally just passed that line! Given that you saw that, you're seeing the end-results of YouTube generating the timings from what I transcribed. Now I'm making timing adjustments and adding some audio descriptions.

Technology Connections

I just started watching this, but I'm about to go for a bike ride so I think I'll stop now and I'll listen to this while riding which may be the best way to consume this video.

Mark Hesse

Are the current captions generated by youtube or you? I noticed that at 5:18 it said "now" in the CC while you said "not".

Lennart Sorensen

I'm realizing how much I miss all the old noises...VHS loading, CDs changing, LASERs fine tuning, servos seeking. Online media is so boring. Thanks for the video!

I like how on the Willy Wonka disc the machine switches sides immediately after a reel change whose markers are still present on the home media for some reason

Pietro Gagliardi

Please do captions describing the sounds [phhhft]! My wife and son both are Deaf and often talk about how good the quality of your captions are. We found your channel from your video on closed captioning. By the way if you would like to do a segment on cochlear implants - we have a few old ones you can show on video and breakdown.

Bananaphone!

Emily Elam

Yes, captions. In addition to hearing challenges you could have non-English speakers that read better than they can process it audibly.

Craig Kollai

Definitely do captions for the talking segments (I use subtitles as I have auditory processing issues) and maybe describe the noises to the best of your ability for those who are HOH.

Always a fan of captions, and I'd be glad to help create/sync them if offered! (I miss the community subtitles, many newer videos from other creators simply don't have non-generated captions anymore)

Qsie