How to make a digital audio clip
Making a digital audio recording is easy once you know how. Store as a file on your computer, on
your school/college intranet or VLE, or even transmit it with Bluetooth onto your students’ mobile
phones.
The kit and caboodle
You can record audio material in a number of ways:
1. Some mobile phones have an audio recording function. For low-tech recordings these are fine,
and as most students will already have one, it is quick and easy for them to record whatever they
choose.
2. Minidisk audio recorders produce better quality recordings, but require a bit more technical
know-how in order to transfer the data onto a computer.
3. Digital voice recorders are probably best in terms of quality and simplicity, and have a USB
connection like a memory stick. Record, plug the gadget straight into a PC and away you go. It’s
a very small and light device, with at least 1GB capacity.
Making the recording
Whatever device you use, remember to:

always have spare batteries to hand (for minidisk and digital voice recorders)

familiarise yourself with the equipment in advance of your recording

eliminate as much background noise as you can

record in an ethical way.
Editing and saving the recording
You will probably want to edit your recording. For this you need some software and/or support from
an IT or Media technician.
If you are using a recording from a mobile phone, there will be some software on the phone (or on a
CD that came with the phone). If you are using a minidisk recorder, your school/college may have
media editing equipment you can use.
If you have recorded your clip on a digital voice recorder, you will probably want to use a PC with
Windows XP. See the guide below for a step-by-step approach using Windows Movie Maker:
1. In your All Programs menu you will find a piece of free software called Windows Movie Maker.
Open this up and if you have the same version it will look like this:
In the Capture Video menu on the left hand side click on > Import audio or music. This will
produce a pop-up Import file box. Find where the audio file is that you want to import. This may be
the drive your DVR is plugged into, or you may already have saved the unedited clips from this to
another location on your computer. Find the file, highlight it, and click on >Import.
2. Your file will appear in the Collections part of Windows Movie Maker, like this:
3.
Now drag and drop your audio file into the storyboard at the bottom of the screen. This will
enable you to edit the clip. It will look something like this:
4.
Now you can click on play to listen to the recording – make sure you have your speakers on and
the volume up! As it plays a bar on the storyboard will move from left to right, showing you
where you are, in minutes and seconds in the recording. A time counter also shows in the play
screen.
5.
Identify in minutes and seconds where you want your clip to start and finish, e.g. from 1:35 to
3:00. Now look carefully at the storyboard and you will find an arrow like this ► at the start and
one like this ◄ at the end.
6.
Drag and drop each of these arrows to your selected start/finish points. You will now have your
clip. To check it, click on play again. If you want to make any changes, just adjust the arrows.
7.
When you play the clip you may find there is a long pause before your clip starts. This will be
because you trimmed some of the start off. To resolve this, drag and drop the trimmed audio clip
back to 0:00 on the timeline. Now it should start playing immediately.
8.
Now you are ready to finish your recording. On the >Finish movie menu on the left hand side of
the screen click on >Save to my computer. Name your audio file and save it. Then click on
>Next.
You will now have a pop-up asking you to select the setting for saving your file – it says ‘movie’
but it works for audio too.
9.
What you choose here will affect the size of the file you create, and how much storage space it
will take up. The default is ‘best quality for playback on my computer (recommended)’ and
you may like to just go with that.
If you want to experiment a bit, look here and see the file size.
10. In this worked example, the file size is 531Kb. Now click on >Other settings and click on the
blue drop down arrow that appears. You can see the different audio quality options. If you
choose >High quality audio (160kbps), the file size jumps to 1.24 Mb. If you choose >Voice
quality audio (8kbps) it shrinks to a tiny 59Kb. The audio quality will change too. You could try
creating different versions and playing them to see what works best with your clip, but as a rough
rule of thumb FM quality (32kbps) seems to work pretty well for keeping both file size and quality
in balance.
Whatever you choose, click on >Next and your file will be saved. When it’s done you will get an
option to play your file automatically on finishing. Tick that box, click on >Finish and sit back and
admire your handiwork.