Move over, Spielberg - part XI

I've almost completed the timeline editing - in fact it would have been finished last night except that the original ending I had in mind came across as too clichéd and boring, so I'm rethinking that part. I expect to be able to get it mostly the way I want it this evening.

The next step after that will be to lay down the narration voice track, which presents its own set of problems; for one thing I'm not certain that the mike connected to my computer is actually working. When I tried to use it a couple of weeks ago the recorded sound was so quiet on playback I could barely hear it. I need to test it and maybe make some adjustments, but even if I can get it working perfectly I don't think I'm going to be able to use it to record the narration track.

One thing you don't really appreciate until you've played back the sound from a camcorder or some similar device, is just how difficult it is to record something without distracting and unwanted background sounds. You may think while you're recording that your sound is good, but when you play it back you'll notice all kinds of things that your ears tuned out. In my case I just know that if I record on the computer I'll pick up the sound of the computer's cooling fans, maybe the sounds from the TV in the next room, sounds from outside the house coming in through the window, and so on.

As it happens I have a Sony ICD-SX25 digital voice recorder - it records in stereo and has a USB connector so you can connect it to a computer and transfer the recorded sounds as WAV files (or MP3, Ogg Vorbis and others). I'm thinking that if I can take my narration script and the recorder to some place where I can control the background sounds, I can record my sound track that way. It'd be a bit awkward because I won't be able to read the script out while watching the video playback for timing, but I think I can make it work. All I have to do is think of somewhere quiet to do that...