BlameThePixel!

First of all, if you dont have any software to record with, There is a really good FREE software program called AUDACITY:-

www.audacity.sourceforge.net

or a portable version that you can put on a USB Flash Drive at:

www.portableapps.com/apps/music_video/audacity_portable

It is great because it is so easy to use, and it has an effect to raise the pitch - to get the high worm voices.

I'll give a full example of how to record from a DVD using audacity.


.WAV FILE FORMAT

The files must be saved as .WAV. They will take up a lot of space if you use high quality settings. I recommend using the following format:

MONO (Not stereo)
SAMPLING FREQUENCY: 22050
BIT RATE: 176 Kbps

I first recorded a bank using CD quality settings, but when it came to posting it, I realised that it was 12MB! By using the settings above, I reduced it to just over 1MB.

I compared the first high quality recordings with ones at these settings, (using good quality headphones) and could not hear any difference.


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To set this up in AUDACITY, before you do any recording:

(1) From the menu, select EDIT, Preferences, or press CTRL+P

(2) Click the AUdio I/O tab
Under 'Recording' change the Channels to 1 (Mono)

(3) Click the Quality tab.
Change the default sample rate to 22050 Hz.

(4) Click the File Format tab.
Change the Uncompressed Export Format Setting to:
WAV (Microsoft 8 bit PCM).
Click OK

(5) Now check in the bottom left corner of the screen that it says: Project Rate 22050. If it doesnt, click on it and select 22050
*********************************************************


TUTORIAL ON RECORDING FROM DVD USING AUDACITY

PREPARE THE FOLDER FOR THE AUDIO FILES
Before you begin, go to:

C:\Team17\Worms Armageddon\User\Speech (or whatever drive you installed the game on).

and create a new folder here, naming it whatever theme the speech bank is - ie. 'The Simpsons'. (So you should now have a folder:

C:\Team17\Worms Armageddon\User\Speech\The Simpsons


This assumes you have a DVD drive. In fact, whatever you are using, once you have made the right connections so that sound is coming into the computer, the steps are the same. But for a DVD:-


1) Put the DVD into the drive and use whatever software to play it.

2) While it is playing, start audacity and make the settings mentioned above (see under **********************)

3) When you find something you want to record, simply click the record button in audacity.

4) A new audio track is automatically created, and recording begins - PRESS SPACE or CLICK THE STOP BUTTON TO STOP RECORDING.

5) NAME THE TRACK
On the track you just created, click on the down arrow where it says Audio Track, and select 'Name' from the menu.

This will be the filename, so type in whatever file it is: Eg. Bummer, Hello, Watchthis... etc

The full list is found in:

C:\Team17\Worms Armageddon\User\Speech (or whatever drive you installed the game on).

There should be 60 files in total.

You only want a max of 4 seconds for each file.


6) TRIM THE TRACK

At this point, CLICK SOLO on the track so that you only hear this one. Make sure all other tracks do not have solo clicked on. This track should be blue, and all the others should be grey.

a) START POINT

Using the mouse, find the exact start point of what you want recorded. And delete everything before it. The easiest to do this is, make sure the cursor is at the point you want to start at, then press SHIFT+HOME - which will highlight everything before that point. Then press delete.

b)END POINT

In exactly the same way, find the end point, where you want the sound to stop. When the cursor is there, press SHIFT+END to highlight everything after this point. Then press DELETE.

7) NORMALIZE

Normalizing raises the audio to the proper level, making it as loud as at can be without distorting. It will also make sure that all your files are at a similar volume.

Simply highlight the whole track. (You can do this by clicking just below the track name).
Choose Effects, Normalize.

FADE THE TRACK IN AND OUT

You have what you want, at a good level. Now its a good idea to fade in and out - this cuts out any unwanted sudden sounds.

Its up to you how long a fade you have. For this tutorial, I use about 1/4 of a second. So click with the mouse and highlight roughly the first 1/4 second.

From the menu select Effect, FADE IN. The wave picture should change at the beginning to look like <.

Do the same at the end, only choose FADE OUT. The wave picture should look like > at the end.

9)SAVE THE FILE

Track is done. Now save the AUDACITY FILE. Save this wherever you like, but not in the same folder as the WAV files will be.

REPEAT STEPS 3 to 8 FOR EACH SOUND. Regularly save the audacity file (step 9) for safety - but you dont need to do it every time you record a track.


10) EXPORT THE TRACKS TO .WAV FILES

You should at the end, have 60 tracks all named as the filenames that you want to save (the exact names as the files in C:\Team17\Worms Armageddon\User\Speech).

This is where AUDACITY shines...

Press CTRL-A to select everything

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HIGH PITCH
At this point, before we go any further, if you want to make the files more 'wormlike' and 'high pitchify' them, then select EFFECT, Change Pitch from the main menu.

Then, where it says pitch make sure 'up' is selected (not down), and in the "to" box go down about 5 stages from whatever it says in the FROM box. Eg. if FROM says "F", select "A#/Bb" in the TO box.

Click OK.

This will convert all the tracks to High Pitch.
***************************************************************
Now, on with exporting...

From the menu choose FILE, Export Multiple
Choose WAV as the Export Format
Change the export location to C:\Team17\Worms Armageddon\User\Speech\xxxx

where xxxx is the name of the SpeechBank - Eg The Simpsons

Make sure "Tracks" is selected under "Split Files Based On"

Make sure "Using Label/Track NAme" is selected under "Name Files"

Click Export

And that should be it!

It should say 60 files exported.

I would save the audacity file and keep it safe somewhere so you can easily change the individual files later if you want to.


If you have used the settings suggested, the files should be recorded at 176 Kbs 22050 Hz, and they will be fairly small in size. 8-12 times smaller than if you just use the default settings.



IF YOU HAVE QUALITY FILES YOU WANT TO CONVERT

If you dont want to use audacity, and your software does not have these settings, or you have already recorded some files, there is another FREE program called SUPER that can convert any audio (or video) file to loads of different formats:

http://www.erightsoft.info/GetFile.php?SUPERsetup.exe

(I have put this link because it is hard to find from their website)

The great thing about this program is that:

(1) It supports MANY formats
(2) You can batch convert files in a all in one go.
(3) Just drag the files you want to convert

Just very quickly to convert files to the settings i recommend, start super, and:

1) Drag the files you want to convert (ie all 60) into the box at the bottom

2) At the top left, under 1. Output Container, select WAV (Audio Only). Number 2 should be blank

3) Set 3 (Output Audio Codec) to WAV (PCM-U

4) In the blue AUDIO section,
Leave the Stream Copy box blank
Set Sampling Freq to 22050
Set Channels to 1
The bitrate Kbps should automatically change to 176
Leave the last box as it is

5) Press CTRL+T to set where you want to save the files, if you want to overwrite the originals, etc....

6) Back on the Super Main Screen, click Encode (Active Files)

It should do them all!


Zip the 60 files to a zip file, and upload it. (I will not go into detail on how to do this!) It should be less than 2MB.

Longest post in history. I envy you.