Wikipedia:Featured sound candidates/State of the Union (Four Freedoms) (January 6, 1941) Franklin Delano Roosevelt

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Δ (talk | contribs) at 04:16, 10 May 2011 (adjusting filename after rename). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

State of the Union (Four Freedoms) (January 6, 1941) Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Template:Multi-listen item

Edit: Template:Multi-listen item


  • Nominate and support edit. TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 00:28, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments WP:FS?#2: Can any of the hissing be removed or reduced? There's a fair bit of racket at the beginning of the recording. Yapping off mike, pops, clicks, etc. WP?#4 The FSC caption is insufficient. Tell us something interesting about the audio, what significance it has etc, otherwise you'll be hard pressed to get anyone interested in it. FS?#5: The file description is pretty poor. "Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Four Freedoms State of the Union Address" doesn't tell us anything more than the file name. Please give us more details on the contents. Are there any details on where it was recorded? Have any edits been made to the file? Transcript would be good, even though the aren't required by the FS?. If these audio files "contribute significantly", then will the deaf and hard of hearing have trouble understanding the topic of the article without the transcripts? Matthewedwards :  Chat  05:42, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • It's not going to be possible to remove all the background (unless you want Roosevelt to sound like he's speaking from the bottom of a well. But some cleanup is possible. There will still, by necessity, be racket at the beginning (unless cropped). Adam Cuerden (talk) 01:22, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Right. Here's what I did:

  • Went back to the original (it's always best to edit from the original) and selected the period between 3 and 4 seconds, as seemingly typical of the background noise in this recording. Went to the menu under Effect->Noise Removal, and chose "Get Noise Profile" - this analyses the section.
  • Edit->Select all. Edit->Duplicate
  • Muted one of the tracks (there's a button on the left), and selected the other. The easiest way to do select just one track is to click anywhere on it, then hit Home (which sends you to the start of it), then hold shift + End.
  • Effect-> Noise Removal. I played with the sliders, and, after a little fiddling, chose something about one-third of the way to the right.
  • Did a playthrough. Failure: contained too many humans talking in the background. Retried above steps with a selection around 21:59.
  • Success! One thing I might have had to do was adjust the noise removal slider - too little and you get strange high-pitched mechanical noises, but you want to apply as little as possible. It sounds a bit tinny, but that's alright because the next step will fix that.
  • I now unmuted the original and used the volume controllers left of the tracks to blend in the original, unedited track. Since Audacity's noise removal tool is so very harsh, this is required. I ended up choosing -6dB for the unedited, -3dB for the edited
  • Sounds good! Listen through, check for any clicks, which can often be carefully removed. Make sure to edit both tracks at once, so they won't get out of alignment. Do not use the click removal tool, which is awful.
  • Cut a bit at the beginning, added a fade-in. Adam Cuerden (talk) 02:11, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Multi-listen item N.B. The edit isn't in articles, and will need to replace the original if it passes. I think it came out pretty well, though I do need to grab a new pair of speakers, as I couldn't listen to it as loud as I'd have liked to without blowing them (old speakers get that way, alas.) Adam Cuerden (talk) 02:31, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Did you notice that your version is only 5 minutes and 28 seconds?
Fixed - Upload error. Adam Cuerden (talk) 09:58, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If I want to do this myself, choosing the section between 3 and 4 seconds is a task can you describe how I do that? For example, if I copy the first few seconds, I can not figure out how to past it into a separate track and fit it for the whole width so that I can see more clearly.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 03:46, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oops, failure in upload, my original is full length. That'll be fixed in a few minutes. As for your other question, can you restate it? It's not very clear what you're actually asking. Perhaps you want View->Normal? Note, though, that the section between 3 and 4 seconds was a complete failure, muting whole portions of Roosevelt's speech. Adam Cuerden (talk) 09:51, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If I want to do this myself, choosing the section between 3 and 4 seconds is a task. Can you describe how I do that? For example, if I copy the first few seconds, I can not figure out how to paste it into a separate track and fit it for the whole width so that I can see more clearly.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 12:37, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Why wouldn't you just use view to zoom in in situ?
Now that you have got me up to speed on the view, how about the select. I can't figure out how to select ranges instead of resetting the start of the playback. Also what do you think about the 18.5-19.5 and 5-7 second ranges?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 16:43, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Is that in your trimmed version? Those make no sense in the original. But let's take this to my talk. I'll walk you through your choice of file, within reason (some files just aren't newbie files). =) Adam Cuerden (talk) 16:58, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Those are times working from the original where the first words "Mr. President" occur at about the 10.5 second mark. I am not sure why you trimmed the beginning and left a 6 second lead. If you feel that you have achieved maximal noise reduction with the edit that you have posted above, I would suggest trimming another 5 seconds off the beginning and a few off the end and then posting it towards the top of this discussion as an alternate, unless that is abnormal in FSCs. As for other files, we could either do the JFK Peace Corps speech or the FDR fireside chat.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 17:32, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

[Unindent] It takes a while for the noise to settle down after he begins speaking. If I cut it too close, the context would be lost, and it'd just sound odd. Oh, yes, support edit Adam Cuerden (talk) 22:08, 5 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]


I changed the names from what they were to before to File:1941 State of the Union.ogg and File:1941 State of the Union - Edit 1.ogg. <<Insert clever jibe about putting the entire file summary into the file name here.>> The redirects still work, by the way. No reason to delete them, per se. This is just easier, and will standardize things in case more edits need to be made.
On the subject of more edits, it sounds like FDR is speaking through a towel some of the time, especially early on. Any way to fix that?
Cheers, Sven Manguard Wha? 02:15, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't care for the change: descriptive filenames are just better, given that category lists only give the filenames. Admittedly, it doesn't do that very well either, but there's at least potential that'll improve, whereas there's no chance that information not in the filename is ever going to appear in such gallery-based lists.
As for the towel - you can either have the extreme static, or the muffled voice. It's very much a trade-off between those options, and the goal is to find the right balance. There is no way to do both. Adam Cuerden (talk) 02:28, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
New names are File:FDR's 1941 State of the Union (Four Freedoms speech).ogg and File:FDR's 1941 State of the Union (Four Freedoms speech) Edit 1.ogg. Cheers, Sven Manguard Wha? 02:54, 7 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]


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