PGDEL/DECP05/Unit3/Ch03.16
Uttarakhand Open University
Post Graduate Diploma in e-Learning
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DECP 05: Developing e-Content
Audacity
Audacity is an open source sound editing program. It is readily available to the public for download at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/. The program is free and written by a group of volunteers. Audacity is created and distributed as using the Open Source model. Audacity is versatile program that can be used to edit sound files and convert them to various formats. It has many of the features that are required to complete the typical project. Audacity will open and edit files in many formats; following are popular formats:
Audacity Project (AUP) – This is the format in which Audacity projects are saved. Projects will have to be exported into another format for replaying by other programs.
WAV – This is the standard uncompressed sound file format.
AIFF – This is the default Macintosh format for files that are not compressed.
MP3, WMA, AC3 – These are common file formats that are especially popular for music. They can be compressed with relatively little loss of audio quality. It is especially useful for situations where file size is important. To work with MP3 files, download the LAME MP3. To use audio from video and many other audio files such as WMA (Windows Media Audio and AC3 (iPod audio tracks) download FFmpeg import/export library.
SUN Au/NeXT – This is the default sound format used on Sun and NeXT computers.
Ogg Vorbis – This is format similar to MP3, but is a free alternative.
