Audio and Video Email Tutorial

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Want to send free audio email or video email messages instead of regular email? Well, I can show you what I do, which may not be the best way of doing it but it works for me. Alas, don't expect to be able to produce something like GONE WITH THE WIND...

The most straightforward way of sending your audiomail or videomail message is as an attachment. If you want to be a little more sophisticated, you can also send it as a STREAMED message. As an attachment the recipient must download it to their hard drive and then play the message. If you stream there is no need to download it and the message starts playing after a few seconds of clicking on a link.

There are programs out there that create audio email or video email for you but most cost money. There are also sites that cater to those who want to send audiomail or videomail but I really haven't found something that satisfies my needs. Besides, you also want to be able to create streaming media in case you have a web site.

Obviously your PC must have the hardware for it. Most PC's are ready for audio as long as you have a microphone. If you already own a PC video camera then you are ready to send video messages.

Uncompressed audio and video files are huge. Depending on how you set things up, a minute of audio could be as large as 10 megabytes. You can't expect to send a few dozen megabytes as an attached wav file to your email message so you sister can hear your sweet voice. And even a small uncompressed video could go into the hundreds of megabytes. Upload and download times would be ridiculous. And email accounts usually have fairly small limits on file sizes.

No need to be Einstein to figure out that we have to crunch those messages into a manageable size...

To produce a good audio or video, I prefer to create an uncompressed file with the audio or video, then compress it using formats that most people can play. This means creating something to be played with the REALPLAYER or the WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER.

Go to the DOWNLOADS page on this website and get yourself a copy of the following freebies, if you don't already have them:

Helix Producer

RealPlayer

Those two are enough for basic stuff so you can already try unedited audiomail and videomail. See below.

If you want to get into it a little more, download these also:

VirtualDub

VidCap

CoolEdit96

To round off you career as a producer, you can also get these:

Windows Media On-Demand Producer

Windows Media Encoder

Windows Media Player

VidEdit

Sound Track Producer

ABC VideoRoll

Audio email:

If you don't want to edit your message, and the recipient has RealPlayer (most people do) you can make it directly with the Helix Producer.

As shown, select Devices and from the drop-down list select you audio device.

On the right side, click on the blue icon and pick a file name, for instance "audio". This will be the file which, when ready, you'll attach to your emal.

Now click on "Audiences" and configure as follows:

Get your microphone and click on the button . When you finish talking click STOP. You'll find your audio clip in the folder you selected to use. If you put it on your desktop go there and try it out.

Go ahead and write your letter and attach the file.

Audio email using CoolEdit only:

There is actually a good way of sending audiomail as an attachment and all you need is CoolEdit96. The format is very universal so that almost anyone will be able to hear your attachment without downloading any player.

Open CooEdit96 and select the 1st and 5th options. Then click RECORD. Here you MUST use a setting of 8000, Mono, 16-bit. Press OK and record your message. When you finish press STOP.

If you want to do a little editing, now is the time to do it. Listen to it and cut out any unwanted parts or trim any unnecessary silences. CoolEdit is quite adept at these things.

To save the message go to FILE---SAVE AS. In the SAVE AS TYPE drop-down menu make sure you select ACM Waveform(*.WAV). Click on Options and select the format DSP Group TrueSpeech. The attributes should be 8,000 Hz, 1 bit, Mono.

The extension of this format is .WAV, and the resulting file will be pretty compact.

All you do now is attach the file to your email.

Video email:

If you don't want to edit your message, and the recipient has RealPlayer (most people do) you can make it directly with the Helix Producer.

As shown, select Devices and from the drop-down list select your audio and video devices.

For the Video camera, click on Settings/DirectShow Pin and configure as follows:

On the right side, click on the blue icon and pick a file name, for instance "video". This will be the file which, when ready, you'll attach to your emal.

Now click on "Audiences" and configure as follows:

Get your microphone ready, look at the camera and and then click . When you finish saying your piece, click STOP. You'll find your audio clip in the folder you selected to use. If you put it on your desktop go there and try it out. Then go ahead and write your letter and attach the video file.

What I really do

I like to record my audios and videos without compression first and then got to the Helix Producer or the On-Demand Producer for the compression. This gives me a chance to do some editing if I so desire. In the case of videos, my PC's resources won't be taxed because I won't be encoding the video in real time. This will give me a better frame rate and a more satisfying end result.

Audio email:

For audio I start with CoolEdit96. When I launch it, I select the 1st and 5th options. Then click RECORD. I generally use a setting of 11025, Mono, 8bit. Before you press OK make sure you have your microphone ready and your tongue ready to flap. When you finish recording your message, press STOP.

To save the message go to FILE---SAVE AS. In the SAVE AS TYPE drop-down menu make sure you select WINDOWS PCM(*.WAV). This gives you an uncompressed wav file for use with the Helix Producer or the On-Demand Producer.

If you want to do a little editing, now is the time to do it. Listen to it and cut out any unwanted parts or trim any unnecessary silences. CoolEdit is quite adept at these things. When done, resave it in the same format.

I generally prefer to send audio email for the RealPlayer so I use the Helix Producer. If you want to produce it for the Windows Media Player, then you need to use the Windows Media On-demand Producer or the Windows Media Encoder.

Video email:

I start with VidCap or VirtualDub. You can use whatever clone of VidCap came with your PC camera. If you prefer, download VidCap from my DOWNLOADS page and come back.

Although VidCap is easier to use, if you experience synchronization problems you should use VirtualDub.

Launch VidCap:

Select File---Set Capture File

Put it on your desktop. You won't lose it.

Now click File---Allocate File Space

If possible, allocate a fairly large amount of megabytes. This will make it less likely that frames will be dropped.

Click Edit---Preferences. The most important one here is Sync Video to audio.

Now go to Options---Audio Format. This is my preferred choice.

Now Options---Video Format. You can experiment a little with this one. A large image means more information will need to be compressed. For example 320x240 has 4 times more information than 160-120 at the same Image Color Format so it'll be harder to encode.

Now click Options---compression. It's important not to compress while you shoot the video. First, the frame rate might suffer. Second, you should leave all the compression to the specialized encoder, otherwise you'll be losing quality.

You're almost ready. Make sure the preview window is active. If you can't see yourself moving then click on the 3rd button from the left, on the top bar. This activates/deactivates the preview mode. Frame the subject and focus the camera. Have the microphone ready.

To start the take, click on the Capture button shown at the left, or go to Capture---Video and click.

Here you really need to experiment. Select the maximum frame rate possible without dropping frames. Try it a few times to determine the best combination possible.

Click OK to start the capture. When you finish, press the ESCAPE key or right click your mouse.

Now that you have a satisfying video in uncompressed AVI format, all that's left to do is compress the file to a manageable size so that you can send it as an attachment, or perhaps to stream it from a web server. To this end, launch the Helix Producer.

Drag the AVI file you wish to compress onto the main window of the Helix Producer and follow the instructions previously outlined.

Hints for a better video

Good video email is more difficult to produce than good audio email. High-motion videos consume a lot of bit-rate so they are more difficult to compress, meaning that for a given file size the quality will be lower in a high-motion video. So you'll always want to balance quality and file size.

The closer the subject is to the camera, the more overall motion there will be. If you are talking and sit very close to the lens, there may be too much motion to encode efficiently. If you are simply talking normally, without a lot of gestures, a 160x120 video compressed for a 56k modem (or even for 28k) should be enjoyable enough for routine videomail.

Keep motion to a minimum.

Don't sit too close to the camera.

Have adequate lighting and try not to have bright lights in back of you.

It's not all that uncommon to run into problems of synchronization between the audio and the video. If you have that problem, try some of these suggestions:

Use VirtualDub to capture the video.

Capture the video at the highest frame rate possible without dropping frames.

Close all other programs.

Defragment your hard drive.

Make sure you're capturing FULL FRAMES (UNCOMPRESSED).

Turn off the PREVIEW window.

Use the smallest possible video size.

Use the lowest possible video source quality but make sure the video is still enjoyable.

For the video format, I use YUV9 for the fastest rate. If you have the option, use 8 bit color.