0028: Pozotron Gets Even Better. You Can Get 7 Hours Free.

all this week i have been taking
registrations for the brand new 2020
edition of vo heroes
pro our new curriculum is out and uh
it’s fantastic the bonuses are fantastic
one of the bonuses that i’m giving
people when they sign up
is seven hours free with positron which
as you may or may not know is a godsend
for audiobook narrators because it helps
marry
the performance that you do on
audio with the manuscript and shows you
where you might have made a mistake and
gives you a
pickup file that you can use in audacity
or any other digital audio workstation
i’m going to demonstrate it for you but
they’ve got a brand new feature
that is going to make something that is
fantastic
stellar even better and we’ll do that in
this episode
of the vo heroes podcast
[Music]
well hey there it’s david h lawrence the
17th and today
i want to show you positron
p-o-z-o-t-r-o-n
what it is is a service that
will find all the errors that you may
have made and may have missed when you
listened back
should you have listened back to the
narration that you did for
a chapter in an audiobook it’s designed
specifically
for audiobook quality control and it’s
used by
narrators it’s used by proofers it’s
used by engineers
it’s used by publishers and you can use
it as well
and how it works is pretty simple what
you do is you
record your chapter or passage whatever
and then you upload that audio along
with
the manuscript that you read from
and then what positron does is it
compares the two
and then produces a list of any errors
that you may have made and not just
a list but an actual marker file
that you can bring back into audacity
and it shows you right where you need to
make the
uh the corrections so it’s really great
let’s show you how it works so i’m
in positron right now and by the way
don’t go to positron.com just yet
because
at the end of this i’m going to give you
a link
that will take you to a very special
page that they’ve created just for me
and my clients
that will give you six hours of free
positron use rather than just the one
hour that they normally give as a trial
so to get started what we want to do is
create a new project and this is usually
the title of the book that you’re
working on i’m currently working on a
book
called burying the
lead and yes it’s spelled l-e-d-e so
let’s go get the
manuscript first this is the written
version that i’m working from and so
this is burying the lead by joseph
lavalley
and i’m going to upload this to the
site by simply clicking on the create
button so it uploads the file it happens
to be a pdf so it’s really really fast
so now we have burying the lead
and if i click on burying the lead i now
am being presented with a screen that
says hey
drag and drop your audio files here to
upload automatically
i can also click on that and i will go
back
up into the hierarchy here let me go
back to
joseph lavalley where are you there
uh there we go joseph lavallee and then
in my wave files
i just finished doing a few chapters i
want to start with chapter two i’ve
actually already done chapter one
i used positron to correct all the
errors so i’m gonna open up
chapter two it’s going to upload it and
we’ll wait for it to upload 108
megabytes worth of audio
and maybe 30 seconds later we’re just
about at the end of the upload
it’s just about finished and when it’s
finished it will then
show that it’s part of this process
it also processes for it uh the book is
going to process
and when we’re done we’re going to be
able to actually marry these two
together
so let’s wait for it to take a look at
the wave file and the actual
manuscript it takes a bit of time to do
it maybe a few minutes
but what it’s doing is it’s transcoding
what is
in the audio into what it can recognize
as a an audio file i actually don’t know
what format they use but they take the
wav
file that we’ve uploaded and transcoded
into something else
and then there are four more steps that
actually are involved in this process
the second step is processing the audio
to get it ready to marry with the script
and this is kind of a long step this
could take
a few minutes depending upon how long
your
audio is this is about a 21 and a half
minute long
piece and it probably takes about five
minutes to do this step
and then step three it’s now processing
the text it’s getting it all in
shape so it can marry it up with the
audio as well
and then in step four it begins the
proofing process this is where it’s
comparing
the audio with the manuscript
and finding all kinds of things that you
might miss
including things that are to the world
of narration
unique uh in everyday language you might
say
that is is the same as that’s you know
contractions versus the separate words
but when you’re narrating an audiobook
as you know that’s not the case and so
it’s looking for things like that it’s
looking for double words it’s looking
for all kinds of things
and that’s what it’s doing in the
proofing right now
and when it’s done with that it is done
and
basically you’re looking now at a
finished file ready to go and to look at
and as you can see it found 18
annotations
so let’s open the proofing and find out
what i’m in for so it shows you the
script
and then on the left hand side here
there are
um the annotations the 18 annotations
errors that it found or things that it
found that you might want to check
and for each one you have three options
you can say oh no
this is not an error that’s what i meant
to say or
it’s minor enough that it’s not a fix
like maybe you missed that i slid into a
a word or something like that or
it is something that you need to fix so
in this case it says please check that
the audio starts at the beginning of
your chapter
that’s not something that i need to fix
because i know my silences are correct
so i’m going to mark that as not an
error so the next one here it says pause
detected 2.7 seconds that’s not an error
either
because that’s the space between chapter
2 when i say chapter 2 and the beginning
which is actually acx’s standard so i’m
going to mark that as not an error
but the next one is isle and it’s down
here it says i’ll bet
and all i have to do to actually hear
what i
said was click on it and note that it
moves me
to that space on the timeline about a
minute and 42 in
and all i have to do is hit play i bet
there’s more than one good story there
tony okay so it caught that i said i
bet there’s one more good story there
let’s try it one more time i can put my
cursor anywhere and start playing from
that point
i bet there’s more than one good yeah
i’m going to say that’s an
error so i’m going to mark that as need
to fix
the next one let’s go to the next one
and see what it says
pause detected 2.2 seconds that’s okay
notice this is an actual space where the
pause
should be 2.2 seconds or so so i’m going
to mark that as
not an error and move to the next one
what does it say
here where is my next one let’s see
uh okay let’s let’s play this and see
what happens
it says inserted word inserted year
evening during tony’s sophomore year in
high school
ah as he his mother and his sister were
eating pasta and salads at the kitchen
table
so i don’t know what would go in there
but i can go to the manuscript and see
what it says
let’s see where is that tony and rita
uh yeah okay so event during tony’s
sophomore
what in high school and i actually
corrected that for the author
it looks to me like there’s a word
missing here the event that most changed
their both their lives occurred
one evening during tony’s sophomore in
high school it should be sophomore year
so i’m just going to mark that as not an
error
as being inserted properly see how it
handles
all these different situations it’s
looking for something it
uses pronunciation it uses syntax it
uses double it looks for double words
it looks for contractions let’s see what
happens when i’m saying
the bedroom alright let’s see what did i
say here he and rita each had a bathroom
on the second floor
yup made a mistake so i’m going to mark
this
as a need to fix error and then right
down here is the next one
uh let’s see what this one is see what i
said
here catholic high school
he had decided to stay so i should have
said he decided to stay
so i’m going to mark this as need to fix
as well and as you can see i can work
all the way through
all of the errors that it found now if i
had done this myself
likely i would not have uh
i would not have found some of the
things that i said because
that’s what i saw when i read it and
that’s what i said when i saw
what i read so i’m gonna go through all
of these
i don’t need to show you uh the the uh
the nature of correcting all these and
i’ll get the ones that i need to do and
then i’ll come back here and i’ll show
you which ones
are done i’ll be at the bottom and be at
the end so hang on one second let me
take care of business
all right so i am finished here i just
wrapped up the last
few things i needed to record some most
of them
were just simply uh moments of silence
that it detected but that were part of
acx’s
requirements so let’s go back to
the project page and now that it’s all
finished it says all checked we have
six pickups out of those 18. let’s
download
what’s called the pickup packet when we
download that pickup packet it’s so cool
we can download a number of different
things
but the proofing report the narrator
proof sheet
book full text but what we really want
is the pickup packet
and we want it to be relative to the
start of each audio file rather than to
the start of
the entire project that way we can get
chapter by chapter
reports on what we’re doing and the
narration content we want the current
sentence
that’s all well and these are the
standards so i’m just going to download
this
and notice it downloads here basically
once it’s done
it’s actually pretty quick because what
it’s downloading is
a list let’s show it in the finder it’s
in my
uh it’s in my downloads folder but i’m
going to drag it into my project folder
that i have on my hard drive for
the project itself now when i double
click on this when i
open this zip file something really cool
is going to be shown
see this index.html file right here it’s
just
index.html that’s actually a web page
and these mp3s are the audio of all the
things that i need
to fix in their in their current state
so they’re not in the corrected state
obviously because
i haven’t corrected them but watch what
happens if i go over here
and i choose a new tab and i just drag
this document onto my browser
it opens up this beautiful locally
produced web page
that shows all of the errors that i need
to fix
and it shows the copy that i need to
read
so if i play this i’ll hear my original
tony decided he would walk over to the
square one day soon
and get to know them i bet there’s more
than one good story there
tony okay so that’s the deal i
i need to say i’ll bet now here’s one
more thing that you download
that’s really really cool i’m gonna drop
this menu again for the import export
and i’m gonna export
daw markers and what that means is
digital audio workstation markers
and it creates daw markers for any uh
application you might be using and we
use audacity and it creates them for
audacity and reaper and audition and pro
tools
we want audacity and we want it relative
to the start of each audio file once
again
so these daw markers are really cool
watch what happens when
i download these daw markers we open
this up we show it
it’s a very short file it’s just a text
file we’ll show it in
the downloads folder we’ll drag it over
into the uh bearing the lead
project folder that i have on my hard
drive and when
i unzip this what i get is a text file
and if i show you the preview of this
text file it’s very short
there’s six lines and each one of those
lines
is an error and watch what happens
i’m going to go over to audacity
this is the original wav file that i
pulled in this is what i recorded this
has all the errors in it
but watch what happens if i go up here
to
the file menu and choose import
and then choose labels
i’m going to go to my burying the lead
folder
positron packet there’s that text file
that i talked about
chapter two bearing the lead.text watch
what happens when i open it
oh look it’s all of my corrections
placed exactly in the track where i need
them to be
time wise right so let’s
go into this in a little bit more detail
i’m going to zoom in on the very first
one that i’ve got
now one thing that you want to pay
attention to is i’m going to actually do
all my pickups from left to right
and the way to do that we’ve told you in
the past to do your pickups from
um uh the end of the track
to the beginning because if you happen
to
have to delete something and you’re
doing it from left to right if you
delete this watch what happens to the
label where the error is
it stays where it is but the other audio
is removed
and so now all of those errors are
mis-timed but
with this with this marker track and
with the audio track here
if i go to the tracks menu and i choose
either lock tracks or sync lock tracks
it depends on what version
of audacity you’re using now if i delete
something
notice that it’s it’s locked to the
bottom track and it’s going to delete
that part as well and all of the timing
will stay the same
let me undo that let me let me just hear
what’s going on here
i bet there’s more than one good story
there tony thought
all right let’s do a pickup on that
do new and it’s i’ll bet there’s more
than one good story there let me play it
one more time just so that i know
what i said i bet there’s more than one
good story there
tony thought
i’ll bet there’s more than one good
story there tony thought
all right i think that’s pretty good i’m
going to grab that copy it
i’m going to go back over here i’m gonna
grab this and paste it in
let’s hear how that goes get to know
them
i’ll bet there’s more than one good
story there tony thought
but not today so it looks pretty good i
like that and i’ll move on
to the next one i can just move on down
the line uh to wherever the next
pickup is these the bathroom one and all
that so that’s how
easy this all is for
positron and the good news is
is we’ve worked out a deal for you when
you
start with positron and you go to their
pricing
they give you a free one-hour trial when
you sign up now one hour
is okay you can do a few chapters but i
went to them and i said look
my people are professionals my people
are doing this for
a living or a hefty side hustle i want
more can you do anything for me
and they said yeah sure we can and they
came back with something that i was
personally blown away from instead of
one hour free trial
six hours you can do an entire medium
length
book when you try it for free but don’t
go to positron.com
instead go to
the link that is showing on your screen
right now that ends in
get hyphen positron you go
there and you’re not only going to get
uh the free
six hours but you’re also gonna be given
options
that are less expensive than nine
dollars per finished hour now
nine dollars per finished hour is pretty
good that’d be uh
the finished hour the thing that we just
did was 21 minutes long
that would be about three bucks to be
able to
uh create a really nice error-free item
to send off to your rights holder
or your producer or your publisher
whoever you’re working for
but you’re getting you’re getting uh six
hours
and the programs that they have for you
as well
are less expensive than nine dollars per
finished hour depends on what you pick
so go to the url on the screen that ends
in get
hyphen positron and
check it out it’s absolutely free you
can do probably an entire book with
the trial that the that we negotiated
for you
and that’s what i do when i want to look
my best and i’ve made it part of my
stack again
it’s optional but it’s very highly
recommended i hope this helps
so that was the demo that i did
recently on positron and in the meantime
what they’ve added is a pronunciation
guide
check this out you can instead of using
google sheets or a piece of paper to
jot down the words in your manuscript
that you need to
investigate to figure out how to
pronounce you can use this
function in positron and again it’s tied
in
to the project that you’re working on
and it doesn’t cost anything more and
it’s part of the premium
uh uh subscriptions that they have but
that you get a break on if you’re a vo
heroes pro
plus that seven free hours to try it out
oh my gosh this is just getting better
and better and better and better and
better so
we’d love to have you if you’re not a vo
heroes pro yet please go check it out
registration ends this sunday night and
the bonus packages go away
the the positron offer goes away but
uh if you if you act now if you do it
now and by the way everybody who became
a member this week everybody who
registered this week
and all my existing pros you get that
seven free hours and the pronunciation
guide and positron as well
so i just wanted to share that with you
i i when i’m doing these things
i try to bring as much value as possible
when i’m doing registration weeks
when i’m designing courses when i’m
setting things up for
my tribe my members my pro members on
voheros.com
i try to be as of service as i can and
include as many things as i can and this
just perfect
so vo heroes dot com slash 2020 act
before sunday night if you’re not a vo
heroes pro yet
and get the seven free hours of positron
including
the new pronunciation guide and the new
pronunciation tracking
that they have built into positron i’m
david h lawrence the 17th i’d love to
hear your comments below just scroll
down below this video let me know what
you think
and i thank you so much for watching and
for listening
and i will talk to you in the next
episode.