VO Workflow: Be Safe, Be Saving…

Saving your VO audio files remains one of those annoying little steps that is easy to ignore.

That vital technical step distracts from the thunderclap of insight and inspiration after you receive that Audition-With-Your-Name-All-Over-It. The artist within you wants only to fire up the recording software, set your level, jump in the booth and bring the BRILLIANCE!

Why be bogged down with the distracting mechanics of saving the file?
You can always save your audio later, right?

Ultimately, someone has to hear that performance. And for someone to hear that performance, we need to make sure it doesn’t get lost. Making the act of saving part of our studio practice avoids the nasty surprise of the Mac’s “spinning beach ball” or Windows’ “blue screen of death”…

That moment when you Save an “Untitled” file and instead see your computer lock up or bog down is a chilling experience. One of the most likely times for software to glitch is when you have a whole bunch o’ data and tell the computer to put it someplace. It’s why I encourage voice actors to “Save As” before they step behind the mic. Give your file a destination and a name before you record. It’s simple insurance.

If there’s an error on your computer or not enough drive space, trying to save the file will expose that. That’s best to know before you record. Otherwise, if your software decides to cop an attitude and not cooperate, you may be sitting there looking at an audio file that will not save. Which means there’s a possibility of losing that audio.

Triage: Potential ways to salvage your audio

• Check that you are not saving to a bad location – this could be an external drive which is not connected (or awake), or a cloud drive like a Dropbox folder which the computer is not seeing.
• Copy and paste the audio to a new file, then try to Save that file.
• Copy and paste the audio to a different recording program (though this often does not work as “native” audio formats are not always interchangeable).
• Try to “Export” the file rather than using the “Save/Save As” command.
• Try to “Export” smaller portions of the audio file.
• Quit any other applications which are running (though best practice is to not have them running in the first place when recording).

The Simple Fixes did not work – What to do next?

At some point, if none of the above works, you will have to decide whether it is really the absolute best audition you could have made (hey, you are a professional… you can do it again! You have the skills to replicate that performance, or even do a better one!) It’s time to FORCE QUIT from the application. (In MacOs, the handy tool shown above opens when you press the OPTION-COMMAND-ESCAPE key combination. On Windows, it’s time for the old CTRL-ALT-DELETE to get to the Task Manager).

A sudden application quit should cause your recording software to go into “Recovery Mode.” Current recording software actually writes data to a temp file on your disk while you are recording, so it should have most – if not all – of your raw file. (Obviously, this is not a lifeline to rely upon – and you may find that some of the audio is corrupted or missing).

The next time you open your recording application, it should know that it quit unexpectedly and ask if you want to recover your audio.

The answer here is “Yes”.
It’s also polite to say “Thank you!”

Learn the Lesson – Saving Audio Files is Cheap Insurance

Hopefully, that will be enough of a close call to remind you to save and name the file before you step into the booth. It’s a simple step which will spare you the moment of panic.

Using a “Non-Destructive” recording application

One of the arguments for using a more complex recording software is that the application handles the saving for you. This is one of the more subtle features of a “nondestructive” recording system. A DAW like Studio One, Reaper, or ProTools records the original master track and then “layers” any changes on top of it. When you play audio back in those systems, all the fancy editing is being implemented in real time while the audio renders back to you. The original recording has already been archived and does not get altered.

In these software programs, you create a “Project” (called by various names – Studio One calls them “Songs”, for example). This establishes a folder where everything gets placed. This won’t prevent issues if your drive fails, but does tend to get the audio saved and located before you start recording.

Why “Recovery” mode works in so-called “Destructive” recording software

Recording software is dealing with so much data that it records to a “Scratch” disk. That’s why the recovery mode works. The data doesn’t just live in the volatile RAM of your machine. The application is writing to a temporary location on your drive. That is one of the reasons you can run into trouble if you are getting into the last 10% of your computer hard drive. The system needs to have a little room to maneuver – one of the reasons not to max out your drives.

Recording on the fly – You can Save-as-You-Go

Another semi-undocumented feature in Twisted Wave – You can actually SAVE in TW while you continue to record – as long as you gave the file a name and location before you started. I used this recently when working on a remote multi-person project and recording locally. Each individual audio file pushed past an hour. So, between scenes I simply stepped out of the booth and toggled to the TW page and hit COMMAND-S while the computer continued to record.

But, I could not have done that unless I created the SAVE TO destination before I started.

Twisted Wave has Another Cool Save Trick

This one is a little tougher to explain, so I recorded a quick “Two Minute Tip” video that walks you through it.

Reminder: Treat the “Restore/Recover” function like a lifeline

We benefit from the fact that the “Restore/Recover” features have evolved really well. In most cases, the software has a good chance of finding the orphaned audio if things glitch out. But why take that chance? Get in the habit of organizing your stuff now – and make the SAVE AS your first step after you open your default template.

However much of a pain it might be to do the mechanical step of saving the file while you are revving up for that brilliant read, it’s much more of a distraction to hope that everything is there after a restart.

Now go be brilliant!

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