This Mother’s Day, April Kelley just wants to give her daughter Jessica Kelley a hug. But she can’t. Jessica, 21, works on the COVID-19 floor at Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids.

To protect her family and still do her job, Jessica is living full time at the hospital, which has made housing available to staff who need to isolate from their families during the pandemic.

“Just based on the floor I’m on, I don’t want to put my family at risk. It’s not worth it,” she said.

Her mother has an autoimmune disorder, adding another layer to Jessica’s worries. Though she does not interact with patients with the coronavirus directly, she still knows exposure is a risk.

“It wasn’t too hard of a decision, but it’s hard on me sometimes,” she said. “I really miss her.”

Jessica is a telemetry monitor technician. For her eight- to 12-hour shifts, her job is to watch heart monitors of patients in the hospital’s intensive care unit. If any patient starts to have cardiac distress or irregular heart rhythms, she and her fellow technicians are the first ones to notice and can notify the doctors and nurses in the main ward.

“It was her choice to either work at the hospital or come home, which was really difficult for her,” April Kelley said. “She’s only 21, so I was pretty proud of her for choosing to help. I don’t think people realize the sacrifice people are making to be there, working in the hospitals right now.”

Jessica is finishing her junior year as a nursing student at Mount Mercy University in Cedar Rapids. When classes moved online and the dorms closed, she had to figure out what to do. While many of her classmates moved back home with their families, doing so would have meant quitting her job. Right now, she said, that job feels more important than ever. In addition to being a full-time student, she works 32 to 36 hours a week at the hospital.

She spent about a week at home with her mother and brother in Humboldt after the dorms closed, but even then, she stayed in her mother’s finished basement and didn’t interact directly with her.

Her older brother, 26, is staying at home with their mom, and she misses him, too. Jessica said to stay connected, she does FaceTime with her mom, a social worker, almost every day.

“She’s definitely one of my best friends, one of my biggest supporters. She is a single mom, and she’s worked two jobs for the last 12 years,” Jessica said. “She always provides for us, and she’s just wonderful in every single way. She’s very caring, she takes care of everybody, no matter where you are.”

This Mother’s Day, those roles have reversed. Now, Jessica is protecting her mother instead of the other way around.

“She said, ‘Mom, I just can’t come home again, I couldn’t put you in that kind of danger,’” April said. “I’m extremely proud of the young lady she is and how responsible she is, and what she is doing during this time, to make sure other people are safe.”

Jessica’s interest in nursing came from her family. Her grandmother, aunt and cousin are all nurses. She also had an experience as a child that stuck with her and inspired her current career goal of becoming a pediatric intensive care nurse after graduation.

In the second grade, she had encephalitis. At first, she said, doctors didn’t believe she was actually sick. Her mother had to take her to a different hospital to get help.

“They said I was making it up, that my screaming and vomiting was just trying to get attention. They said I was faking it,” she said. “At one point, I really did not know who my mom was, and that’s the scariest part, to have someone tell you that’s not real. That’s just not right, and I don’t want other people, especially children to have to deal with that.”

She became interested in the telemetry job after touring the hospital as a student. She said watching the monitors can be surreal, knowing each line she watches represents a patient she may never meet but whose life she is responsible for.

“You see their heart, but you don’t see them,” she said. “Sometimes you watch them die, but never see them. Other times, you see someone going into a fatal rhythm, and you call the nurses ... and when they finally get that person stabilized, you know they might not have made it if we weren’t there. It’s very rewarding.”

April stressed the need for people to follow public health guidelines on social distancing to stay healthy.

“I know they’re starting to open back up and people are eager to get on with their lives,” she said. “But there are a lot of people putting their lives on the line right now ... and I would hate for Jessica to have to go back and self-isolate again if there was a second wave.”

April’s sad she can’t spend this Mother’s Day with her daughter, but right now, that’s not what is important.

“Remember, there’s going to be another Mother’s Day, she said. “We all just have to take care of our people.”

Comments: (319) 398-8339; alison.gowans@thegazette.com

CEDAR RAPIDS — Like other members of the United States House, the “new normal” for Rep. Dave Loebsack involves a lot of time on the phone and in video conferences.

Although the Senate returned to Washington this past week, the House may not return to the Capitol until mid-May. As representatives work from their districts, many face the same challenges as their constituents who are working from home via various phone and video meeting platforms.

“They’re clunky, difficult, frustrating at times,” the 2nd District Democrat said after a 90-minute Energy and Commerce Committee teleconference meeting, “but we can get a lot of things done that way without necessarily going into Washington. It’s not the same by any means ... but I think we can get a lot of our work done that we have to get done even though were not there.”

If there’s an upside to the telecommuting downside, it’s that the poor connections, dropped calls and sometimes spotty internet signals highlight an issue Loebsack has been working on — Congress and the country need better broadband connectivity. A member of the Communications and Technology subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over telecommunications issues, Loebsack also serves as a co-chair of the Rural Broadband Caucus.

In one meeting, Loebsack said, a fellow committee member was unable to ask questions because the Wi-Fi signal at his home outside of a southwestern city was so poor.

“So I think we’re going to make some progress” convincing congressional colleagues of the need to connect all Americans to reliable and affordable broadband internet, Loebsack said.

“In times like these, when families are at home, millions of K-12 students do not have access to the high-speed internet needed to take classes and complete their assignments online,” he said in an announcement with House Majority Whip James Clyburn and others of a House Democratic plan to connect all Americans to high-speed internet.

When the transmission of COVID-19 slows, the need for high-speed internet connectivity will remain as well as the need for Congress to provide incentives for internet service providers to close the “broadband gap” by extending service to the las mile in rural areas and eliminate what he called “internet deserts” that exist in cities.

The plan calls for an investment of $80 billion over five years for internet infrastructure and another $5 billion over five years for low-interest financing of projects.

With more reliable connectivity, Congress could consider remote voting at times like this when members don’t want to gather in Washington. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been cool to the idea, but Loebsack thinks members are “more open” to voting remotely.

“But we have to make sure that it’s completely secure, that the system can’t get hacked, and that votes are recorded properly,” he said.

Remote voting may be a may be a generational issue, “but I think this is doable.”

“I’m not making that prediction, but I would not be shocked if we move in that direction, especially the longer this (isolation) goes on,” Loebsack said.

Comments: (319) 398-8375; james.lynch@thegazette.com

Announcement of the Members - Give Integration add-on that creates a nicer UI when the GiveWP and Members plugins are active.

Announcement of the Members - ACF Integration plugin, which creates custom capabilities for the Advanced Custom Fields plugin.

Introducing an add-on plugin for Members that integrates the Easy Digital Downloads plugin roles and capabilities.

An add-on plugin that integrates WooCommerce's roles and capabilities into the Members user role editor.

Announcement of Members - Block Permissions, a WordPress plugin for showing/hiding content using the block editor (Gutenberg).

I first released the Members plugin in September 2009. I had not long moved back home to Alabama from Atlanta, … Continue reading The Members plugin has a new home →

I like the philosophy behind shooting with primes; that a photographer shouldn’t stand still but instead, continuously move closer, further, lower, or higher relative to his/her subject as a means of establishing a deeper connection. ????????
—
Save 50% on my custom Lightroom presets with HOLIDAY50. Link in profile. (at Toronto, Ontario)

Bricks are better black. ◾️ (at Toronto, Ontario)

Missing Berlin’s gorgeous buildings again. ???? (at Berlin, Germany)

This might as well be a Herschel ad. ???? (at London, United Kingdom)

Four days from now I’ll be boarding a one way flight to San Francisco to take on the next evolution of my role at @shopify. Leaving the city that I’ve called home my entire life and the people who have defined everything I am was one of the most uncomfortable decisions I’ve ever had to make. But this wouldn’t be the first time I’ve chased discomfort in my career.
.
I wrote about my ongoing pursuit for discomfort this morning in hopes of inspiring others to do the things that scare and challenge them this year. You can find the link in my profile.
.
Happy 2017! ????
.
????: @jonasll (at San Francisco, California)

The new Auphonic Audio Post Production Add-ons for Adobe allows you to use the Auphonic Web Service directly within Adobe Audition and Adobe Premiere (Mac and Windows):

Audition Multitrack Editor with the Auphonic Audio Post Production Add-on.
The Auphonic Add-on can be embedded directly inside the Adobe user interface.

It is possible to export tracks/projects from Audition/Premiere and process them with the Auphonic audio post production algorithms (loudness, leveling, noise reduction - see Audio Examples), use our Encoding/Tagging, Chapter Marks, Speech Recognition and trigger Publishing with one click.
Furthermore, you can import the result file of an Auphonic Production into Audition/Premiere.

Auphonic Add-on for Adobe Audition

Audition Waveform Editor with the Auphonic Audio Post Production Add-on.
Metadata, Marker times and titles will be exported to Auphonic as well.

Export from Audition to Auphonic

You can upload the audio of your current active document (a Multitrack Session or a Single Audio File) to our Web Service.
In case of a Multitrack Session, a mixdown will be computed automatically to create a Singletrack Production in our Web Service.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to export the individual tracks in Audition, which could be used to create Multitrack Productions.

Metadata and Markers

All metadata (see tab Metadata in Audition) and markers (see tab Marker in Audition and the Waveform Editor Screenshot) will be exported to Auphonic as well.
Marker times and titles are used to create Chapter Marks (Enhanced Podcasts) in your Auphonic output files.

Auphonic Presets

You can optionally choose an Auphonic Preset to use previously stored settings for your production.

Start Production and Upload & Edit Buttons

Click Upload & Edit to upload your audio and create a new Production for further editing. After the upload, a web browser will be started to edit/adjust the production and start it manually.
Click Start Production to upload your audio, create a new Production and start it directly without further editing. A web browser will be started to see the results of your production.

Audio Compression

Uncompressed Multitrack Sessions or audio files in Audition (WAV, AIFF, RAW, etc.) will be compressed automatically with lossless codecs to speed up the upload time without a loss in audio quality.
FLAC is used as lossless codec on Windows and Mac OS (>= 10.13), older Mac OS systems (< 10.13) do not support FLAC and use ALAC instead.

Import Auphonic Productions in Audition

To import the result of an Auphonic Production into Audition, choose the corresponding production and click Import.
The result file will be downloaded from the Auphonic servers and can be used within Audition. If the production contains multiple Output File Formats, the output file with the highest bitrate (or uncompressed/lossless if available) will be chosen.

Auphonic Add-on for Adobe Premiere

Premiere Video Editor with the Auphonic Audio Post Production Add-on.
The Auphonic Add-on can be embedded directly inside the Adobe Premiere user interface.

Export from Premiere to Auphonic

You can upload the audio of your current Active Sequence in Premiere to our Web Service.

We will automatically create an audio-only mixdown of all enabled audio tracks in your current Active Sequence.
Video/Image tracks are ignored: no video will be rendered or uploaded to Auphonic!
If you want to export a specific audio track, please just mute the other tracks.

Start Production and Upload & Edit Buttons

Click Upload & Edit to upload your audio and create a new Production for further editing. After the upload, a web browser will be started to edit/adjust the production and start it manually.
Click Start Production to upload your audio, create a new Production and start it directly without further editing. A web browser will be started to see the results of your production.

Auphonic Presets

You can optionally choose an Auphonic Preset to use previously stored settings for your production.

Chapter Markers

Chapter Markers in Premiere (not all the other marker types!) will be exported to Auphonic as well and are used to create Chapter Marks (Enhanced Podcasts) in your Auphonic output files.

Audio Compression

The mixdown of your Active Sequence in Premiere will be compressed automatically with lossless codecs to speed up the upload time without a loss in audio quality.
FLAC is used as lossless codec on Windows and Mac OS (>= 10.13), older Mac OS systems (< 10.13) do not support FLAC and use ALAC instead.

Import Auphonic Productions in Premiere

To import the result of an Auphonic Production into Premiere, choose the corresponding production and click Import.
The result file will be downloaded from the Auphonic servers and can be used within Premiere. If the production contains multiple Output File Formats, the output file with the highest bitrate (or uncompressed/lossless if available) will be chosen.

Installation

Install our Add-ons for Audition and Premiere directly on the Adobe Add-ons website:

Auphonic Audio Post Production for Adobe Audition:
https://exchange.adobe.com/addons/products/20433

Auphonic Audio Post Production for Adobe Premiere:
https://exchange.adobe.com/addons/products/20429

The installation requires the Adobe Creative Cloud desktop application and might take a few minutes. Please also also try to restart Audition/Premiere if the installation does not work (on Windows it was once even necessary to restart the computer to trigger the installation).

After the installation, you can start our Add-ons directly in Audition/Premiere:
navigate to Window -> Extensions and click Auphonic Post Production.

Enjoy

Thanks a lot to Durin Gleaves and Charles Van Winkle from Adobe for their great support!

Please let us know if you have any questions or feedback!

Lots of users have asked us about more customization and control over the sound of our audio algorithms in the past, so today, we have introduced some advanced algorithm parameters for our singletrack version in a private beta program!

• Leveler Presets are basically complete new leveling algorithms
• Maximum Loudness Range (LRA) Target to control the strength of our Leveler
• Maximum True Peak Level
• Better Hum and Noise Reduction Controls

UPDATE Nov. 2018:
We released a complete rework of the Adaptive Leveler parameters and the description here is not valid anymore!
Please see Auphonic Adaptive Leveler Customization (Beta Update)!

Please join our private beta program and let us know how you use these new features or if you need even more control!

Leveler Presets

Our Adaptive Leveler corrects level differences between speakers, between music and speech and will also apply dynamic range compression to achieve a balanced overall loudness. If you don't know about the Leveler yet, take a look at our Audio Examples.

Leveler presets are basically complete new leveling algorithms, which we have been working on in the past few months:
Our current Leveler tries to normalize all speakers to the same loudness. However, in some cases, you might want more or less loudness differences (dynamic range / loudness range) between the speakers and music segments, or more or less compression, etc.
For these use cases, we have developed additional Leveler Presets and the parameter Maximum Loudness Range.

Preset Medium:

This is our current leveling algorithm as demonstrated in the Audio Examples.

Preset Hard:

The hard preset reacts faster and applies more gain and compression compared to the medium preset. It is built for recordings with extreme loudness differences, for example very quiet questions from the audience in a lecture recording, extremely soft and loud voices within one audio track, etc.

Preset Soft:

This preset reacts slower, applies less gain and compression compared to the medium preset. Use it if you want to keep more loudness differences (dynamic narration), if you want your voices to sound "less compressed/processed", for dynamic music (concert/classical recordings), background music, etc.

Preset Softer:

Like soft, but softer :)

Preset Speech Medium, Music Soft:

Uses the medium preset in speech segments and the soft preset in music segments. It is built for music live recordings or dynamic music mixes, where you want to amplify all speakers but keep the loudness differences within and between music segments.

Preset Medium, No Compressor:

Like the medium preset, but only (mid-term) leveling and no (short-term) compression is applied. This preset is optimal if you just use a Maximum Loudness Range Target and want to avoid any additional compression as much as possible.

Maximum Loudness Range (LRA) Target

The loudness range (LRA) indicates the variation of loudness over the course of a program and is measured in LU (loudness units) - for more details see Loudness Measurement and Normalization or EBU Tech 3342.

The parameter Max Loudness Range controls how much leveling is applied:
volume changes of our Adaptive Leveler will be restricted so that the loudness range of the output file is below the selected value.
High loudness range values will result in very dynamic output files, low loudness range values in compressed output audio. If the LRA value of your input file is already below the maximum loudness range value, no leveling at all will be applied.

It is also important which Leveler Preset you select, for example, if you use the soft(er) preset, it won't be possible to achieve very low loudness range targets.

Also, the Max Loudness Range parameter is not such a precise target value as the Loudness Target. The LRA of your output file might be off a few LU, as it is not reasonable to reach the exact target value.

Use Cases: The Maximum LRA parameter allows you to control the strength of our leveling algorithms, in combination with the parameter Leveler Preset. This might be used for automatic mixdowns with different LRA values for different target platforms (very compressed ones like mobile devices or Alexa, very dynamic ones like home cinema, etc.).

Maximum True Peak Level

This parameter sets the maximum allowed true peak level of the processed output file, which is controlled by the True Peak Limiter after our Global Loudness Normalization algorithms.

If set to Auto (which is the current default), a reasonable value according to the selected loudness target is used: -1dBTP for 23 LUFS (EBU R128) and higher, -2dBTP for -24 LUFS (ATSC A/85) and lower loudness targets.

The maximum true peak level parameter is already available in our desktop program.

Better Hum and Noise Reduction Controls

Hum Base Frequency:

Set the hum base frequency to 50Hz or 60Hz (if you know it), or use Auto to automatically detect the hum base frequency in each speech region.

Hum Reduction Amount:

Maximum hum reduction amount in dB, higher values remove more noise.
In Auto mode, a classifier decides how much hum reduction is necessary in each speech region. Set it to a custom value (> 0), if you prefer more hum reduction or want to bypass our classifier. Use Disable Dehum to disable hum reduction and use our noise reduction algorithms only.

Behavior of noise and hum reduction parameter combinations:

Advanced Parameters Private Beta and Feedback

At the moment the advanced algorithm parameters are for beta users only. This is to allow us to get user feedback, so we can change the parameters to suit user needs.
Please let us know your case studies, if you need any other algorithm parameters or if you have any questions!

Here are some private beta invitation codes:

y6KCBI4yo0 ksIFEsmI1y BDZec2a21V i4XRGLlVm2 0UDxuS0vbu aaBxi35sKN aaiDSZUbmY bu8lPF80Ih eMsSl6Sf8K DaWpsUnyjo
2YM00m8zDW wh7K2pPmSa jCX7mMy2OJ ZGvvhzCpTF HI0lmGhjVO eXqVhN6QLU t4BH0tYcxY LMjQREVuOx emIogTCAth 0OTPNB7Coz
VIFY8STj2f eKzRSWzOyv 40cMMKKCMN oBruOxBkqS YGgPem6Ne7 BaaFG9I1xZ iSC0aNXoLn ZaS4TykKIa l32bTSBbAx xXWraxS40J
zGtwRJeAKy mVsx489P5k 6SZM5HjkxS QmzdFYOIpf 500AHHtEFA 7Kvk6JRU66 z7ATzwado6 4QEtpzeKzC c9qt9Z1YXx pGSrDzbEED
MP3JUTdnlf PDm2MOLJIG 3uDietVFSL 1i7jZX0Y9e zPkSgmAqqP 5OhcmHIZUP E0vNsPxZ4s FzTIyZIG2r 5EywA0M7r5 FMhpcFkVN5
oRLbRGcRmI 2LTh8GlN7h Cjw6Z3cveP fayCewjE55 GbkyX89Lxu 4LpGZGZGgc iQV7CXYwkH pGLyQPgaha e3lhKDRUMs Skrei1tKIa

If you have an invitation code, you can enter it here to activate the advanced audio algorithm parameters:
Auphonic Algorithm Parameters Private Beta Activation

In late August, we launched the private beta program of our advanced audio algorithm parameters. After feedback by our users and many new experiments, we are proud to release a complete rework of the Adaptive Leveler parameters:

In the previous version, we based our Adaptive Leveler parameters on the Loudness Range descriptor (LRA), which is included in the EBU R128 specification.
Although it worked, it turned out that it is very difficult to set a loudness range target for diverse audio content, which does include speech, background sounds, music parts, etc. The results were not predictable and it was hard to find good target values.
Therefore we developed our own algorithm to measure the dynamic range of audio signals, which works similarly for speech, music and other audio content.

The following advanced parameters for our Adaptive Leveler allow you to customize which parts of the audio should be leveled (foreground, all, speech, music, etc.), how much they should be leveled (dynamic range), and how much micro-dynamics compression should be applied.

To try out the new algorithms, please join our private beta program and let us know your feedback!

Leveler Preset

The Leveler Preset defines which parts of the audio should be adjusted by our Adaptive Leveler:

• Default Leveler:
  Our classic, default leveling algorithm as demonstrated in the Leveler Audio Examples. Use it if you are unsure.
• Foreground Only Leveler:
  This preset reacts slower and levels foreground parts only. Use it if you have background speech or background music, which should not be amplified.
• Fast Leveler:
  A preset which reacts much faster. It is built for recordings with fast and extreme loudness differences, for example, to amplify very quiet questions from the audience in a lecture recording, to balance fast-changing soft and loud voices within one audio track, etc.
• Amplify Everything:
  Amplify as much as possible. Similar to the Fast Leveler, but also amplifies non-speech background sounds like noise.

Leveler Dynamic Range

Our default Leveler tries to normalize all speakers to a similar loudness so that a consumer in a car or subway doesn't feel the need to reach for the volume control.
However, in other environments (living room, cinema, etc.) or in dynamic recordings, you might want more level differences (Dynamic Range, Loudness Range / LRA) between speakers and within music segments.

The parameter Dynamic Range controls how much leveling is applied: Higher values result in more dynamic output audio files (less leveling). If you want to increase the dynamic range by 3dB (or LU), just increase the Dynamic Range parameter by 3dB.
We also like to call this Loudness Comfort Zone: above a maximum and below a minimum possible level (the comfort zone), no leveling is applied. So if your input file already has a small dynamic range (is within the comfort zone), our leveler will be just bypassed.

Example Use Cases:
Higher dynamic range values should be used if you want to keep more loudness differences in dynamic narration or dynamic music recordings (live concert/classical).
It is also possible to utilize this parameter to generate automatic mixdowns with different loudness range (LRA) values for different target environments (very compressed ones like mobile devices or Alexa, very dynamic ones like home cinema, etc.).

Compressor

Controls Micro-Dynamics Compression:
The compressor reduces the volume of short and loud spikes like "p", "t" or laughter ( short-term dynamics) and also shapes the sound of your voice (it will sound more or less "processed").
The Leveler, on the other hand, adjusts mid-term level differences, as done by a sound engineer, using the faders of an audio mixer, so that a listener doesn't have to adjust the playback volume all the time.
For more details please see Loudness Normalization and Compression of Podcasts and Speech Audio.

• Auto:
  The compressor setting depends on the selected Leveler Preset. Medium compression is used in Foreground Only and Default Leveler presets, Hard compression in our Fast Leveler and Amplify Everything presets.
• Soft:
  Uses less compression.
• Medium:
  Our default setting.
• Hard:
  More compression, especially tries to compress short and extreme level overshoots. Use this preset if you want your voice to sound very processed, our if you have extreme and fast-changing level differences.
• Off:
  No short-term dynamics compression is used at all, only mid-term leveling. Switch off the compressor if you just want to adjust the loudness range without any additional micro-dynamics compression.

Separate Music/Speech Parameters

Use the switch Separate MusicSpeech Parameters (top right), to see separate Adaptive Leveler parameters for music and speech segments, to control all leveling details separately for speech and music parts:

For dialog intelligibility improvements in films and TV, it is important that the speech/dialog level and loudness range is not too soft compared to the overall programme level and loudness range. This parameter allows you to use more leveling in speech parts while keeping music and FX elements less processed.
Note: Speech, music and overall loudness and loudness range of your production are also displayed in our Audio Processing Statistics!

Example Use Case:
Music live recordings or dynamic music mixes, where you want to amplify all speakers (speech dynamic range should be small) but keep the dynamic range within and between music segments (music dynamic range should be high).
Dialog intelligibility improvements for films and TV, without effecting music and FX elements.

Other Advanced Audio Algorithm Parameters

We also offer advanced audio parameters for our Noise, Hum Reduction and Global Loudness Normalization algorithms:

For more details, please see the Advanced Audio Algorithms Documentation.

Want to know more?

If you want to know more details about our advanced algorithm parameters (especially the leveler parameters), please listen to the following podcast interview with Chris Curran (Podcast Engineering School):
Auphonic’s New Advanced Features, with Georg Holzmann – PES 108

Advanced Parameters Private Beta and Feedback

At the moment the advanced algorithm parameters are for beta users only. This is to allow us to get user feedback, so we can change the parameters to suit user needs.
Please let us know your case studies, if you need any other algorithm parameters or if you have any questions!

Here are some private beta invitation codes:

jbwCVpLYrl 6zmLqq8o3z RXYIUbC6al QDmIZLuPKa JIrnGRZBgl SWQOWeZOBD ISeBCA9gTy w5FdsyhZVI qWAvANQ5mC twOjdHrit3
KwnL2Le6jB 63SE2V54KK G32AULFyaM 3H0CLYAwLU mp1GFNVZHr swzvEBRCVa rLcNJHUNZT CGGbL0O4q1 5o5dUjruJ9 hAggWBpGvj
ykJ57cFQSe 0OHAD2u1Dx RG4wSYTLbf UcsSYI78Md Xedr3NPCgK mI8gd7eDvO 0Au4gpUDJB mYLkvKYz1C ukrKoW5hoy S34sraR0BU
J2tlV0yNwX QwNdnStYD3 Zho9oZR2e9 jHdjgUq420 51zLbV09p4 c0cth0abCf 3iVBKHVKXU BK4kTbDQzt uTBEkMnSPv tg6cJtsMrZ
BdB8gFyhRg wBsLHg90GG EYwxVUZJGp HLQ72b65uH NNd415ktFS JIm2eTkxMX EV2C5RAUXI a3iwbxWjKj X1AT7DCD7V y0AFIrWo5l

If you have an invitation code, you can enter it here to activate the advanced audio algorithm parameters:
Auphonic Algorithm Parameters Private Beta Activation

Until recently, Amazon Transcribe supported speech recognition in English and Spanish only.
Now they included French, Italian and Portuguese as well - and a few other languages (including German) are in private beta.

Update March 2019:
Now Amazon Transcribe supports German and Korean as well.

The Auphonic Audio Inspector on the status page of a finished Multitrack Production including speech recognition.
Please click on the screenshot to see it in full resolution!

Amazon Transcribe is integrated as speech recognition engine within Auphonic and offers accurate transcriptions (compared to other services) at low costs, including keywords / custom vocabulary support, word confidence, timestamps, and punctuation.
See the following AWS blog post and video for more information about recent Amazon Transcribe developments: Transcribe speech in three new languages: French, Italian, and Brazilian Portuguese.

Amazon Transcribe is also a perfect fit if you want to use our Transcript Editor because you will be able to see word timestamps and confidence values to instantly check which section/words should be corrected manually to increase the transcription accuracy:

Screenshot of our Transcript Editor with word confidence highlighting and the edit bar.

These features are also available if you use Speechmatics, but unfortunately not in our other integrated speech recognition services.

About Speech Recognition within Auphonic

Auphonic has built a layer on top of a few external speech recognition services to make audio searchable:
Our classifiers generate metadata during the analysis of an audio signal (music segments, silence, multiple speakers, etc.) to divide the audio file into small and meaningful segments, which are processed by the speech recognition engine. The results from all segments are then combined, and meaningful timestamps, simple punctuation and structuring are added to the resulting text.

To learn more about speech recognition within Auphonic, take a look at our Speech Recognition and Transcript Editor help pages or listen to our Speech Recognition Audio Examples.

A comparison table of our integrated services (price, quality, languages, speed, features, etc.) can be found here: Speech Recognition Services Comparison.

Conclusion

We hope that Amazon and others will continue to add new languages, to get accurate and inexpensive automatic speech recognition in many languages.

Don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or feedback about speech recognition or our transcript editor!

Last weekend, at the Subscribe10 conference, we released Advanced Audio Algorithm Parameters for Multitrack Productions:

We launched our advanced audio algorithm parameters for Singletrack Productions last year. Now these settings (and more) are available for Multitrack Algorithms as well, which gives you detailed control for each track of your production.

• Fore/Background Settings: keep your music/clip tracks unchanged and set a custom background gain
• Multitrack Leveler Parameters: control the stereo panorama, leveling algorithm, dynamic range and compression
• Better Hum and Noise Reduction Controls for each track
• Maximum True Peak Level setting for the final mixdown
• Full API Support

Please join our private beta program and let us know how you use these new features or if you need even more control!

Fore/Background Settings

The parameter Fore/Background controls whether a track should be in foreground, in background, ducked, or unchanged, which is especially important for music or clip tracks.
For more details, please see Automatic Ducking, Foreground and Background Tracks .

Unchanged (Foreground):

We sometimes received complaints from users, which produced very complex music or clip tracks, that Auphonic changes the levels too hard.
If you set the parameter Fore/Background to the new option Unchanged (Foreground), Level relations within this track won’t be changed at all. It will be added to the final mixdown so that foreground/solo parts of this track will be as loud as (foreground) speech from other tracks.

Background Level:

It is now possible to set the level of background segments/tracks (compared to foreground segments) in background and ducking tracks. By default, background and ducking segments are 18dB softer than foreground segments.

Leveler Parameters

Similar to our Singletrack Advanced Leveler Parameters (see this previous blog post), we also released leveling parameters for Multitrack Productions now.
The following advanced parameters for our Multitrack Adaptive Leveler can be set for each track and allow you to customize which parts of the audio should be leveled, how much they should be leveled, how much dynamic range compression should be applied and to set the stereo panorama (balance):

Leveler Preset:

Select the Speech or Music Leveler for this track.
If set to Automatic (default), a classifier will decide if this is a music or speech track.

Dynamic Range:

The parameter Dynamic Range controls how much leveling is applied: Higher values result in more dynamic output audio files (less leveling). If you want to increase the dynamic range by 3dB (or LU), just increase the Dynamic Range parameter by 3dB.
For more details, please see Multitrack Leveler Parameters.

Compressor:

Select a preset for Micro-Dynamics Compression: Auto, Soft, Medium, Hard or Off.
The Compressor adjusts short-term dynamics, whereas the Leveler adjusts mid-term level differences.
For more details, please see Multitrack Leveler Parameters.

Stereo Panorama (Balance):

Change the stereo panorama (balance for stereo input files) of the current track.
Possible values: L100, L75, L50, L25, Center, R25, R50, R75 and R100.

If you understand German and want to know more about our Advanced Leveler Parameters and audio dynamics in general, watch our talk at the Subscribe10 conference:
Video: Audio Lautheit und Dynamik.

Better Hum and Noise Reduction Controls

Noise Reduction Amount:

Maximum noise and hum reduction amount in dB, higher values remove more noise.
In Auto mode, a classifier decides if and how much noise reduction is necessary (to avoid artifacts). Set to a custom (non-Auto) value if you prefer more noise reduction or want to bypass our classifier.

Hum Base Frequency:

Set the hum base frequency to 50Hz or 60Hz (if you know it), or use Auto to automatically detect the hum base frequency in each speech region.

Hum Reduction Amount:

Maximum hum reduction amount in dB, higher values remove more noise.
In Auto mode, a classifier decides how much hum reduction is necessary in each speech region. Set it to a custom value (> 0), if you prefer more hum reduction or want to bypass our classifier. Use Disable Dehum to disable hum reduction and use our noise reduction algorithms only.

Behavior of noise and hum reduction parameter combinations:

Maximum True Peak Level

In the Master Algorithm Settings of your multitrack production, you can set the maximum allowed true peak level of the processed output file, which is controlled by the True Peak Limiter after our Loudness Normalization algorithms.

If set to Auto (which is the current default), a reasonable value according to the selected loudness target is used: -1dBTP for 23 LUFS (EBU R128) and higher, -2dBTP for -24 LUFS (ATSC A/85) and lower loudness targets.

Full API Support

All advanced algorithm parameters, for Singletrack and Multitrack Productions, are available in our API as well, which allows you to integrate them into your scripts, external workflows and third-party applications.

Join the Beta and Send Feedback

Please join our beta and let us know your case studies, if you need any other algorithm parameters or if you have any questions!

Here are some private beta invitation codes:

8tZPc3T9pH VAvO8VsDg9 0TwKXBW4Ni kjXJMivtZ1 J9APmAAYjT Zwm6HabuFw HNK5gF8FR5 Do1MPHUyPW CTk45VbV4t xYOzDkEnWP
9XE4dZ0FxD 0Sl3PxDRho uSoRQxmKPx TCI62OjEYu 6EQaPYs7v4 reIJVOwIr8 7hPJqZmWfw kti3m5KbNE GoM2nF0AcN xHCbDC37O5
6PabLBRm9P j2SoI8peiY olQ2vsmnfV fqfxX4mWLO OozsiA8DWo weJw0PXDky VTnOfOiL6l B6HRr6gil0 so0AvM1Ryy NpPYsInFqm
oFeQPLwG0k HmCOkyaX9R G7DR5Sc9Kv MeQLSUCkge xCSvPTrTgl jyQKG3BWWA HCzWRxSrgW xP15hYKEDl 241gK62TrO Q56DHjT3r4
9TqWVZHZLE aWFMSWcuX8 x6FR5OTL43 Xf6tRpyP4S tDGbOUngU0 5BkOF2I264 cccHS0KveO dT29cF75gG 2ySWlYp1kp iJWPhpAimF

If you have an invitation code, you can enter it here to activate the Multitrack Advanced Audio Algorithm Parameters:
Auphonic Algorithm Parameters Private Beta Activation

The Department of Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business is considering removing the following occupations from the Skilled Migration Occupation Lists (Skills List) in March 2020: Careers Counsellor Vehicle Trimmer Business Machine Mechanic Animal Attendants and Trainers Gardener (General) Hairdresser Wood Machinist Massage Therapist Community Worker Diving Instructor (Open Water) Gymnastics Coach or Instructor At […]

The post Occupations that may be taken off or put onto the skilled migration occupation lists appeared first on Visa Australia - Immigration Lawyers & Registered Migration Agents.

Do you want to turn your WordPress blog into a membership site? Businesses around the globe use this model to sell their physical products or offer exclusive digital content, and many of them are super successful. CopyBlogger, a site with content marketing lessons, offers premium courses to members and they’re currently an eight-figure business. Meanwhile, the owner of the razor […]

In 2015 we launched Social Icons Widget by WPZOOM with the intent to provide WordPress users with a simple and easy-to-use widget for adding social links to their websites. With over 100k installs at the moment and continuous positive feedback from the users, it kept us motivated to constantly improve and keep updating this free plugin. Now, to keep the […]

Great news for the users of Presence — our multipurpose theme. We have finally released the long-awaited 2.0 version, which features major changes and improvements. What’s new in Presence 2.0? Beaver Builder Integration Dark Skin New Demo: Organic Shop New Typography and Colors options in the Customizer New Templates in Page Builder Beaver Builder Integration If you have followed recent […]

Hey there, I’m Ben, and I’m a guest author here at WPZOOM. Today I thought I’d share with you my experience of one of their rather awesome plugins, an addon for Beaver Builder. I know the team at WPZOOM are big fans of Beaver Builder, why not? It’s a great page builder with an excellent feature set; chances are if […]

If you’re a video producer or vlogger looking to set up your own video website to showcase your content, you’ll most likely need one that reflects your own unique style. You’ll need to think about the gallery options you’d want, color schemes, customizations, and the type of business you’re running. You should also consider the different technology you’ll need to […]

Savoy And here comes Savoy, the latest trending WordPress theme for creating interactive online stores. Powered by AJAX technology, the simple and elegant design of the theme delivers the best possible user experience for the customers. Powered by WooCommerce, Savoy enables you to manage various options of your online shop from one location. The perfectly […]

The post Best WooCommerce Themes appeared first on WP Theme Designer.

Kalium Kalium is an excellent WordPress theme that is intended for blogging and portfolio websites. It has plenty of layout design variations, along with an impressive drag and drop content builder. There are many features and elements, each designed to enhance your website and guarantee its success. Dalton A classy and clean theme for businesses […]

The post Best Business WordPress Themes appeared first on WP Theme Designer.

Avada Avada is clear, versatile and has a completely responsive design! Avada sets the new standard with limitless potentialities, top-notch help, and free updates with newly requested options from our customers. And its essentially the most easy-to use theme available on the market! Avada could be very intuitive to make use of and utterly able […]

The post 2017 Best Coffee Shop WordPress Themes appeared first on WP Theme Designer.

Boutique Boutique offers you full means to create a tremendous on-line retailer. It’s trendy design and completely different layouts and limitless potentialities will aid you to place your merchandise in focus, It’s also fully responsive and you won’t worry how your prospects reach your store (It really works fantastic with both desktops and smartphones) Boutique […]

The post 2017 Best WordPress Themes for Boutiques appeared first on WP Theme Designer.

Education WP Education WP is the following era and among the finest training WordPress themes round, containing all of the energy of eLearning WP however with a greater UI/UX. This WordPress educational theme has been developed primarily based on the #1 LMS plugin on the official WordPress Plugins directory LearnPress, which presents you an entire […]

The post 2017 Best Education WordPress Themes appeared first on WP Theme Designer.

Authentic Authentic is a light-weight & minimalistic WordPress theme good for life-style bloggers & magazines. It has so many superb options that may make your weblog or journal stand out amongst others. Let your guests benefit from the muddle free contemporary design of your new web site powered by Authentic. Maple Maple is a daring, […]

The post 2017 Best Blog WordPress Themes appeared first on WP Theme Designer.

City Marketing, bewegwijzering en informatie spelen een belangrijke rol in hoe communicatie in een stad effectief tot stand kan komen. Lees verder over hoe bewegwijzering ingezet kan worden als communicatie middel.

I sometimes get asked by regular people in the actual real world what it is that I do for a living, and here's my 15 second answer:

We built a sort of Wikipedia website for computer programmers to post questions and answers. It's called Stack Overflow.

As of last month,

We recently completed a bright and engaging new website for one of Fort Myers Beach’s most popular and well known...continue reading

We created the program identity and website for this City of Sanibel initiative.

This Friday I attended the first day of She’s Geeky here in Seattle. It was my first experience of the Unconference Format and I had no idea what to expect, but ended up having a GREAT TIME. Discussions that I joined in on throughout the day included subjects such as Impostor Syndrome, Diversity Groups, Side- […]

https://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2020/05/08/microsoft-bundled-its-beautiful-bing-wallpapers-into-a-free-android-app/

https://hren.io/blog/stealing-best-landing-pages/

https://line25.com/wordpress-plug-ins/content-scheduling-tools-for-wordpress

As a designer, we’re overloaded with choices every day, but there are some apps that are absolutely worth your time and investment. Finding the best ones and most useful ones can be a difficult task, so we’re going to make things easy for you and give you our top 10 apps and websites we couldn’t […]

Read More at 10 Websites and Apps All Designers Should Be Using

Patients with disabilities must receive the same level of lifesaving medical treatment from hospitals during the coronavirus pandemic as able-bodied patients, the Trump administration said.

"After my driver asked me what I did for a living and found out I support the mental health programs at WWP, the discussion moved predictably to the topic of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)...[She said,] 'Let me ask you something. Why can’t they just snap out of it?'"

For the first time, it seems, the entire world knows what it’s like to live inside my head.

It’s that time of year when Spoon Graphics gets a little older, with 2020 marking 13 years of tutorial creating, freebie sharing and article writing on what started as a blog that was attached to my portfolio website in 2007. Every April I take some time to reflect on the past 12 months and talk […]

The post Spoon Graphics Turns 13 Years Old — Traffic Down, Subscribers Up! appeared first on Spoon Graphics.

Access All Areas members have been requesting more Affinity Designer resources, so this week members can download this great set of Airbrush Shading Brushes made specifically for Affinity, courtesy of The Artifex Forge. Add organic texture shading to designs and illustrations with ease! This versatile shading brush pack contains a wide variety of textures – […]

The post Affinity Airbrush Shading Brushes for Premium Members appeared first on Spoon Graphics.

Access All Areas members have a useful set of Photoshop Actions to download this week, courtesy of FilterGrade. This ColorWash product adds colorful washes and fades to your images, using the same tints and light leaks you see in professional advertising campaigns. Add retro effects to your images in seconds by playing multiple actions at […]

The post ColorWash Faded Photoshop Actions for Premium Members appeared first on Spoon Graphics.