Making a recording of a little drumming bear toy for a Play

I have now a recording of the little drumming bear toy which is pretty good.
It's a rather specific sound, "squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak *drum*  *drum* *drum*" and it's good the sound we've recorded matches the toy (who will be on stage an performing also! :)
I haven't done sounds before for something like this.


This is my recording setup now:

Karaoke microphones -> DVD -> TV -> laptop (TV has audio out).
Works pretty well. The microphones are from Lidl or Aldi.
I first used mobile phone to record stuff. Then Bluetooth sounds -> laptop. (and ffmpeg enabled for amr converting) That's not great. Flat
 

I'm using linux so mostly Audacity for sound editing, Ardour for playing, VLC/ffmpeg for converting.
We shall see this weekend how they sound in the theatre! Ulp! :)


This is what it is for: http://www.milltheatre.com/shows/seasons-greetings
Season's Greetings by playwright Alan Ayckbourn.   (in Dundrum on 24-28 Nov)
Glencullen Musical and Dramatic Society.
Season's Greetings is a black, though often farcical comedy about a dysfunctional family Christmas, set over Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and St Stephen's Day in an average suburban house.

collecting sounds for theatre, ffmpeg converting, howto ffmpeg + amr

I'm collecting sounds for the theatre people. Need a cassette tape screech sound, doorbell, jolly Christmas song. It's jolly difficult to find jolly christmas songs jollily sung! :) We don't have

This is for the play Season's Greetings.
 http://www.milltheatre.com/shows/seasons-greetings
 http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6065036825

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Season%27s_Greetings_(play)
 http://seasonsgreetings.alanayckbourn.net/


I'm recording sounds with my mobile phone (Nokia E65). Converting sounds and vids with ffmpeg.

Ubuntu jaunty default ffmpeg kindof did amr to wav or ogg. But didn't mostly. I first tried ffmpeg source + older amr codecs with licencing problems. Found ffmpeg now uses libopencore. AND actually also I have the older amr codecs installed already as ubuntu packages  anyway. Anyway fresh built ffmpeg converts all amr ro wav or ogg.

So 15/Nov/2009 how to get ffmpeg working a bit better with amr format:

http://opencore-amr.sourceforge.net/
  tar -zxvf opencore-amr-0.1.2.tar.gz
  cd opencore-amr-0.1.2/
  less README
  ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
  make
  sudo make install

  cd ../
  svn checkout svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/ffmpeg/trunk ffmpeg-svn
  cd ffmpeg-svn
  ./configure --prefix=/usr/local --enable-gpl --enable-pthreads --enable-version3  --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb
  make
  sudo make install


  # if you install in /usr/local you'll need to set the LIBRARY path:
  export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/lib

  # This converts all .amr files in dir to .ogg (and doesn't do it if already done)
  for F in *.amr ; do
    echo F=$F;
    N=${F%%.amr};
    if [[ ! -e $N.ogg ]] ; then
      ffmpeg-amr -i "$F" "$N.ogg";
    fi;
  done

Songs of the 80s.
http://www.afn.org/~afn30091/


Also. VLC crashes if try to do things  with playlist?
Individual VLCs are fine open and playing together which is  what is wanted.