"Our Ambient World" Postmortem

Contribute or start a crowdsource project here.
Post Reply
User avatar
MikeQuell
Site Admin
Posts: 412
Joined: June 6th, 2013, 4:15 pm
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Occupation: Sound Designer
Contact:

"Our Ambient World" Postmortem

Post by MikeQuell » January 6th, 2014, 7:17 pm

Hi everyone!

Hope you're enjoying the "Our Ambient World" library. For a first attempt, I definitely think it exceeded my expectations.

I would like to start a thread to go over anything we thought could have been better or what we would like to see for future projects. I personally would like to find a streamlined way to create a contact list of people that have signed up. It was a pain in the ass to copy and paste everyone's username on the forum and put it into a single private message for communication.

It seems like Google Drive worked fairly well after the initial week of its release. One of the main reasons I ended up using that is there is no daily bandwidth download restrictions and I had 80GB of free storage. Most other starting options on other sites are around 5GB.

Another thing we could probably change is the way files are packaged. Probably make a bulk package of .zip files instead of individual files.

So here's a bullet point list from me to get us started:
- Streamline the signup process
- Package files in bulk .zip files instead of individual .wav files

Also, some of you were probably wondering why I didn't include people's names with the deliveries. This was more out of privacy concerns. That's something that could be changed going forward, it just wasn't something that was made apparent during the sign up phase.

imgoinmad
Critical Listener
Posts: 18
Joined: July 30th, 2013, 9:07 am

Re: "Our Ambient World" Postmortem

Post by imgoinmad » January 7th, 2014, 11:04 am

A couple of thoughts...just like you created the 'contributor' thread you could create another password protected thread...the 'submitter's thread and add people only as they've completed their submission. That might reduce part of the work and take away the need to contact each individually?

As far as packaging, I'd recommend you use an application that can create a set of zip or rar files from a folder in user definable file sizes. IE take this 35gb folder containing 250 files and create 70 500mb rar (or zip) files. This is a format which has been used for years on the internet. It becomes easy to know if your downloads are finished (all the files are the same size) and the checksum which is usually built in confirms whether there is file corruption. It's much easier to check for file corruption since it's built in, rather than have to play all 250 files to confirm they are all good.

Regarding details for the files, I'd suggest having the submitters also submit a text file which includes the data they'd like to share. This file would likely contain the following recording details:
Location
Date
Content
microphones used
recordist & email address (optional...allows the submitter to control their own privacy)

I also like the idea of a location photo if available.

Thanks again Mike for organizing this, this set contains some awesome material.

User avatar
joe_griffin
Audio Specialist
Posts: 78
Joined: June 7th, 2013, 4:23 pm
Location: Chicago
Occupation: Recording engineer
Location: Chicago
Contact:

Re: "Our Ambient World" Postmortem

Post by joe_griffin » January 10th, 2014, 1:37 pm

I thought all the information that would be in that text file you mention was supposed to be embedded as metadata in the sound files. It was, in a lot of cases.

imgoinmad
Critical Listener
Posts: 18
Joined: July 30th, 2013, 9:07 am

Re: "Our Ambient World" Postmortem

Post by imgoinmad » January 10th, 2014, 4:46 pm

joe_griffin wrote:I thought all the information that would be in that text file you mention was supposed to be embedded as metadata in the sound files. It was, in a lot of cases.
I didn't know things like mics used etc would be included in the metadata. I had trouble figuring out how to add the metadata, normally i add descriptions into the name of my file and do title searches. I don't use Soundminer i generally use Snapper. So in the case of my submitted files that detail is not included :(

User avatar
joe_griffin
Audio Specialist
Posts: 78
Joined: June 7th, 2013, 4:23 pm
Location: Chicago
Occupation: Recording engineer
Location: Chicago
Contact:

Re: "Our Ambient World" Postmortem

Post by joe_griffin » January 11th, 2014, 9:22 am

Makes sense. I know the metadata isn't consistent across all the entries. Some have more info than others.

User avatar
MikeQuell
Site Admin
Posts: 412
Joined: June 6th, 2013, 4:15 pm
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Occupation: Sound Designer
Contact:

Re: "Our Ambient World" Postmortem

Post by MikeQuell » January 13th, 2014, 12:40 am

Here was a wiki page I was referencing for some of the file sharing providers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison ... g_services

User avatar
GrahamDonnelly
Critical Listener
Posts: 21
Joined: June 11th, 2013, 11:16 am
Location: Bournemouth/London
Occupation: Sound Designer
Contact:

Re: "Our Ambient World" Postmortem

Post by GrahamDonnelly » March 9th, 2014, 5:42 pm

Hi Mike,

I did not receive an email about the library being up - and I got caught up with life etc. Was wondering if you could PM or email me the password to gain access to the library? I am really looking forward to hearing this library.

Cheers

Graham

User avatar
MikeQuell
Site Admin
Posts: 412
Joined: June 6th, 2013, 4:15 pm
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Occupation: Sound Designer
Contact:

Re: "Our Ambient World" Postmortem

Post by MikeQuell » March 9th, 2014, 7:43 pm

GrahamDonnelly wrote:Hi Mike,

I did not receive an email about the library being up - and I got caught up with life etc. Was wondering if you could PM or email me the password to gain access to the library? I am really looking forward to hearing this library.
Sorry about that, Graham. Google Drive should have sent you an email just now. Let me know if you didn't get it.

User avatar
Nick Output
Critical Listener
Posts: 15
Joined: January 30th, 2014, 4:03 am
Location: London
Occupation: Sound Designer
Contact:

Re: "Our Ambient World" Postmortem

Post by Nick Output » March 18th, 2014, 6:02 am

Hi Mike,

I was late finding out about this project, only joining the forum recently. Therefore missed my chance to be involved. I would like to be involved in the future as I'm sure others would. How can i go about this?

PM me or leave a response. Looking forward to hearing about the next project.

PS - Google drive is awesome… but also painfully slow. Box and dropbox are of a similar speed but lack the storage space. I think you made the right choice there.

User avatar
MikeQuell
Site Admin
Posts: 412
Joined: June 6th, 2013, 4:15 pm
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Occupation: Sound Designer
Contact:

Re: "Our Ambient World" Postmortem

Post by MikeQuell » March 18th, 2014, 5:14 pm

Nick Output wrote:I was late finding out about this project, only joining the forum recently. Therefore missed my chance to be involved. I would like to be involved in the future as I'm sure others would. How can i go about this?
You could start your own here or wait for us to begin another. I usually broadcast it pretty far and wide. Designing Sound was pretty nice at helping to spread the word when we did the first one so I'm sure you'll hear about it one way or another. Sorry you missed it!

Post Reply