2 OHMS Webinars Announced, March 2025
Announcing two upcoming webinars, Introduction to OHMS and OHMS & Transcripts.
OHMS, WebVTT, and the Transcript Editor of my Dreams
We are excited to announce a major update to transcript functionality in OHMS Aviary! As detailed in my video announcement (watch here), the old transcript synchronization method (where a user drops time codes into a transcript at regular intervals) has been retired. This update introduces the new OHMS Aviary transcript standard, which allows for more granular and…
32-Bit Float Recording and Why It Is Amazing
Portable digital audio recorders are essential tools for oral historians, filmmakers, journalists, folklorists, documentary and podcast producers, and sound designers, and when recording high-quality professional sounding audio, the capabilities of the recording equipment matter. Once affordable audio recorders had high quality preamps and recorded at 24-bit/96 kHz , I feel there was only incremental innovation…
Major Updates to OHMS: Coming Soon
Several years ago, someone at the Library of Congress asked me why the OHMS application and viewer did not utilize one of the emerging timed-text standards. It was frustrating for me because, as an archivist, I take standards and sustainability very seriously. The reason was that when I first created OHMS (the Oral History Metadata Synchronizer)…
Announcement: Integrating OHMS and Aviary
If you have yet to hear, we have been completely rewriting the code for OHMS, the Oral History Metadata Synchronizer, and we are incorporating the OHMS Application into the Aviary Platform on September 18, 2023 (https://www.aviaryplatform.com). I wanted to start this exciting conversation and offer details about the upcoming migration. This integration is a powerful step in…
Zoom Podtrak p4 and phone interviews
Zoom has just released the PodTrak P4 ($199), an impressive recorder with the built-in ability to easily conduct and record high quality telephone interviews. As more of our oral history projects include remote interviewing, most of the focus is on online web conferencing systems such as Zoom or TheirStory. Web conferencing systems add an important…
Three-Point Lighting for Video Oral History Interviews
For several years, professional video technologies have become increasingly more affordable and accessible. We see more oral history projects utilizing HD (high definition) and 4K video as the primary recording method for interviews. Professional-looking video interviews can be a powerful way to capture and disseminate oral history; however, from a user’s perspective, bad-looking video can…
Microphones, Oral History, and that “Radio” Sound in the Field: Shotgun Microphones
This is the third post in the series Microphones, Oral History, and that “Radio” Sound in the Field about the microphone options for trying to achieve “broadcast quality” recording when not in a studio. The first post in the series focused on handheld electronic news gathering (ENG) microphones; the second post focused on lavaliere microphones….
Digital Audio Recorders: Zoom H4N Pro
The H4n Pro is an update to the very popular H4n which was a very popular recorder. The primary update to the H4n Pro is the improved preamps resulting the overall recording quality. Additionally, the H4n Pro has a better screen, and the XLR microphone inputs are locking. This is a recorder that is attractive…