I edited audio, file names, and ID3 tags.
Edited audio using Audacity:
- Removed commercials and broadcast announcements. ie. Vocals that had nothing to do with Gunsmoke.
- Kept end credits.
- Kept the bit of end music after the end credits, but removed the end announcement and music after that.
- Fade out at end.
- Removed excess music at mid-story commercials & announcements. ie. Removed music before commercial or announcement, and kept music after announcement before resumption of story.
- Fixed beginning, if needed, to start with the hoofbeats faded in.
- Repaired audio volume: Remove DC offset (center on 0.0 vertically). Normalize volume so peak amplitude 0 dB, unless the entire episode had been severely clipped before, in which case I normalized at -1 dB or -0.5 dB.
- Reduced very high volume peaks (like gunshots), so the rest of the audio could be normalized at a higher volume.
- Fixed the volume throughout some files where volume varied wildly during the length.
- Adjusted treble, bass, or filtered to improve bad quality audio so vocals could be understood better.
- Removed silence gaps in a couple of files.
- Reduced to 64 mbps if a file was originally higher than that to make files smaller. The audio quality didn't suffer since the original quality was not great. I suppose all the files could be recoded to 32 mbps without losing any noticeable audio quality to make the files even smaller, but I didn't do it. Most files were 64 mbps.
- If files were 40 or 32 mbps, kept them that way.
- Usually left sampling rate as is. Most of them are 44.1 KHz. Some are 22.05 KHz.
Note: After some time, I realize that I did not edit all the audio to my satisfaction. There are still some occasional silences, bad audio, bad volume, etc. that I missed. Now that the torrent is widespread, I hesitate to do the additional editing and produce another torrent that will compete with, or be confused with, the first torrent. Also, I lack the drive to do so.
Edited file names:
- Removed excess information from file names, like actor names, paring down the file names to the basics (Gunsmoke_date_episode#_Title). Example:
Gunsmoke_1954-10-09_130_Love_of_a_Good_Woman.mp3
Edited MP3 ID3 tags using Mp3tag:
- Removed old ID3 tags MP3GAIN_UNDO, replaygain_track_gain, MP3GAIN_MINMAX, replaygain_track_peak, since I edited the audio.
- Added information ID3 tags:
- Track Title: [episode title]
- Artist Name: Old Radio Shows
- Album Title: Gunsmoke
- Album Artist: Old Radio Shows
- Track Number: [episode number]
- Year: [year the episode aired]
- Genre: Radio Drama
- Comments: [date episode aired in format YYYY-MM-DD]
- When a script was reused, added in title tag "(reused script # )", with episode numbers of the previous episode(s). Note that these reused scripts were actually acted out new again, sometimes with different guest stars.
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