Series of Media: Sound Design for Refining Portfolios

 Mistakes seen in the lack of sound design, and how to improve it to give you an edge. 

Sound Neglected:

Sound design is something often overlooked when designing complex media. It is taught in Film Production, but aside from that, other mediums tend to leave it alone or barely speak on it. (relatively) But good sound can be the difference in professionalism when making a portfolio. Today I will talk about some common misuses and treatments for sound design.

Audacity:

Most students working towards a professional portfolio and or job market tend to display work over YouTube. Either through personal portfolio websites or links to a YouTube/Instagram/etc. channel. 

Quick Tip!

YouTube specifically does automatically convert all audio given from the source video into Loudness Units Full Scale (LUFS): Many creators target around -14 LUFS. That and the dBFS aiming or a relatively industry standard of -12 dBFS. But that does not mean you should rely on it!

YouTube tries to do the work for you, but many videos for portfolios tend to be Reels where music is playing during the demonstration. Music is mastered at near close to zero, or extremely loud. This is where some quality can be lost converting to YouTube. 

Suggestion to Improve!

A very useful FREE downloadable software to export Audio at the correct levels is called Audacity. It is bare bones but really easy to pick up and light on your computer. Tons of tutorials are available to navigate systems to better your audio. Run your audio export quickly through Audacity to match the "standard" exports for YouTube reels. Then simply add it back to your video!

Quick Tip!

When exporting audio, most commonly used formats are .MP3 or .WAV. But what's the difference!? .MP3 is a relatively small file, easy to upload and quick to export. But that file type does compress the audio a bit, flattening it to keep data sizes lower. This doesn't usually matter much, some information is lost and the sound isn't at its' "fullest". When sound is part of your presentation, it is much better to use .WAV, as it is an uncompressed version of the audio. Thus, resulting in a higher quality. 

Conclusion:

It is very easy to forget about sound and should be a close to last step to consider. But major companies and colleges can and will care if your portfolio video is at a standard level. Others will be too quiet or too loud, and its extra steps like that that make a more professional tone for your work that definitely deserves it. I barely scratched the surface, and this is supposed to educate you on key terms and what to look out for! I heavily suggest looking into the attached links for more information and looking up YouTube tutorials from professionals to better understand this concept!!

Links to sites in paradelle knowledge:

Adobe Social Media: talking about audio in social media.

Loud Mouth Broadcast: How to Improve audio for Reels social media. 

Soundacy: Mastering reel sounds.