Joshua Reads The Opening of Lucretius Book One - 1743 Edition

SUNDAY WEEKLY ZOOM - 12:30 PM EDT - Ancient Text Study: De Rerum Natura by Lucretius -- Meeting is open to Level 03 members and above -- Read the agenda for December 14, 2025 by clicking here.

    In which "voice" would you prefer to hear the full book of Lucretius? 4

    The result is only visible to the participants.

    Joshua has done some great reading for this video!

    Please thank Joshua for the time he invested in this, and let's also discuss something that might help as we make more of these in the future:

    In this reading from the opening of Lucretius Book 1, Joshua uses three distinct voices. I'm calling then "normal," "audiobook," and "dramatic/Shakespearean."

    We frequently find that some people like the dramatic voice for short periods, but find it tiring over time. Each version has advantages in terms of clarity and emphasis. As we work to produce more and longer videos, please let us know in which voice you think you would most enjoy listening to longer selections from Lucretius.

    So please "vote" and also "comment" to let us know your thoughts:

    Hmm, the text scrolling can be wonkey because it applies a consistent scroll speed to a voice with variable speed. It averages out as shown at the end, but the text can get so behind that you can't see the words being spoken. The only way to solve this would be to give the user the option to set keyframes (like telling the text-scrolling engine what part of the text is being read at the middle of the audio, then the engine could change the times before and after the keyframe to help stabilize the text scrolling).

    Yes I noticed that Kyle. I am also wondering if I can just break down the audio into separate files, and process it separately by "chunks" and give the video a chance to catch up that way.

    That's one advantage of the computer-read voice -- it reads at constant speed.

    Another thing I want to figure out is how to start the opening location on the first screen lower on the page at the beginning , as I am thinking that might help as well.

    > Another thing I want to figure out is how to start the opening location on the first screen lower on the page at the beginning , as I am thinking that might help as well.

    Yes, I'm certain this can be done by modifying the script. I'll see if I can solve it later today.


    > I am also wondering if I can just break down the audio into separate files, and process it separately by "chunks" and give the video a chance to catch up that way.

    You could break the audio and text file into corrosponding chunks and run the python script for each chunk, I was thinking about making the script do this for you if you specify the chunks so you don't have to run the python script for each chunk.

    Also, if anyone has any "audacity" / filtering or recording tips, please chime in. It is possible that if I had run this through a "compression" filter that there might not be quite so much "echo" effect -- actually I am not sure I know how to describe it -- I bet others have a word for it. Joshua in general the recording quality is excellent. What type of microphone were you using. Were you using a headset?

    Quote

    Audacity picks up on a ton of background noise.

    Yep.

    I used a desktop Yeti microphone, a pop filter, Bose over-ear headphones, and Audacity on a no-frills laptop. Recorded on the kitchen table in the narrow intervals when the furnace blower wasn't running.

    I ran the audio through several filters; from memory, I think it was equalize, amplify, compress, amplify. I tried noise reduction as well—I think I did that at the end.

    Today I have a cold, so unfortunately it may be some time before you see anything else from me! I think I still have the unfiltered, untampered audio file if you'd like to play around with that, Cassius. I've certainly gained a new appreciation for content creators!

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