I’m not being paid to write this, I’m writing this because I love these essential tools. I am not getting compensated at all and only do this to share with the world.

One of the most essential tools to us is SmartSound SonicFire Pro 5. I used this program in Pinnacle Studio and you can see it in earlier 7 O’Clock News episodes. I also have used it in some of my ads and videos. It is even used for the opening to The 7 O’Clock News. We are beginning to use it for even more of our projects. This tool is amazing and I’ll explain why.

Say your producing video, audio, or any other type of multimedia. You finish your project and want to add a little spice and flavor. You find a piece of music, but it’s too long or it’s too short. Or the instruments are too noisy during a piece of dialogue. With SmartSound you can find a piece of music and then trim it to the exact time of your clip. The music then rearranges your music’s composition and makes it so it’s not just repeating the same loop over. It varies the music. All of their newer pieces allow you to alter the actual instrument groups. You can set a mood of dialogue by selecting a preset (you can also modify the presets even further) and your music is quieter during the dialogue with reduced guitar or drums and is back to business afterwards. This has been a great tool for us and adds a lot to the feel of the media.

You also do not have to worry about licensing or royalties because the music comes royalty-free at a pretty affordable price. If you need a cue sheet to prove what you use-SonicFire will output it for you with the length, the time the audio came in and who is the composer and publisher. This is great for legal purposes.

You can also use SonicFire for sound effects, they have really high quality sound effects, and you can add hits to your music like cymbal crashes, drums, etc.

The program has an immense database of songs and you can always look for another piece of music if something doesn’t fit your project. The library keeps growing every month and are always high quality pieces. There is also a wide variety of music types and choices. The music never seems cheap to me and some people have asked me how I got such a high quality and customized piece of music on our budget.

If you would like to learn more about SmartSound SonicFire Pro 5, visit http://smartsound.com/ (not an affiliate link). I hope this tool proves to be as useful to you as it is to us.

Yo Dudes, this is Tony D! Jonathan let me post on the main TNIWWT blog. This is kinda scary dudes! I feel like I’ve got A LOT to live up to when I post here. I wanted to let you know that he is entering a college scholarship essay contest and he has produced a video for it. It’s called “College Revolution” and he asked me to help act out his thoughts. Dude, I was scared and this was not a small project either. I kept walking into his office during the editing and he would tell me to leave because I was distractin’ him by asking so many questions on life! Dudes, please take a look at his awesome video essay submission!

-Tony D.

I have some tools that are essential to my everyday production of video and audio files. One such tool is The Levelator, This tool takes the audio that I produce and levels it out. So the dialogue isn’t too low or the music isn’t too loud and makes everything sound more enjoyable. This has been a tool we used for all of our SuperBug Take 2 episodes and other different projects. This has to be one of the simplest tools I’ve ever used and I get great results from it! Plus, it’s free!

My grandfather, Elwyn Williams, has written a lot of poems and thoughts over the years. This Christmas we surprised him by publishing his book on the Kindle and in printed form.

You may buy his book in hardcover form for $19.99, paperbac for $11.99 and on the Kindle for $5.99

View and buy Cobwebs to Lightning now

We hope you enjoy this book.

-Jonathan Bloom

You may have noticed that it’s snowing now on The Name I Wanted Was Taken. You might also have noticed our pretty decorations we’ve put up. We’ve decided to decorate for Christmas this year and we brought out the decorations that were stuck in the attic. I know it’s before Thanksgiving, but Thanksgiving is a great time to begin decorating.

From all of us at The Name I Wanted Was Taken, We Wish You a Merry Christmas!

I went to two VON conferences back in 2007 and have attended PodCamp Boston 2 & 4. I have invested a lot of time and energy in podcasting. I’ve learned a lot about it since 2006. (more…)

I have just added feeds for all of our podcasts. You can find the feeds on the sidebar of each podcast. The iTunes feed for SuperBug Take 2 has been fixed and iTunes feeds for The 7 O’Clock News and Morning Radio are on the way.

Hope you enjoy the new feeds!

Pedro McDonald has created a new podcast called Morning Radio. This podcast is about a fictional radio program that is producing it’s own podcast. Yeah, kind of like another show we like to watch about people working in a corporate office environment.

You might even see me in that podcast!

Check it out soon!

We just launched the new TheNameIWantedWasTaken.com and things so far are going smoothly.

This new redesign takes into account all of the stuff we’ve learned since 2006, primarily the Do’s and Don’ts of designing a website. We thank you for your patience and if you have any suggestions or you find any errors (like broken links, glitches, etc) please feel free to contact us!

Thank you very much and we hope you enjoy the new site. You might want to check out the podcasts on our site.