How did the idea for Hindenburg
Journalist come about?
“I was working in community radio
projects in Zambia and needed software
that could be used by local journalists
– something that was easy to edit on
and could uphold broadcast standards.
I couldn’t find anything. I knew a
programmer and asked him how difficult
it could be to create this tiny bit of
software. As it turned out, it was quite
difficult. But he made it anyway. It had
more to do with a democracy process.
The software caters for anyone who has a
story they want to tell through audio.”
Pro Tools is probably the industry
standard for audio editing. How does
Hindenburg Journalist differ to Pro
Tools?
“This is designed specifically for
radio production, so we can add
features that other programmes don’t
take into consideration because they
are made more or less for music or
movie production. We can design the
programme to help the user reproduce
radio broadcast quality. We built an
intelligent sound engineer into it.”
How user friendly is the editing and
mixing?
“Very user friendly. You can learn the
basics within a couple of hours. There are
quite a few universities around the world
using it to teach audio journalism.”
How do the auto-level and Loudness
Meters help professional broadcast?
“The Loudness Meter is a bit of a geeky
feature. The European Broadcasting
Union (EBU) has introduced a new way
of measuring audio, by using loudness
rather than peak measurements. It
derives from the problem of different
compression levels. The auto-level is
measured so we fit current broadcast
levels.”
Does the software let users upload
podcasts to blogs, Soundcloud, etc?
“We have a publishing feature where
you can set up different accounts, so you
can upload to a Soundcloud account, or
you can have your own podcast. You can
also add images, links, and chapters to
the programmes.”
What other Hindenburg Journalist
functions can you mention?
“Voice Profiler is made for journalists
either working in the field or at home.
One of the challenges is making proper
sound images for your voice. That can
be really difficult. If you’re working with
speakers on your computer, they’re not
really going to be good enough to set
an EQ. Headphones don’t really work
either. But you can get a sound engineer
to do an EQ on your voice and we apply
that profile to all other recordings of
your narration, so it always fits the
optimal sounding voice. We also built in
a Skype call recorder, so you can record
conversations on two tracks.”