[bksvol-discuss] Re: Reading books downloaded from the loving BookShare

  • From: "Sarah Van Oosterwijck" <curiousentity@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2005 14:11:42 -0500

I doubt you are doing anything wrong. I just think there is something about Windows 98 that makes MP3 creation slower, but I sure can't imagine what that factor might be. In Xp it seemed to take no time at all compared to what it took in 98. I really can't give you numbers because i didn't really look at the times long enough to be sure about them. This is mostly a subjective feeling about how long it took, but it seemed to take about as long as it would take to read the book to make the MP3s in 98, whereas in XP it just seemed to be a reasonable amount of time for encoding the MP3s, comparable to CD ripping speeds.

I usually don't do the whole book at once. I am just too impatient. I would have to make my computer do it at night while I wasn't using it. I just select a chapter at a time to be created usually. I made one whole book once by converting the book to a file format that lost the bookmarks that exist in daisy books for page navigation, and then searching for each chapter number and placing a bookmark in front of it, so that the mp3s could be broken in to chapters. See another reason why we need to retain the chapter headings and numbers in bookshare files.

If you want me to, I suppose I could use the same sample of text to create an MP3 in 98 and in XP and actually compare the times taken for each. The times may not be very relevant to how long it takes on your computer because I am sure our computers are quite different. Mine is a 1Ghz AMD duran with 512 MB of very slow PC100 RAM. :-(
What's yours?


Sarah Van Oosterwijck
Assistive Technology Instructor
http://home.earthlink.net/~netentity
----- Original Message ----- From: "Pat Ferguson" <fergent@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, June 06, 2005 11:11 AM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Reading books downloaded from the loving BookShare



Hi Sarah,

Thanks so much for your email. Does it take forever to make MP3 files of the books you make with Kurzweil? Like I said in a previous message it took 2 days to make one Star Wars book into an MP3 file because it was reading it and that is probably what slowed it down. I do this on a separate computer with Windows 98 SE on it. I still think I'm doing something wrong. <grin> lol.

Thanks much.

Pat Ferguson



At 09:55 AM 6/5/05, you wrote:
I make MP3s with Kurzweil, so that my husband and I can listen to books in the kitchen while we eat. I was annoyed by the slowness when I first started to make them, too. I first made them with Kurzweil in Windows 98, because Kurzweil crashed less in 98. I have Xp on the same computer, and one time when I wanted to make another chapter of a book in to an MP3 I was using Xp and didn't want to bother switching. I found that it made the MP3s way faster and didn't bog down my computer while it did it, so I could still do other stuff. Now I never make MP3s in Windows 98.

Now thanks to a reinstall of Xp and Kurzweil I don't have crashes anymore, so using it is no longer annoying for that reason, either.

I'm sure I can't speed up your computers performance, but if you need any other MP3 creation tips for Kurzweil let me know.

Have the people that have used Kurzweil as well as other software done testing to determine that the other software is faster? Could it be the codec being used? I also wonder if the voice being used makes a difference. I've only used via voice for books.

Sarah Van Oosterwijck
Assistive Technology Instructor
http://home.earthlink.net/~netentity

----- Original Message ----- From: "Pat Ferguson" <fergent@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Book Share Discuss" <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>; <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, June 04, 2005 10:48 AM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Reading books downloaded from the loving BookShare



Hi Everyone,

I hope these aren't stupid questions, but I'm trying to deside how I should read my books that I'm downloading from BookShare.org.

Right now, I read them either on my Voice note or my computer, but I wanted to make some of them into MP3's and I have had problems with doing that with Kurzweil 1000. It's like it took almost a day to convert one book to MP3, as it had to read it. One Star Wars book, it took 2 days. lol.

I know I'm doing something wrong, so please don't laugh too hard. lol.

What is the best program to make mp3 files out of brf files.

My next question is this:

I have the PlexTalk recorder from Plextor and I love it! It was one very expensive item that I bought after arriving home from Oregon in June of 2003, and one loving item that Vernon brought out to me outside on that night of June 24th, 2003, when we were hit with that awful f4 tornado.

My question is this. If I download the daisy player from BookShare, can I put these books on my PlexTalk and read them as well in Daisy format?

Also, what book reader are you all using when reading books on your computers?

Thanks much.

Pat Ferguson




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