[bookcourier] Re: Book Courier and MP3 files

  • From: "James O'Dell" <jamesodell@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <bookcourier@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2006 18:10:07 -0000

Book Courier and MP3 filesHi

The only problem you will have with creating a single large mp3 file is that 
Text Aloud creates a wave file of the TTS output and then converts the wave 
file to mp3.  If you are splitting a large text into several mp3s this is not 
an issue because the temporary wave file gets deleted each time a new mp3 is 
created.  However if you are trying to create a single mp3 from a large text, 
which might well be worth doing since the BC has a Resume feature, then you 
might want to try something else.  Jonathan Mosen recently discussed a product 
which he claims writes directly to mp3 on his weblog at www.mosenexplosion.com. 
 I have not used the product myself, but you can get more information on it at 
www.text-mp3.com.

Hope this helps

James
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Leonin 
  To: bookcourier@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  Sent: Wednesday, March 08, 2006 5:23 PM
  Subject: [bookcourier] Re: Book Courier and MP3 files



    ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: Guy Barlow HR Workforce Information & Analysis Officer 
    To: 'bookcourier@xxxxxxxxxxxxx' 
    Sent: Wednesday, March 08, 2006 4:49 PM
    Subject: [bookcourier] Book Courier and MP3 files


    Could anyone educate me a little about the efficient creation of MP3 files 
for the Book Courier. 
    I have a 1GB Compact Flash card in my BC and usually create MP3 files  by 
loading text files into Kurzweil and then using the MP3 creation facility in 
this application. Up until now I have created MP3 files containing around 40 
pages of scanned text. I want to know  ideally  is it possible to scan create a 
MP3 file from a complete text book e.g. 300 text pages  in length  using 
Kurzweile, or will this crash my PC or be greater than 1GB?

    Additionally, is the on line Text Aloud software more efficient and better 
quality than Kurzweil V8? 
    Any advice would be most welcome,. 
    Guy 

    Hi Guy and list

    I've used both Text Aloud and Kurzweil for conversions. If you convert the 
mp3 file to no more than 64kps, you shouldn't have any problems fitting several 
300 page books onto 1GB. Whether it crashes your PC will depend very much on 
how much memory and processing power it has, but even a less powerful PC should 
be able to do this ok but it may take longer.

    Text Aloud is quite good, plus you can purchase lots of different voices 
from them - many of which are very realistic. It does seem to take longer to 
convert than Kurzweil, though. If you have Text Aloud on your system, you can 
use their voices from within Kurzweil, which is what I do, getting the best of 
both worlds. Text Aloud is useful for converting a current web page to an mp3 
file on the fly.

    I think that it would come down to personal preferences and individual 
systems, so the best thing to do is give it a go.

    Hope this helps
    Prisca


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