Nolan, Could I use your overview of turning a four-track cassette in to an MP3 in Fred's Head? I'd love this information to appear in our database. You will receive full credit for the article of course. Michael McCarty An Overview: This mini tutorial will provide the steps necessary for converting data from a four-track half-speed cassette to MP3 files used by the Book Port. None of the steps here are screen reader specific, but all of the steps assume that you have Sound Forge, and this was written on the basis of Sound Forge 8.0. WHAT YOU NEED: You'll need a stereo cassette player capable of playing both channels of a stereo cassette at the regular 1-7/8 Inches Per Second speed at least. If you have a dubbing deck that can move the tape at an even faster rate, that's even better, provided the dubbing signal can travel from the deck into your computer's sound card. You'll also need a half-speed four-track cassette recording such as Newsweek or the Reader's Digest, both available from the American Printing House for the Blind. You'll need the appropriate cords to connect your tape deck or handicassette machine to your computer's sound card. You'll need a computer with a sound card capable of receiving a line in signal. I'm using a Live Value card from Creative Labs. Prior to completing these steps, you'll need to create a 24 kilobits per second MP3 template in Sound Forge. You may want to opt for 24 KBPS and mono rather than stereo recording when you create this template. The creation of such a template is outside the scope of this document, but virtually every version of Sound Forge from 5 to 8, and probably earlier, is capable of creating a 24-KBPS mono MP3 file template. This is important because it's what you will use when you save the final product we convert from the cassette. Also, make sure you've gone into the record options of your volume control and that you've checked your line-in volume to be one of the volume controls shown in the volume control settings of your computer. I do this by running a program called sndvol32, which can be found on your computer. Again, the details for doing this are outside the scope of this document. By selecting the line in volume, you ensure that you will be able to hear a signal if you wish to do that. For the purposes of this little mini guide, I'll assume that you're using a stereo cassette machine capable only of playing tapes at the standard speed. THE STEPS: 1. Insert your four-track tape into the cassette machine, making sure the machine can play both stereo channels at once and that it is set at the high or standard speed of 1-7/8 IPS. Cue the cassette the old-fashioned way--by rapidly finding the beginning of the voice track, stopping the tape immediately at the beginning, then removing the cassette and rewinding it slightly with your finger, re-inserting the cassette, putting the pause control on, and activating the play button. 2. Make sure your cords are properly connected between the cassette unit and your computer's sound card. 3. Open Sound Forge 4. Activate the record preparation control in Sound Forge with Control+R. When you check your record attributes, make certain that you're sampling at 44,100 Hz. and that the stereo channel radio button is selected. You can do that by tapping the Alt+C key combination, then moving through the radio button selections with your arrow keys. You have only two selections here--mono and stereo. Make sure you've selected stereo. The sampling rate designation is a combo box, so your Up and Down Arrow keys should let you see your choices. Make certain 44,100 Hz. is selected. 5. Simultaneously do an Alt+R key combination to start the recording and release the pause button on your player. The Time Recorded information in Sound Forge should begin to show the number of seconds and eventually minutes and seconds the machine is recording, and you should hear the signal through your computer speakers. 6. At the conclusion of the recording, between 30 and 45 minutes from when you start, depending on whether you're converting a magazine or full-fledged book, do an Alt+F4 to terminate the recording. You should now have two tracks recorded on your hard drive--track one, which will sound normal except for the double speed component that will give it a chipmunk effect, and track four, which will sound reversed. Please remember when you're using a stereo machine to convert four-track half-speed cassettes, the braille side of the cassette will include tracks one and four while the non-braille side will include tracks two and three. Since we recorded the tape with the braille side up, we're working on tracks one and four. 7. Do a Control+Home key combination to move to the top of your recorded file and tap Spacebar to hear the beginning to make sure it sounds relatively ok so far. Remember, you should be hearing both tracks with voices that sound like a speeded up cassette. You may not hear track four immediately at the same time you hear track one. This is because of the mastering process. Eventually, however, you'll hear track four nice and loud and backwards. 8. Activate only the channel that includes the reverse track four. For me, it's my right channel, so I would tap the Tab key twice--once to activate only the left channel and again to activate only the right one. Whatever it takes, this right channel must be the one you hear when you tap the Spacebar. 9. With the reverse track four channel activated, open the Process menu with Alt+P and activate the mute channel menu item by simply tapping M. After a few seconds of processing time, the reverse track channel, again for me the right channel, is muted entirely. 10. Tap your Tab key two times to activate the relatively normal-sounding track, track 1, and tap your Spacebar just to make sure that's the one you have activated. 11. Now execute a Control+A key combination to select all the audio in the channel from the beginning to the end. Then do a Control+C key combination to copy the selected material to the clipboard. 12. Open a new sound window with Control+N and make absolutely sure you do the two following actions. Failure to do either of these could result in a less-than-successful outcome. A. In the sample rate combo box that comes up first thing when you open a new sound window, up arrow until you have selected 22.050 Hz. as your new sampling rate. Notice this is exactly half of the sampling rate you used when you created the original recording. B. Change the channel selection radio button from stereo to mono with Alt+C then Up Arrow to Mono. Tap Enter to accept the new settings. 13. Paste the text you selected earlier into this new window with Control+V. When you do, a dialogue opens, asking if you're sure you want to do this, since the resampling will alter the pitch of the voices. Activate the Yes button, and the paste process will go forward from there. 14. You're almost ready to save this as an MP3 file. But if you're a bit of a perfectionist, as I am when it comes to this audio stuff, you'll want to trim the ends and possibly get rid of the unnecessary instructions about turning the cassette over and such. I do leave the side designations in mbo box, so your Up and Down Arrow k place as well as the table of contents material if it exists. Just use your Sound Forge editing commands to trim the ends to your liking. 15. Open the Save File dialogue (Control+S) and make sure the 24 KBPS template you created earlier is selected. Give the file an appropriate file name with an MP3 extension, make certain the file will go to a directory where your Book Port transfer software can easily find it, and activate the Save button. 16. Close the sound window; you no longer need this one open. When you close the window, (Control+W works nicely for that), you'll be asked to save changes. You already have saved the file, so opt for the no button at that point, and the window is closed and you're back in your original chipmunk-sounding recording with the track four reverse channel still muted out. 17. It's time to restore the channel you muted earlier. Do a Control+Z key combination or open the Edit menu and select the undo option--either way. After a few seconds, tap the Spacebar to ensure that your reverse track four channel is indeed back. 18. Now it's time to mute out the track one normal-sounding (left) channel that you've already saved as an MP3 file. Tap Tab twice to activate that channel and make it the dominant one. If you only tap Tab once, you'll get both channels evenly. With the normal-sounding channel now the dominant one, open the processes menu, (Alt+P), and activate the mute command by tapping M. 19. Tap Tab once to make the reverse track four the dominant channel again. You'll be working with this channel for the rest of the time. 20. Select the entire contents of this channel with Control+A then copy the contents to the clipboard (Control+C) 21. Open a new sound window (Control+N), and remember that it will be unchanged from the other sound window you opened earlier in order to save track one. In other words, this new window will also include a sampling rate of 22,050 Hz. and the channel selection will still be mono. Tap Enter to accept these settings. 22. Now paste the contents of the clipboard into the new sound window you've just opened. Again, the dialogue will open, appointing out that you're about to alter the pitch of your data. Simply activate the yes button and the paste will commence. 23. Now that the channel is pasted, open the processes menu (Alt+P) and activate the reverse process with R. After a few seconds, your track four will sound normal in pitch and certainly normal in terms of the content. 24. Because of the mastering process, this track will almost inevitably have lots of space at one end or another that you can trim. This is the point at which you trim the ends if you want to. 25. Save this channel now as the second MP3 file. I usually call it by the magazine or book name and then delineate track 4. So it might say, Newsweek July 4 track 4.mp3. 26. Now close this sound window; you no longer need it once the file is saved. 27. Now close the window that contained the original chipmunk-sounding tracks. You don't need to save it for any reason, so simply activate the no button when Sound Forge points out that the file is changed but not saved. 28. Now it's time to clean up after yourself a bit. By that, I mean that you need to restore your sampling rate and channel selection settings in preparation for recording the non-braille side of the cassette. To do that, open a new sound window with Control+N and down arrow in the sample rate combo box until you again hear 44,100 Hz. Also, give focus to the channel selection radio buttons (Alt+C) and down arrow until stereo is selected, then tap Enter to accept the settings. This is an extremely important part of the process. It's too easy to just close Sound Forge and think you'll fix that part later, only to start a recording later having forgotten to do this fix. 29. Insert the cassette braille side down into your machine, cue it, and repeat steps 4 to 29. Congratulations! You've successfully completed your four-track conversion. Nolan Crabb Michael McCarty Fred's Head Database Coordinator American Printing House for the Blind Phone: 502 895-2405 Fax: 502 899-2363 www.aph.org