How do you allow the user to skip to the next section

Special Interest Groups Recording Techniques
1

I’m creating an audio (voice only) with three sections and want the end user to be able to us it as an MP3 on an iPhone, iPad or any MP3 player. I want them to be able to skip the introduction and go to the next section without having to listen to the whole thing. Any ideas of how do to this? This would be much appreciated

2

You want navigation chapters.

Nobody has to sit through the show. All those devices have music scroll bars.

I don’t know of any chapter management in iTunes other than making a playlist with three items in it and the iWhatever will play them in sequence and you can forward step to the next one easily. Music1.wav, Music2.wav, Music3.wav. It’s an end-user setting.

Koz

3

Thanks, but I think there must be something one does on the recording end to put spaces or breaks between different sections. When I hit next on my iPhone, it goes to the end

4

See: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Splitting_a_recording_into_separate_tracks

WC

5

When I hit next on my iPhone, it goes to the end

Of the current selection, yes. It should also go to the beginning of the next segment. That’s where you put segment two. You distribute as three songs.

I only know of three ways to Chapter Skip: Music CD, Video DVD and Video BluRay. All the other music players depend on the user to set up a show between delivery of the work and listening.

You do need to make sure you have the only sequence of files in the system. I use date and time. 201202070734.mp3. That’s right now. 2012 02 07, 7:30 am. The next file is …35 and the next one …36. Chances of having file duplicates on the client’s computer is very low (but not zero). Do Not use slash marks in filenames. 2/7/12.mp3 is not a filename.


There is one other, much more complicated way to do this. Distribute as a web page. Then you can use JavaScript and clicking buttons to play the work. MyMusic.html as a file should open in a browser and play.

http://www.kozco.com/tech/soundtests.html
Each of these is a sound clip. They’re specialized clips, so they don’t play everywhere, but that’s the idea. JavaScript will let you gang the clips so they play one after the other.

Koz

6

Ok, it’s getting clearer. Now I need to know how to create segments on one MP3. So that “next” goes to the next segment. Can you tell me how to do that?

Thanks so much for your help.

Gary

7

Is there a way of marking separate ‘tracks’ while it’s being recorded? I’d like to split a recording into separate sections while it’s being recorded, so when the user is listening to it, it’s easier to navigate to the next section…

8

Ctrl+M then Enter.
(see: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Label_Tracks#play )

9

Thanks!!!

10

Really good post have learn’t a lot as I am trying to record a book , is it possible to split down the sections again. So like you could click on a chapter in the index (playlist) and it would list the number of each page that was in the chapter? So it would be like a sub directory I am trying to record a document for work so people may need to go to a individual page to recap-if it can’t be done in Audacity would it be something that could be build in as a adaptation? Is there a cheep program that is more suited for recording books/documents? :nerd:

11

Audacity is a good, free program for recording and editing your material, but for advanced e-publication features you will probably need specialist software.
This article may be useful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB

12

Audacity is a terrific program for recording your voice. But everybody is asking for something that doesn’t exist. You produce a series of sound files in audacity, chapter1, chapter2, chapter3, and the player plays them in order or allows you to skip around. It’s not burned into one big MP3. In the case of a Music CD, it’s the CD burning program and the CD player in your car that are doing the heavy lifting. You supply a pile of normal sound files. Not one big special one.

You can totally do something like this in web programming, maybe even blog software. When I watch a news show on line, I click on the first file and it cranks through all the files in the show one after the other. I can click on and play them out of order if I want. The show files are just ordinary animation files; show1, show2, show3. Nobody made a special segmented news file. It’s the environment and browser management that are doing all the work.

Here’s someone who got something to work. Oddly, I suspect he went to a lot of convolution and trouble to make a standard Music CD with chapters.



http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/285036-How-would-I-create-points-or-chapters-throughout-my-mp3-audio-file

I believe I may have found it right inside of Virtual dj. I have to record my mix as a bin/cue file, then while recording make a cut where I would like the cut made so it will enable me to do what I want in my cd player. Then Burn it in say nero as an image. Funny thing is Im all out of cd’s at the time LOL. So I’ll pic some up tomorrow. This should be the same concept as making the cue sheet, and structuring it, correct Guns?, relating to the link you gave me.

I thinks its a go, I took took the Cue file and mounted it with Magic Iso and played the file inside of Windows Media Player, and it shows the different tracks I made with the cut button, but all of them play as one file. The individual track jump in sync to the next track. So if burned to cd It looks and sounds like all will do as I wanted. (from the googling I did the files have to be in wav format for me to be able to use the cue points by my cd/dvd player) Mission accomplished !

13

I don’t know that EPUB is the answer. That seems to be almost exclusively for printed pages…

EPUB also requires that PNG, JPEG, GIF, and SVG images be supported using the mimetypes

Koz

14

I think we are on the same page in our interests. I will look forward to input about your additional questions as well. I’m ending up with a webpage that just links to each section, but I wish it could be different.

15

For electronic books, one of the main formats seems to be M4B: http://wiki.librivox.org/index.php/How_To_Make_M4B_Files
The software that comes up repeatedly on Google for creating M4B files is “Chapter & Verse”: http://lodensoftware.com/chapter-and-verse/ (free)
For Mac: Audiobookbuilder http://www.splasm.com/audiobookbuilder/ (commercial, non-free)

16

I wonder about that, too.

they rely on the same ID3 tags

And you only get one ID3 tag per sound file. I need to go to work. Koz

17

How about the Daisy book format? It’s the number one choice for VIP. There are a lot of free players and some creating tools too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DTBook

18

I can see people really wanting “The Universal Audiobook Format.”

Write back if you find one.

Koz