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Re: [school-discuss] falling costs of producing audio books



hello,


everything can be out sourced.

the software can be downloaded (100 meg or so) :

http://www.etc-edu.com

download page (in main menu)

audio books

the loast world - contains book and full set of software with a readme.

it's all free.

i can act as traffic cop if you like, so we don't get too many versions of the 
same books.

thousands of texts are available at http://www.promo.net/pg/.

they are free as is this package.

mike eschman, etc ...
http://www.etc-edu.com
"Not just an afterthought ...


On Saturday 21 December 2002 12:15 pm, Matt Payne wrote:
> Quoting John Munro <jmunro@uvi.edu>:
> > How many of these steps could be 'outsourced' to those with spare cpu
> > cycles?
>
> Yes!  this is a lot better than Seti @Home.   Is the software you're
> talking about all free?  If it is can't you make a kit for people to run
> books through the cycle? -Matt
>
> > I've got spare time on several PC's in the area, and would be glad to
> > have them become useful rather than mostly ornamental.  Might the
> > additional results outweigh the additional management and control to get
> > this done?  If there's already a process or schedule for doing this, I'd
> > like to learn more and participate if possible.  Artistic creator I'm
> > not, but cpu cycles I've got...
> >
> > Respond directly to jmunro@uvi.edu if that's more appropriate.
> >
> > John Munro
> > Univ of the Virgin Islands
> > StCroix Campus USVI
> >
> > At 08:14 AM 12/21/2002 -0600, Mr. Eschman wrote:
> > >... meanwhile, we are continuing to move the technology forward in three
> > >directions (marked A, B and C):
> > >
> > >A- the gutenberg group wants to rip audio books on the fly.  last year,
> > > our technology to do that produced a mono-tone voice, that was hypnotic
> > > - it put you to sleep.  today, we can rip a book on the fly that has a
> > > reasonably engaging inflection.  this resulted directly from focusing
> > > on the effect consonant patterns have on a "steady state" audio
> > > generator, that is, a
> >
> > sound
> >
> > >generate that produces a certain number of phenoms per time unit, as
> >
> > viavoice
> >
> > >appears to be (this is speculation, because the source code is not
> >
> > available,
> >
> > >and the speculation is based on more than a year of observations].
> > >
> > >unfortunately, running redhat linux 7.2 on an atlalon 900 with .5 gig of
> > >memory and a typical ide drive, it takes about 2.5 hours to complete a
> > > book like war of the worlds.  fortunately, no single chapter takes over
> > > ten minutes.  (this abberation in arithmetic is accounted for by our
> > > not having
> >
> > a
> >
> > >dedicated box to rip audio on, so loading affects run time).
> > >
> > >we hope gutenberg users will use the chapter-by-chapter ripping
> > > software,
> >
> > and
> >
> > >will help out with a few cycles and maybe some bandwidth :-)
> > >
> > >the new software, which i am using to rip the etc ... new year's cd does
> > > the following :
> > >
> > >1 - downloads the gutenberg book
> > >2 - applies an author specific set of sed parsers to correct
> > >mis-pronunciations.
> > >3 - introduces appropriate pauses in the reading.
> > >4 - dithers speech rate and voice baseline frequency to improve
> > > inflection. 5 - creates an .au file in a non-standard format.  sorry.
> > >this is an emacspeak / viavoice artifact.  without the source code we
> > > can't fix it.
> > >6- creates .wav files
> > >7 - upsamples the .wav file and introduces masking to reduce digitized
> > >artifacts (i.e. "buzzing")
> > >8 - expands the voice output in the critical mid-range.
> > >9 - adds reflections to improve clarity, according to the guidelines
> > >established for this by the German classical recording company, DGG,
> > >a leader in this field.
> > >10 - converts the wav file to mp3 and adds title information.
> > >we would love to make this conform to koa(?) indexing requirements,
> > >but our hands are full.

-- 
(http://www.etc-edu.com ) Not just an afterthought ...