[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

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



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.
> 
> 
> 


-- 
Matt Payne, Payne@MattPayne.org                                    932 1779
                                   \|/
                                  (o o)
------------------------------oOo--(_)--oOo--------------------------------
                         Slow down to go faster.