Options for playing mp3 on iOS

Wed Oct 28 19:47:57 EDT 2015

Also I am very much interested in such functionality playing mp3 (or
whatever other sound format is suitable).

I started a language learning app. I gave up on it as with some earlier LC
versions I had just frequent crashes and thought that the
multimedia-technology may not be as advanced in LiveCode yet.

Also at that time I also gave up because there was no way to easily have
Russian characters displayed together with Roman language characters, or
using files wiith names in Cyrillic letters. UTF-8 was not available as a
native character set. And all this changed now.

THAT IS A GREAT ACHIEVEMENT with "7-UP" )))

But is such more sophisticated application something LC would just be the
best tool for?

I work on Windows and Android. I do not have a Mac. But it would be great
to support any LC supported platforms.

- Basic Requirements: Cross-platform, desktop and mobile

- Plays sound (video) synchronous with text.highlighting phrases and words
which are spoken (either different natural speakers or synthetic voice up
to choice of user). Also user can enter voice (in native or foreign
language.) and do the synchronization of both languages (text and sound).

- User can click on text to hear the associated spoken phrase. App allows
to replay words, phrases etc. as many times as the user wants, and user can
store certain phrases to a library.

So, the player (native or not, or whatever player on given platform) should
be controllable to some degree:

- controlling time scale (allowing to move backward, forward, to any marks
set within a file, and from file to file)
- controlling the level of loudness (which I believe is not a problem).

I know I can track milliseconds and move around using milliseconds. But
with all players on all platforms?

Any other sound (and video) attributes are not as important for such app.

Also it should play snippets of sound (or video) files and combine them if
needed without noticeable delays in loading and playing.

This means, probably sound files (or video files) should generally be local
(on  mobile, on hard disk). Or they should be loaded from anywhere into
memory and be accessible for the language learning lesson.

Basic idea behind: Teacher and students can create their own language
learning lessons, and they can create text and sound and video and drawings
- as they like. They can add any annotations and use any kind of learning
technique.

For example, using this as learning cards or with whatever edutainment
strategy - should be easy to do. It is another level of usefulness which
can be developed on top of basic functionality.

For example: I find it highly interesting and useful to translate foreign
language phrases word by word using an "exact" word-by-word translation
even if such translation is not something one would use for a meaningful
translation.) It is just used to learn how in a foreign language grammar is
used.

Example:
German: Ich gehe heute Abend spazieren.
English literal 1:1 translation: I go today evening walking.
Possible meaningful translation: Today evening I will go for a walk.

The student will grab the way a foreign language mind is constructing the
phrase using the literal translation word-by-word. (The literal translation
does not have to be correct English at all.)

So, the app would play the sound, and together with the sound, exactly
matching words are highlighted in the original language, and also the
literal translation will be highlighted word-by-word, whereby the user
could switch on and off whatever he wants to see.

There are several possible synchronized levels or tracks: Sound tracks with
different voices, pictures track, videos track, original foreign language
text track, text transliteration track, exact word by word translation
track, translation of meaning track, annotations tracks (notes, remarks,
mnemonics, references to further explanations, word forms, etc.).

And many people love to learn when they can create their own
learning-course since then they also learn while creating. It is more fun.
And I am sure, it is more fun for students to CREATE while learning,
instead of just to learn.

Is it possible to do this with LiveCode?

I mean, is it really possible with today's tools available on desktop and
mobile? I am a bit confused reading through comments on this list and
trying the best myself to get the player working the way I conceive it.

Then of course, I am thinking of not only having some fixed text, but be
able visually to move phrases, words etc. around and combine them through
drag-and-drop to become new phrases, or fill empty spaces in a text with
correct (or incorrect) phrases (with incorrect ones the app will bark at
the user)))...Sound (and all else) should still be with such snippets.

One level to work with is how to manage such multimedia data in a database,
and another level is using the functionality available in LiveCode for
display and user input.

Any ideas and comments are highly appreciated ).

First it all boils down to a player that can really be used and managed and
be under programmatic control for such purpose on each of the supported
platforms.

Is it possible now?

Roland

On 28 October 2015 at 22:30, Klaus major-k <klaus at major-k.de> wrote:

> Hi Ben,
>
> > Am 28.10.2015 um 20:34 schrieb Ben Rubinstein <benr_mc at cogapp.com>:
> >
> > I have a small number of mp3 clips that I want to embed in my app and
> play on demand.
> >
> > I think that I have three choices, but I may be wrong:
> >       - audioClip
>
> imported sound clips do not work on mobile, if you mean that.
> However: play „path/to/sound.mp3“
> does work on mobile.
>
> >       - mobilePlaySoundOnChannel
> >       - a player object
>
> player objects are also not supported on mobile.
> But you can „mobilecreate“ a „native „player“, although I’m not sure if
> this is only for video?
>
> > Are any of these an out-of-the-box bad idea?  Is one of them a clear
> leader? Or what are the pros and cons?
> >
> > I'm interested in the pros and cons in general; but in this specific
> case it may be relevant to note:
> >       - I don't need to give the user a controller (but don't object to
> it)
>
> I think the native player object has one.
>
> >       - I do need to be able to programmatically stop the sound
> >       - I would like to be able to programatically adjust the volume
>
> „the playloudness“ is also supported on mobile.
>
> > Thanks in advance for all wisdom shared!
> >
> > Ben
>
> Best
>
> Klaus
>
> --
> Klaus Major
> http://www.major-k.de
> klaus at major-k.de
>
>
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