Audio integration tutorial

[Mark Swindell]

Hi Dan,

Questions that I have would involve:

Audio formats:
What's the best for working with Rev under different circumstances?  
MP3, MP4, AIFF (huge files), M4B, etc.   What are the trade offs in 
terms of fidelity, file size, ease of manipulation, compatibility.

Benefits/drawbacks of the different formats:
X-platform issues, standards that can succeed across them?  Example: 
Books on tape use the m4b format which apparently includes striping of 
some sort which allows a user to resume listening at a place he left 
off.  It may not to be compatible with Rev; at least when I tried to 
import such a file into a stack it was howlie garbage.

Audio/text synchronization:
How can I synchronize a longer audio file with real-time text hiliting 
features?  Example: I want to have the narration/reading (real recorded 
voice, not text-to-speech) of a book playing while corresponding text 
is hilited on screen.  Not word by word, necessarily, but at least 
paragraph by paragraph. How might the audio drive the hilite feature in 
a text field (and vice versa)?  Can audio files somehow be tagged so as 
to trigger corresponding text events, call handlers that would import 
new text, scroll fields, etc.  Or would this have to occur in reverse.  
It would be nice if audio could have markers that would be linked to 
text lines and trigger handlers.  But that may be fanstasy.

Playback of multiple streams:  Can more than one audio event play back 
at once?  Music synched with voiceover located in different files?

Audio File Storage/retrieval/loading:
How would one anticipate and pre-load audio audio files so that there 
is seamless playback from file to file?  Where are the files kept, and 
how can they be queued so that the user hears no gaps or clicks, etc.?

Memory requirements:
How much memory needs to be allocated to achieve a seamless integration 
of on screen visuals and supplemental audio?  How would this happen?

These are just some ideas that pop up off the top of my head.  The m4b 
format seems like it might have great benefits if Rev knew how to read 
the files and somehow access the markers via script.

All this said, I am fully aware of  being 99% ignorant of any of this, 
and that's why I need help and education.

Thanks,
Mark


On Feb 26, 2005, at 7:16 PM, Dan Shafer wrote:

> Mark....
>
> As far as I know, nothing like this exists. Maybe this should be the 
> next chapter I release. I've been doing a bit with sound lately and 
> there are a couple of serious experts on this list. Maybe we can put 
> something together.
>
> Why don't you see how many specific questions you can frame and email 
> them to me off-list. That'll give me a place to start seeing if this 
> topic is ready for prime time in my training and experience yet.
>
> Dan
>
> On Feb 26, 2005, at 7:41 AM, Mark Swindell wrote:
>
>> Is there a tutorial anywhere that covers this topic in some depth?  
>> Is this subject covered in Software at the Speed of Thought?
>>
>> I need some serious education, as I'm trying to set up an ebook with 
>> extensive use of audio and need help in the areas of design and 
>> organization of files, file types and features (m4b, mp3, etc), and 
>> how to to most efficiently store them, access them, buffer them, call 
>> them, etc.
>>
>> Looking around the Rev documentation I find fragmented bits of 
>> information regarding audio integration, but nothing comprehensive.
>> Thanks
>> Mark