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Digitizing FSI | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 7144 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes  Studies: Uzbek | Message 97 of 237 05 May 2005 at 3:00pm | IP Logged |
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I have the Audio-Forum version of the FSI Basic French course (volume one), bought several years ago, and the cassette tapes are indeed modified; there are a number of "cultural capsules" on the tapes, done I presume by a university professor or someone specifically for Audio-Forum, on such issues as the way French people greet each other, shaking hands, etc. (Some might find them a bit gimmicky, but I think that they're in fact useful for someone who doesn't have much familiarity with France or the French.)
I'm fairly confident that this information was NOT on the original FSI tapes, and that Audio-Forum has added them, presumably in an effort both to make the course more attractive and also to prevent unauthorized copying. I can't speak in terms of the other FSI courses. (I have the German course and don't recall such additions, but it's been years since I listened to the tapes and so can't be too confident in my memory on this score.) I would note as well that there are a number of other language courses produced with US Government funds on which the copyright runs out in a short time, such as ten years after publication, thus presumably putting these materials into the public domain as well. The "Textbook of Modern Western Armenian", by Bardakjian and Thompson, for instance, was issued in 1977 and copyrighted only until 1987. The book had been produced at Harvard on a contract with the US Office of Education, Department of Health, Education and Welfare. I think I've seen similar notes on other language books, so it's not only the FSI materials that are now in the public domain. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mtwalker Newbie United States imageray.net Joined 7184 days ago 26 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 98 of 237 06 May 2005 at 2:36am | IP Logged |
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I just finished digitizing FSI Italian. It took me 2 days. I have a tape deck
in my office that I plugged into my laptop. I kept feeding it tapes while I did other work on my desktop computer. Once the intial digitizing was complete I transferred the files to my more powerful desktop computer to remove tape hiss, normalize the audio, and exported to mp3 (96kbps, stereo). The total file size for all 24 units was about 380mb. For the manual, I took it to a printer that I do a alot of work with. He cut off the spine, only a few millimeters, so I would have loose pages (I'll have it spiral bound at Kinkos tomorrow) . My wife's office has a cool copy machine that can also scan to pdf. It scanned the whole 269 pages in less than 10 minutes (including one paper jam) and made a pdf that was about 9mb. While I was cleaning up the Italian files, I started on FSI German 1. The last tape is recording now. I think I have the system down where I can easily do about 10-12 tapes a day. Since I have 2 computers and most of the time is spent babysitting the tape deck, I still have time to get my work done. So, Francois, when you decide how you want to distribute this stuff, Italian is done and German 1 should be done by tomorrow evening. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7376 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 99 of 237 06 May 2005 at 3:01am | IP Logged |
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Mtwalker, this is great stuff. Now what releases of FSI did you use to digitize?
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| mtwalker Newbie United States imageray.net Joined 7184 days ago 26 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 100 of 237 06 May 2005 at 3:18am | IP Logged |
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I'm not sure how to determine the editions. The tapes in both have the FSI
logo on them. The Italian book is dated 1976. The German book says "US Printing Office, 1976" 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7376 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 101 of 237 06 May 2005 at 4:39am | IP Logged |
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Mtwalker, did you get them from a library? Is there any stamp such as 'Barrons' or 'Audioforum' on them?
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| Nick Newbie United States Joined 7147 days ago 23 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 102 of 237 06 May 2005 at 5:29am | IP Logged |
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Awesome, mtwalker. I'm moving in a couple of weeks, so hopefully my (new) local library will have some FSI courses that I can rip. The one I live by right now doesn't.
Also, I will be willing to help with distribution if necessary. I don't have a lot of upstream bandwidth, but every little bit helps. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| pentatonic Senior Member United States Joined 7247 days ago 221 posts - 245 votes | Message 103 of 237 06 May 2005 at 8:46am | IP Logged |
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Wow, sounds like you've got a good system set up there. A couple of questions: where did you get these courses? Hopefully you didn't cut the spline off a library book. Also, have you listened to any of your mp3s all the way through? Recording on a busy computer often leads to gaps in the recordings when the computer is too busy to handle the input. It'd be a shame for you to go to all that work and discover that later.
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| morprussell Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7163 days ago 272 posts - 285 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 104 of 237 06 May 2005 at 10:36am | IP Logged |
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I checked my local library. Sadly they only have Barrons FSI courses. I'm happy to hear that others were able to find the originals.
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