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Digitizing FSI | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| ducr Newbie Canada Joined 7094 days ago 16 posts - 16 votes Speaks: French | Message 145 of 237 29 June 2005 at 10:17am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks Nigel. I appreciate the suggestion, but I'm not very fond of OCR technology. It makes too many mistakes and I'm not wanting to sift through a 400 page text in French looking for what went wrong. I found an application called ScanOut that seems to be working. I'm practicing with a book from the library and getting okay results. This app creates pdf files or tiff files. I tried maiking a pdf file and it seems too slow to load, even with only 20 pages. I would image that a 400 page text would be painfully slow to navigate. I'm thinking about creating a tiff for each page and converting them to jpgs. I'll need to find a batch converter for doing this, so if anyone here has a suggestion, let me know.
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| delectric Diglot Senior Member China Joined 7181 days ago 608 posts - 733 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: German | Message 146 of 237 29 July 2005 at 8:58am | IP Logged | ||
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What is happening with this digitizing process? All this talk and nothing is happening. We keep talking about if this software is in the public domain or not. Clearly it is otherwise there wouldn't be several outlets selling their own versions of FSI material.
If we all want a copy of this FSI Chinese then something needs to be done. Here's my proposal. I will buy the entire FSI modular Chinese (including the extra modules). I will digitize the entire course within 3 - 4 months (or less). I will process the audio and convert it into MP3 format (i will also master it if neccessary). The books will be taken apart and converted into PDF's. Once it is done I will copy it onto DVD/CD-ROM and send it out to the people that also want a copy. However, the entire course will cost over or about £1000. This is no problem, I will fork out the cost upfront but in order to do this I need some pledges of around £100. Providing I get around 10 such pledges of money I'll go ahead and order it. So we'd all be sharing the cost of the product but the work would be centralised in my hands. Payments would be made via paypal. I think the people on this site are quite honest and as long as I get the pledges I will assume they will be honoured come the time I finish the digitizing process. Let me know what you all think? Send me a PM. Edited by delectric on 29 July 2005 at 9:03am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 7104 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes 2 sounds | Message 147 of 237 29 July 2005 at 10:24am | IP Logged | ||
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How long does it take and what tools are you using to convert these courses? I just recently converted a Russian course to mp3CD in about 6-8 hours (it was about 6 hours of casettes). Most of the time I just hit record in Sound Forge and walked away. Later I just converted them to mp3 and burned them.
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| delectric Diglot Senior Member China Joined 7181 days ago 608 posts - 733 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: German | Message 148 of 237 29 July 2005 at 12:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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I will record the tapes directly into Cubase SX to chop them up.
If FSI do CD's I will rip the audio directly of a CD into Cubase SX and then edit it. As for the PDF. I plan to use veryPDF software to edit and make these PDF's. I've been converting some of my language books into PDF at quite a quick rate. I've recently seen some of the digitised FSI German course and I realise that I can do just as good a job with the Chinese a modular aproach. If the course now comes in CD format I think I can convert the entire course in about 2 weeks to a month (though I think 2 weeks is more accurate). The books will certainly take no more than two or three weeks to convert and if I was working on it full time I'm sure I could convert the books within 3 or 4 days. I have the money to buy, now all I need are some people who will help with the cost of the course, once it's digitised. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| maxb Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 7183 days ago 536 posts - 589 votes 7 sounds Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 149 of 237 29 July 2005 at 5:15pm | IP Logged | ||
I think I could help out. I've ordered modules 5,6,7 from NTIS and I expect to get them soon. I could digitize the audio from those. I also have modules 1,2 and 8, and 3,4 are on the way too. However 1,2,3,4 and 8 are from Multilingualbooks and thus copyrighted. I don't have equipment for converting books into PDF so I can only contribute with the audio. Of course the multilingualbooks.com audio is from NTIS expect for a short announcement at the beginning of each lesson. However each CD bears a copyright label from "Lucus Language". So I guess I can't digitize those and make them publically available without breaking some laws :-(. But I could easily digitize 5,6,7 which means that you would only have to buy the books for those. Module 9 has already been digitized by Malcolm so you don't have to buy that either. BTW, You may have to wait a long time to get all the modules delivered to China. Expect 3-4 weeks at least. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| delectric Diglot Senior Member China Joined 7181 days ago 608 posts - 733 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: German | Message 150 of 237 29 July 2005 at 5:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for your offer Maxb. What do you think of the FSI course so far? Could you give a full review of it.
I'm in England at the momment, so it won't take to long to post things to me. 1st Of course I could convert all your books to PDF! The best quality PDF would be taking them to bits. Though it would still work just scanning them without breaking them, though you would see the fold in the pages. Do you know how to rip CD's? This can be done very fast? If the whole course was on CD it could be digitized in a day. 2nd - on the other hand: The problem with everyone chipping in bits of work here and there is 'will it ever get done?' and also will the standard all be the same (maybe the standard isn't so important after all we don't want to get too anal). I know the time frame I can do the work in and get everything done, which is pretty fast. If the effort is disjointed then who knows perhaps nothng will get done. Because, perhaps, like before, we'll just talk and nothing will really get done. At the end of the day you have nearly all the modules except for the extra ones, so do you have the motivation to digitise things fast? I've been following this thread for ages now and in this time I've put off buying the course simply because I've been waiting for it to be digitized. But it seems everything is just talk. Now i'm offering to do all the work and buy all the modules and then send the final copy to people. My motivation to do this is only to learn Chinese and wanting to learn a language can really drive things fast. I have the technology, the know how and the experience all I need is others on this forum to say they will help me out with the costs when i've finished. If there's a problem with audioforum CD's no problem I can order the tapes all from NTIS. Who knows perhaps I could do a better job. It seems far better to have one determined person do all the work/organise all the work, and have everyone chip in. Though if you have other ideas on the subject PM me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| maxb Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 7183 days ago 536 posts - 589 votes 7 sounds Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 151 of 237 30 July 2005 at 4:42am | IP Logged | ||
I'm only on unit 4 of module 2 (repition of stuff I already know :-), so it is difficult to give a full review of it. One point I have noticed is that it actually isn't very vocabulary intensive. A rough estimate is probably 2000 words. So you may not be completely fluent having finished it. Of course the resource modules most likely introduce additional vocabulary, so the total count may be higher. But as I have said before it is very good for developing listening comprehension and speaking. So you should definetely be functional in most situations in China after having done this course. But I don't think you will be on the level of a native speaker, even an uneducated one. Having done module 2 it seems I will have to go directly on to 5 and 6 since Multilingualbooks seem to have forgotten about my order for modules 3 and 4 :-(. I'll post a review later on when I have gotten further into module 5. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| czech Senior Member United States Joined 7194 days ago 395 posts - 378 votes Studies: English* | Message 152 of 237 30 July 2005 at 9:59am | IP Logged | ||
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How many lessons are included in each module, Maxb?
Well, to me this is the best way to learn Mandarin. The combination of it being one of the hardest languages and having virtually no comprehensive material, just some courses that end quick and don't take you anywhere far, make this the way to go. I'll probably pay the money as it is very cheap. Make sure that you don't order double copies of the books, Delectric, unless you want to keep an extra hard copy for yourslef. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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