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Digitizing FSI | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| pearl0 Newbie United States Joined 6913 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 217 of 237 21 December 2005 at 1:36am | IP Logged | ||
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Is this thread dead? I hope not. Any updates from anyone?
Paul, Interested in German, French, Spanish, and Arabic for now 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 7104 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes  2 sounds | Message 218 of 237 12 January 2006 at 4:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have purchased the FSI German course (2 level original from NTIS) and plan on posting it soon. Anyone who has some suggestions on formatting is welcome to add comments.
I plan on encoding the files to variable bitrate mp3 files at about 80kbps mono (e.g. 80k + as the high when there's speaking and much lower, about 24k, when there are silent parts). Anything less than this seems to be too low for quality purposes. The files would also be split separately for each exercise and would be named accordingly. I would also clean up the audio from the tapes so that the noise is at least lower then -60db. I don't plan on removing 100% of the noise as that seems to take out some of the upper end of the speech with it. I just want to remove enough to make the noise almost inaudible at normal listening levels, whilst still preserving the original audio. For the booklets, I plan on posting PDFs that are an exact photocopy of the booklet. There will also be a backing OCR of the text so that one can search the file for certain words. This way the booklet is an accurate representation of its original form and if the OCR program recognises something wrong, you just might not be able to search for that word. Some have posted concerns about people later taking these files and selling them. Personally, if they plan on doing something like printing books or distribution on CD, due the cost associated with that already, I don't care if they want to make money off my work. After all, these courses are in the public domain. I do plan on putting a small disclaimer into the file archive or the PDF stating that first, this course is a digitised version of the original FSI course etc., second you may distribute this course and that if anyone has had to pay a company for this digital version that they should ask for a refund from that company as the files are intended to be free and available to anyone on the Internet. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7015 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 219 of 237 12 January 2006 at 4:33pm | IP Logged | ||
Thanks Nigel.
Where? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 7104 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes 2 sounds | Message 220 of 237 12 January 2006 at 4:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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Here. I know of some free file upload sites and François will likely host the files also.
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| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7205 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 221 of 237 12 January 2006 at 6:23pm | IP Logged | ||
There is a free program called CleanSpeech that's designed for batch cleanup of voice recordings. It has some options like eliminating pauses that you probably don't want, but you can delete from the batch command. CleanSpeech is a take off of Audacity. I've found the secret with noise reduction is to "remove less" noise. Basically, you select a few seconds that are supposed to be silent, but actually have hiss. Then the program tries to remove that sound signature. Tell it not to try very hard. I.E. It has about 30 levels of effort for noise removal. The default is about 15. CleanSpeech appears to use level 3 by default, which removes most of the hiss and none of the fidelity. Please let us know how the NTIS tapes sound before doctoring. Do they need EQ, etc to sound good? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 7104 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes 2 sounds | Message 222 of 237 12 January 2006 at 6:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sure, I understand about being picky about the audio as I am too. :) I'll just save the tapes to unmodified .wav files and burn those to a DVD so I'll have a backup of the original audio.
For restoration, I have the Sony Noise Reduction plug-in that works really well at significantly reducing the hiss yet preserving the original fidelity. Edited by Sir Nigel on 12 January 2006 at 6:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dmg Diglot Senior Member Canada dgryski.blogspot.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7011 days ago 555 posts - 605 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Dutch, Esperanto | Message 223 of 237 12 January 2006 at 7:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you want lossless audio, your best bet is to use FLAC (http://flac.sf.net). Burning the unmodified .wavs is a waste of space.
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| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7103 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 224 of 237 13 January 2006 at 3:07am | IP Logged | ||
Interesting program Luke. Might I suggest a repost in the Internet Links section - assuming François doesn't object to the duplication :¬). Andy. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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