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Linux software for playing MP3s | ||
Tags: MP3-Player | Software | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| onebir Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7098 days ago 487 posts - 503 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin | Message 1 of 6 10 July 2011 at 8:04pm | IP Logged |
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I've been using mp3DirectCut for playing FSI mp3s on windows. The keyboard controls let you jump about like using a tape it displays a crude waveform, so you can guess where drills start without messing around. So it's exactly like a using tape - except better ;-)
I'm in the (prolonged, somewhat painful) process of switching over to Linux (Ubuntu). Unfortunately, although mp3DirectCut is supposed to work well under Wine, it seems to be quite unstable. Has anybody got a favorite MP3 player for Linux with these key features: - keyboard "fast forward" - waveform display with somewhat customisable zoom? [I've been experimenting a bit with Audacity. Unfortunately some of it's behaviour isn't ideal. Specifically, the playback position reverts to the beginning of a selection when you press stop. Ok, you can press "Pause" instead. But then you can't fast foward/backward. And if you want to change the selection point to the playback point, you need to use another key. Fortunately that works while paused, but it's much fiddlier than mp3DirectCut's three-keys-do-everything-onebir-wants-to-do simplicity, particular when my brain's struggling with a drill. Perhaps I'll get used to it...) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| zonius Triglot Newbie Israel Joined 4997 days ago 12 posts - 15 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, Modern Hebrew Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 2 of 6 11 July 2011 at 1:21am | IP Logged |
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You can try SMPlayer. (It's also a video player)
It has keyboard commands to jump forwards and backwards by 10sec, 1min, 10min It also has a feature that might interest a language student: it has keyboard commands to slow down (or speed up) the playback by 1%, 4% etc. As far as I know there's no waveform display, but with FSI it usually takes me only several keypresses to get to the drill. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jarm Newbie Australia Joined 4847 days ago 33 posts - 55 votes Speaks: English* | Message 3 of 6 11 July 2011 at 2:29pm | IP Logged |
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Have you checked in the preferences at all the shortcut keys? They can be remapped in audacity (and many other programs on linux). VLC has a pretty wide range of shortcuts, as well. The benefit of it, is that you can use the scrollwheel on the mouse to track back and forward. I'm still not 100% clear on what you want, though...
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| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5065 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 4 of 6 11 July 2011 at 3:12pm | IP Logged |
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I don't know that I'd be using audacity for playback.
Audacity is first and foremost an editor. The SMPlayer suggestion is a good one. There's also GMplayer that works nicely in Ubuntu and has all the usual keyboard shortcuts. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| onebir Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7098 days ago 487 posts - 503 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin | Message 5 of 6 12 July 2011 at 1:04pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the suggestions. It turns out that Audacity's extensively (but irritatingly) modifiable keymap allows a close-ish approximation. Specifically a key can be assigned to "play/stop + move cursor" and the keys for moving the cursor during playback and at other times can be set to be identical. (These are different by default - really don't know what they were thinking of.)
Risking repeating myself, the reason I like to see a waveform is a) for finding the start of drills etc, and b) for saving time/boredom during drills where the gaps are over-long. Try it - it does make a difference. (And the usefulness of this visual information is precisely the reason the audio editors provide it....) If it's stable on your OS, mp3DirectCut is ideal (it which works natively with mp3s and is lighter-weight and simpler for this application). But Audacity with some customisation seems to be ok too. (Not completely sure about stability yet.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| egill Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5631 days ago 418 posts - 791 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 6 of 6 13 July 2011 at 12:27am | IP Logged |
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If you're doing drills a lot, why not split them up into separate tracks? This is
trivial to do with audacity. Now you don't need to look at the waveform constantly, which means you can stick it in a portable mp3 player and go take a walk/ride the bus/go surfing while learning. I've split a lot of audio material (e.g. from old cassette tapes) into more logical units this way. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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