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Extracting audio from software etc | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| onebir Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7169 days ago 487 posts - 503 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin | Message 1 of 9 02 October 2008 at 9:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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(Apologies if this is old hat for some forum members, but I just found out about this, and I'm quite excited)
Language software can (sometimes) contain good material, but has the disadvantage of tying you to your pc. But taking out the audio to use on the move can be a pain. The audio may be embedded in video, split across files for individual sentences scattered through a complex directory structure, or stored in an unusual format. Websites further tie you to a internet connection (& may make demands on the quality of connection). & even if you manage to download video files, you may not have a mobile player that can handle them. Audacity** offers a one-stop solution to these problems. You can use Audacity to record ANYTHING playing on your sound card, by selecting "Stereo mix" or similar, on the mixer toolbar*. With this selected, you can just push the buttons that make the software (or video) produce the language you want to hear. If you want phrases repeated several times, just push that button several times. If you want to break down sentences etc further than the software permits, you'll still have to do some editing. But this approach eliminates most of the technicalities (&/ grunt work, in the case of small scattered audio files) out of getting the audio content out of the software, website or video, into MP3s, & away from your PC. * Actually this may not be totally straightforward. My PC, a Dell, used an out-of-date audio driver. As a result Audacity only displayed "line in" and mic" in the mixer toolbar. I was able to solve this by updating the driver. But there's also a lower tech, very general solution: simply to connect the headphone & mic jacks with a cable. This also works pretty well, but you'd need a slightly more complex cable if you need to hear what was going on. ** If for some reason you don't want to use Audacity, a number of simple utilities that JUST record output from your soundcard exist. I've tried "MP3myMP3" & it does the job with a very simple interface. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 7152 days ago 1152 posts - 1818 votes Speaks: English*, German, French, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch Studies: Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Modern Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 2 of 9 02 October 2008 at 10:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have also done this with LPRecorder. It works well on my old computer but not on my new one. It does work for line in but not from my sound card.
On my old computer (Windows 98) I can record streaming audio and audio from my language CDRoms. I will have to try Audacity and also CDex. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6900 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 9 03 October 2008 at 3:22am | IP Logged | |||||
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Yes, Audacity has that function, but for some of us the result comes out with unacceptable quality. I suppose it depends on the characteristics of the sound card or something.
In my case, and this happens exactly the same on two different computers, one of them a laptop, the resulting recording made with Audacity ends up with a quite noticeable and disturbing echo effect which means it's basically useless as language learning material for me. I did try to google around to see if this was a frequent problem, perhaps with a well-known fix, but only a very few hits came up with this type of complaints and no solutions. BTW, I suppose this thread really belongs in the "Links and Internet Resources" forum. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6017 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 4 of 9 05 October 2008 at 6:46am | IP Logged | |||||
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With most modern computer programs, the sounds are in standard files like WAV or MP3 and can be copied straight out. Sometimes they are bundled together in cabinet (.CAB) files, but programs such as WinRAR can unpack these. Rerecording and re-encoding just muddy up the signal.
Hencke, if there's an echo in your recording, it probably means that Audacity is outputting the signal as it's recording it. In doing so, it goes back through the signal path and back into the "What U Hear" recording channel. Try muting the sound output in Audacity. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Rollo the Cat Groupie United States Joined 6040 days ago 77 posts - 90 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Russian, Ancient Greek | Message 5 of 9 05 October 2008 at 7:19am | IP Logged | |||||
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I use Wire Tap Pro. It is free for the basic version.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6900 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 9 11 October 2008 at 8:51am | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks, I'll try this and let you know. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| onebir Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7169 days ago 487 posts - 503 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin | Message 7 of 9 12 October 2008 at 10:40am | IP Logged | |||||
This can be true. But - the files aren't always mp3s. They're AIFs in the software I'm using. RM files on some websites I've seen. So reencoding can be mandatory. - WAVs will probably need reencoding into MP3s to save space - the files can be buried in a complex directory structure, with odd names, making finding the ones you want tricky - a single dialog may be broken into many files, making reassembly tricky Recording via the sound card eliminates all these problems (if you can get it to work). If you want to hear a sentence twice on your mp3, & the program lets you click to play a sentence, just click twice. If you want a gap of a few seconds, just wait a few seconds before you click the next time. What could be simpler.
In my (admittedly limited) experience doing this with AIFs & recording to low-bitrate MP3s it makes no noticeable difference... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6900 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 9 18 October 2008 at 11:22am | IP Logged | |||||
OK, I have played around with this a little now and am reporting back. This is not an ideal forum for technical help of course but since this came up, why not try it here too just in case. Audacity, great piece of software that it is, does have its own little quirks, especially with some of the options and settings being hidden in really unexpected places. Who knows, someone might know something that helps here (?) OK, so here's what I have tried so far: 1. Going to the preferences tab: Edit/Preferences/Audio-I/O and making sure the setting "Play other tracks while recording new ones" is disabled 2. Making sure "Software playthrough" is disabled, in the same preferences tab 3. Pressing "Mute" on the Audio track window while recording. 4. Trying different combinations of Playback and Recording devices (in same tab as above) None of these things make any difference at all. I am still getting an annoying echo effect on the recording which jumbles up the sound and makes this useless to me as a solution. I can't find any other settings that would apply to this. Any ideas ? EDIT: I just posted this same question on the Audacity support forum. I'll report here if I get a solution. Edited by Hencke on 18 October 2008 at 12:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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