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From: Phil Shapiro <pshapiro@his.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-technology@literacy.nifl.gov>
Subject: [NIFL-TECHNOLOGY:2813] mp3 audio stories
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in case it might be of use to folks in the nifl-technology
community, this is an email i sent last week to the ctcnet email list
(http://www.ctcnet.org) about distributing fiction and nonfiction to
students in mp3 audio format.
- phil shapiro
arlington, virginia
hi everyone -
this afternoon i finished work on a small project to upload
mp3 audio versions of some fiction and nonfiction i wrote.
these can be downloaded from
http://storymakers.net/mp3stories.zip
these stories can be distributed on floppy disks to students
who receive donated computers. they can be loaded into portable
mp3 audio players (such as the apple ipod and the many portable
cd-based mp3 players). the stories can be distributed via cd-rom
and can be sent as file attachments to friends and family.
(individual stories can be sent as file attachments. the whole
archive, at 4.5 megs, is too big to send as a file attachment.)
it occurred to me that if each ctcnet affiliate produced an
original fiction or nonfiction reading passage each year, that
would add up to 1200 pieces of "community-created literature" per
year. that could end up being a valuable resource to everyone,
knitting together ctcnet as a literary community as well as a
technology access community.
here is what i learned in doing this project -
- spoken voice audio sounds very clear in mp3 format at 40kbps.
there is little reason to use a higher quality encoding
(compression), because the human ear can hardly tell the
difference and higher quality encoding creates larger file sizes
that are more difficult to distribute.
- the free itunes program that ships with new macs works well for
creating mp3 audio files. use the "preferences" (i.e. properties)
menu item to define the quality of your encoding. there are
similar programs for windows to create mp3 audio files.
- you can fit about 3 minutes in each megabyte of 40kbps mp3
audio. what this means is that you can fit about 1000 audio of
spoken word audio on a 20 gigabyte ipod. (give or take 100
hours.)
- longer stories or nonfiction reading passages are best broken
up into segments that fit on a floppy disk. if your center
receives a donation of big box of high density floppy disks, you
might ask some center volunteers to copy mp3 spoken audio files
onto the disks to hand out to students. if you're copying files
onto floppy disks make sure the virus protection software on your
computer is up to date. it's best to copy such files onto PC
formatted disks. any mac capable of playing mp3 audio files is
also capable of reading PC formatted disks.
- all power pc and pentium macs can play mp3 audio files. 64K
macs (and 486 computers) are not able to play mp3 files, to the
best of my knowledge. they don't have the computer processing
horsepower.
- it took me 30 minutes to upload this 4.5 meg file with a 56K
modem. so for each minute of mp3 spoken audio it takes about 2
minutes to upload it.
- if folks are interested, i can place these stories and reading
passages onto a cassette tape. i'd just ask for help copying
such cassette tapes to send out to ctcnet affiliates. that's not
a task i can take on entirely on my own.
- folks are welcome to use these audio files for any nonprofit
purpose they like.
- the text from these stories and reading passages can be found
at http://www.his.com/pshapiro/stories.menu.html
- it would be helpful if some other ctcnet folks would like to
co-host this file on their own server space. i get quite a bit of
web traffic on this web site and i need to be careful about not
exceeding the bandwidth i pay for. if you reupload this file to
your own server space, just send the web site address for the
file to the whole ctcnet list. connect@ctcnet.org
- i'd always love to hear from folks interested in doing writing
that can be of use to ctcnet affiliates, literacy organizations
and the like. it's time that folks of this ilk band together.
--
Phil Shapiro pshapiro@his.com
http://www.his.com/pshapiro/ (personal)
http://www.mp3.com/philshapiro/ (guitar fingerpicking)
http://storymakers.net (multimedia explorations)
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