Suggestions for the Audio Review
andrew_c
July 19, 2008, 03:43 PM posted in General DiscussionI would like to suggest what would be, in my opinion, improvements to the already awesome Audio Review.
Suggestion 1: Add every single expansion sentences to the Audio Review.
Suggestion 2: Add all of the expansion sentences into the PDF file (presumably, for Premium users only).
My reasoning behind these suggestions, in short, that you guys are already making available and putting a lot of effort into these expansion sentences as part of the Premium subscription. Unfortunately for those of us who practice Chinese "on our terms" away from the computer, any sentences not already included in the Fix are very inaccessible via your website.
What do you guys think?
andrew_c
June 27, 2008, 02:19 AMHi Bubobubo,
It is very likely that they changed the website such that the program no longer works. However, I just tested the program and it appears to be working mostly fine, aside from mp3wrap making weird mp3 files, and one issue with lessons such as death-by-ninja. Most lessons however work as well as they did previously. I updated the program to be able to download the death-by-ninja lesson correctly. There's a small chance that this is the problem you were having. Can you please redownload the program and try again and let me know if the problem persists?
Chances are there's something else that's wrong, and therefore I am working on adding error logging to the code that will help me debug it. I should have a new version this weekend. Hopefully we will be able to debug the program then.
As per your request, I updated the program to handle the other languages. However, this is untested since I don't currently have access to the Premium content of SpanishPod, FrenchPod, or ItalianPod, so I have no idea if it actually works. If you have any luck with it, or any problems please let me know (in addition to your already reported problems). The way it works is as follows, there is a text file called language.txt. Currently it says chinese at the top. To download lessons from the other websites, you need to change this to say either spanish, italian, or french.
On an unrelated note, the updated version of the program also fixes a problem with the expansion sentences HTML document.
To anyone else using the program, please feel to report bugs or request features as Bubobubo and Michele have. I want to make this program as useful as possible!
michele
June 21, 2008, 12:38 PMI'm not sure that including all the expansion section it would be a real improvement.
In the abstract it could, but I'm afraid that, if you want to include a first reading, and then at least two or three random repetition (which is the main strenght of the Audio Review) for each sentence you'ld get a pretty long time to do so. Consider that the total timing for the whole expantion it ranges from a couple of minutes to nearly three minutes. If you multiply this for 3 or 4 times, and you add the time needed for the initial vocab section, well... you'll get something in the order of 15 minutes! it seems a little bit too much long for a review, somewhat discouraging, isn't it?
As regarding the Pdf, yes it would be fine, but I'd say, only more convenient, not strictly speaking, indispensable, given that is quite simple (I need one minute or so to do this) to copy and paste the text of the whole section and to put into a word doc or what else you prefer.
But I do have an idea to propose for a real improvement ,that is, to make available, plus the actual on line flash based version, not in substitution, a downloadable version of all the sequence of the sentences in a single Mp3 file.
I'm proposing this, basing on my experience. I'm used to record each sentence with an audio editor, to save it as an Mp3 file, and then I can listen to each sentence in a loop, on the computer as long as I want, or need, while trying to recognize its meaning, and, or, while trying to write it, both with IME, both handwriting with a pentablet, running a character recognition based input system, like the one you can get even in the demo of Wenlin. In my experience, and in my personal opinion, this is extremely useful, and pleasant too.
Sometimes I transfer the file on a simple old mp3 player (not on Ipod, because it, incredibly, does not have this feature) and, while listening in loop each sentence with the A-B feature, I like to write with a brush (and water) on the floor of my terrace, and believe me, it's an ecstatic experience to do this in the silence and the sun of the morning....
And when I have enough time to do that, I also can record my Italian translation of the sentences, and then substitute the English part. But, to say the truth, this takes me pretty a lot of time, and I've done only a couple of times, but the result is very good. In fact, as I always supsected, the bigger benefit can be reached, if no one drop of energy is wasted for recognizing the English meaning, and the whole attention can be used for the Chinese. Have a try by yourselves, if you're not a native English speaker, I'm sure you'll notice huge advantage from this.
That's my official request for a downloadable Audio Review!!
ciao a tutti, Michele,
lilywhytelegs
June 21, 2008, 04:18 PMI agree, it would be helpful to have the expansion material in the audio review.
andrew_c
June 21, 2008, 07:46 PMMichele's description of recording all of the expansion sentences and manually creating an mp3 file inspired me. I wrote a program this morning that does this automatically. In particular for a given lesson it creates an mp3 file of all of the expansion sentences, each said twice, with a 5 second delay in between. I am sharing it here, in case any of you guys would find it useful. I want to emphasize that this is *NOT* giving anyone access to premium content that they don't already have access to, it just makes it the premium content more accessible to us premium subscribers. Before proceeding, please note the following:
Disclaimer
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Instructions:
1. Install Python
2. Download the program and unzip it.
3. Double-click on cpod_expansion.py and follow the instructions in the black box that pops up. It will ask for: your email address, password, and the name of the lesson that you want to download the expansion sentences for. This information is only sent to the Praxis log-in site.
Alternatively, you can create a file called settings.txt in the same folder as cpod_expansion.py, which contains your email address in the first line, and your password in the second line. Then if you run the program, you only have to enter the name of the lesson, and not your login information.
4. A file named after the requested lesson should then appear in the same directory.
Issues / Drawbacks:
1. No English... For this reason, I'm still hoping that CPod will consider incorporating all of the Expansion sentences into the audio review file.
2. The mp3 files created are weird and don't always work. It plays sometimes for me in VLC, never in WMP, in QuickTime without any delay between sentences. It does play perfectly on my Nokia cell phone, which is all that matters to me.
3. It gives the file the name "Use Mp3Splt to obtain original tracks". You'll have to edit this yourself if you don't like it (right click on the file in Windows, and look at the Summary tab).
How it works:
After asking you for your email address, password, and the name of the lesson. It logs into ChinesePod. Once logged in, it then opens the expansion page of the lesson you requested, obtains a list of the expansion sentence mp3 files, and then downloads them. It then uses the program mp3wrap to combine these into one file such that each sentence is said twice with a 5 second delay in between.
bubobubo
June 21, 2008, 09:25 PMYou just wrote a program...what the...? Absolute genius!
(That actually reminds of an experience I had in Cambodia. I complained about not having AC at home during class. The next day, one of my students presented me with a weird-looking machine compiled from rubbish. It actually worked. Somehow.)
andrew_c
June 22, 2008, 04:23 AMI made a few small changes to the code, most notably that it only has a delay of 3.5 seconds before repeating each sentence.
michele
June 22, 2008, 06:05 AMHi acorrigan@,
have you ever heard about the story of the single beat of wings of a butterfly in Amazon, and the hurricane, or the terrible snow storm, somwhere in the opposite side of the earth? Well I reckon that you can never foresee what a post can induce in an other ,brilliant indeed, CP user!!
I'd like to try your program; usually I'm quite reluctant to install new (and in this case it is really new) software, but in this case... it seems you know pretty well what are you doing!
谢谢你, Michele.
michele
June 22, 2008, 07:19 AMWell, I've just tried... it works, but there's something wrong, that perhaps could be fixed. The file I get can be opened only on RealPlayer (nor iTune, neither my audio editor); and there's another problem, each sentence is quickly reduplicated with no silence in between, afterwards there's a long, long time of silence, approximately reduplicating (two times totally i.e. X4 !!) the overall timing.
It seems to me that the problem arise while joining all the single downloaded file into a single one. If is it difficult to fix this bug, maybe it should be better to stop the routine when all the clips are downloaded, and keep them all splitted. What do you think about it? Thanks in advance.
bubobubo
June 22, 2008, 07:42 AMI downloaded V1, and it works perfectly in VLC and RealPlayer(2 sec pause). The pause in Windows Media Player is really long (4 seconds), on the other hand, the pause is really short (0.5 sec) when the file is played using Quicktime. Doesn't work properly with IrfanView because sometimes the file won't open at all and the duration time is all messed up. I'm going to test the files on my MP3 and mobile phone.
Thumbs up anyway.
(Better than my feeble experimental programmes at school that were so horrible they even messed up the whole network.)
Would it be possible the enable the simultaneous creation of several lesson specific files?
RJ
June 21, 2008, 11:45 AMI agree. Expansion section is so important. This would be great. You have my vote.
bubobubo
June 22, 2008, 11:35 AMproblem report: Program works fine for 82 of the intermediate lessons. The others simply won't be compiled. (e.g Chinese Wedding Customs )
andrew_c
June 22, 2008, 01:20 PMHi Bubobubo,
Wow, 82 intermediate lessons! Chinese Wedding Customs isn't working in general due the the "No Data" bug they're still working on since they upgraded the web site, which you can see if you try playing the expansion sentences on the Chinese Wedding Customs web site. There's nothing this program can do to avoid that bug.
Regarding enabling the creation of multiple files simultaneously, there's already built-in support for this ;-) To do this, create a file called lessons.txt and on each line put the name of the lesson that you want to create (one per line, exactly as it appears in the URL of the lesson). When you run the program, it won't ask you for the name of a lesson and will process all of the lessons you have listed.
andrew_c
June 22, 2008, 01:21 PMHi Michele,
Regarding V1 vs. V2. The only changes made between the two were that, I made the silence shorter and added more comments and messages to the code. It's still producing mp3 files exactly the same way, so downgrading to the first version won't help. I no longer have it anyway. The problem lies with the fact that mp3wrap, which is the program my program calls to put all of the individual clips together, produces mp3 files which don't appear to be well-supported by various media players. In the long-term, I'm going to look for another program to, hopefully losslessly, combine all of the clips together.
As per your request, I have modified the code so that it leaves behind all of the individual expansion sentence mp3 files. I posted a new version. I hope that this is more helpful to you.
michele
June 22, 2008, 01:52 PMHi acorrigan@,
thanks a lot for your work!
Just a more question: is it the last version posted at the same old link? I'm saying so 'cause I've just downloaded it and tried: it works exactly the same way I described in my previuos post. It's quite strange...
At any rate I don't mean pushing you to spend (or waste?) all of your first Sunday of Summer, trying to fix a presumed bug...
I've just realized the new version creates also a folder, having the same name of the lesson, with all the single Mp3 files within... For me this is already very good and time saving!! Believe me, you're a genius!!
bubobubo
June 22, 2008, 03:36 PM" you're a genius!!"
I second that.
But there's a staggering number of lessons that don't have proper audio. aiyo...
andrew_c
June 22, 2008, 11:20 PMI implemented a new feature and posted it in the same place linked above. The program now automatically generate an HTML file, that's just like the PDF distributed by ChinesePod for each lesson, except that it contains the expansion sentences. This basically takes care of Suggestion 2 in my original post.
The zip file contains a new file called generate_document.py, but you don't need to run that program, you still just run cpod_expansion.py.
It doesn't generate a PDF, since I couldn't find something free that handles the Chinese characters well. I hope that an HTML document is sufficient.
To avoid any misunderstanding, I want to again emphasize that this is not making any premium content available to those who don't already have access to it. It just makes it more accessible to those of us who already have a premium subscription.
andrew_c
June 24, 2008, 01:33 AMThanks to Michele for the idea, it now automatically downloads the sentences from the dialogue tab and makes an mp3 out of those as well.
My next priority is to get rid of the messed up Author/Title tags automatically.
bubobubo
June 26, 2008, 03:07 PMDear acorrigan,
would it be possible to provide the same kind of program for the other language pods? I am sure the users over there would really appreciate this great tool.
I have run into a problem, ever since the announcement of the "no audio"-bug having been fixed. Even lesson expansions that I was able to download before won't work now. Is it possible that the format (or whatever was changed) is incompatible?
michele
June 22, 2008, 07:48 AMHi bubobubo@, OK Thumbs up anyway, but do you have an idea how can I get the V1, now the link brings to the V2... I guess should uninstall mine actuall version and the install the old one... hmm.. perhaps it's better wait for acorrigan@ wake up... I'm sure he's able to fix the bug!
bubobubo
June 21, 2008, 11:05 AMThat's exactly what I have always missed. When I signed up a year ago, CP was already really good, but I didn't have the time to study Chinese back then. Now, CP is even better, more personal and more educational, offering so many resources.
But we all should always strive for improvement, especially when it's so easy to achieve this. How about yet another audio file comprising the expansion sentences? Changing the format of the fix strikes me as a little impractical.
It would be just brilliant to be able to study the expansion sentences on the go, for premium subscribers, of course. (In fact, not everyone has an internet flatrate.)
That would really be learning on our terms!