Re: Recording Sound File

'fraid I'm impelled to offer some un-perl-ish solutions, after viewing your issues with most of the replies below

I'm infering/guessing that you want to have the system more or less resemble the operations of old-tyme cassete dictation (eg, to replace something: Stop (NOT pause), rewind, find start of erroneous section, cue to just before, re-start recording....). Might you consider writing a perl wrapper for controls around two different audio packages (one for *n*x, including tiger10) and one for 'doze?

Con: two audio packages (both, however, mp3 or similar and selection transparent to user); cost if you use OSS proprietary for the audio
Pro: Coding minimized (though some would consider that a con).

Aare you doing this mostly for the challenge/bragging rights? (I'm not implying 'fault' if so; but ignore the rest of this.)
Why not go with direct speech to text? Someone -- usually clerical -- is going to have to proofread/re-listen to the saved audio to get it anywhere near the dictator's intent.

Or, let the dictator resume/continue use of dictaphone, cassette, or electro-mechanical device (if s/he can't cope with complexities of "re-winding" digital audio or a text file) and feed output to a speech-to-text package required ONLY on a single OS, shared by clerical folks.

Sometimes, it's a good idea to just find a way to make something work, when the help offered doesn't fit.

Comment on Re: Recording Sound File

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Re^2: Recording Sound File by the_0ne (Pilgrim) on May 18, 2005 at 17:30 UTC
'fraid I'm impelled to offer some un-perl-ish solutions, after viewing your issues with most of the replies below No problem, any help is appreciated. I was just hoping to stay away from Java, knowing very little about it in the first place. Might you consider writing a perl wrapper for controls around two different audio packages (one for nx, including tiger10) and one for 'doze? Just might have to do that. Mostly why I posted here was to see if anybody had done what I'm am trying to accomplish, to save me the time of having to write 2 different scripts/programs. But, as I am finding so far, it looks like this might be the way to go. The 2 python packages I posted above, one is very old, not much activity. The other I posted a question to their list yesterday and still haven't gotten a response. If I would have problems with the package, not sure I'd receive any kind of help in a timely fashion. I must admit also, I have a bias for Perl, not too fond of Python, but have used it before. :( Why not go with direct speech to text? Someone -- usually clerical -- is going to have to proofread/re-listen to the saved audio to get it anywhere near the dictator's intent. You are exactly write. I wrote the system using VB consisting of 3 parts. A recorder, which works through activex controls. A daemon that processes the recording once the actual recording is converted to an asf and transferred to a network drive. And then the transcriptionist, which streams the processed asf file to the transcriber, which is the person that would be doing the proofreading/listening. We have talked over the speech-to-text pathway before, however, this would still require my pre-requisites of the original recording functionality. Thanks for your post.	[reply]
Re^3: Recording Sound File by ww (Archbishop) on May 18, 2005 at 17:43 UTC
Not sure I agree that "the speech-to-text pathway ... would still require my pre-requisites of the original recording functionality." If the individual doing the dictation is sufficiently tech savvy to use an ability (as part of the proposed wrapper) to read the TEXT of what's been dictated to any given (stopping) point, that individual can then ANNOTATE the beginning of the substituted section with a "start skip here" marker (the selection of which is left as an exercise for the OP). Or, see also what I hoped was a clear example of the elements of using "old-tyme" procedure. Is there some reason you cannot , in effect, "rewind" the audio, and start overwriting? Use the wrapper to truncate a copy of the audio file at some user-selected point, and send the orig to /dev/nul only when the user starts again from that point, at which time, you can mv the copy to the original filename.	[reply]
Re^4: Recording Sound File by the_0ne (Pilgrim) on May 18, 2005 at 18:30 UTC
Is there some reason you cannot , in effect, "rewind" the audio, and start overwriting? Use the wrapper to truncate a copy of the audio file at some user-selected point, and send the orig to /dev/nul only when the user starts again from that point, at which time, you can mv the copy to the original filename. It's not so much as I cannot, the problem is I would have no idea where to even start to go about manipulating an ongoing recording. Like I asked below, I'm not even sure how to use Audio::Wav::Write to pull in information from the microphone. That module looked fine to me before I even posted to PM, however, I am at a standstill as to how to pull in the information from the microphone (sound device) to even write the file using Audio::Wav::Write.	[reply]