[NIFL-TECHNOLOGY:2432] Re: Recording help

From: Cindi Riley (lvl@hargray.com)
Date: Thu Apr 18 2002 - 10:23:59 EDT


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From: Cindi Riley <lvl@hargray.com>
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Subject: [NIFL-TECHNOLOGY:2432] Re: Recording help
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My husband is doing a lot of this with his new computer, which runs
WindowsXP. He has a Dell Jukebox (I think that's the name of it) program
that came with the computer that will record the tapes into MP3 files. Then
the burner software will record the MP3s onto a CD in the proper audio
format. The hardware setup is similar to what is described below.

********************
Cindi Riley
Assistant Director
Literacy Volunteers of the Lowcountry
1403 Prince St.
Beaufort, SC 29902
phone 843-525-6658
fax 843-521-1945
lvl@hargray.com

-----Original Message-----
From: nifl-technology@nifl.gov [mailto:nifl-technology@nifl.gov]On Behalf Of
Steve Linberg
Sent: Wednesday, April 17, 2002 11:55 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [NIFL-TECHNOLOGY:2407] Re: Recording help

On Wed, 17 Apr 2002, Carol Morris wrote:

> I have a group of adult learners for whom I've made a couple of cassette
> tapes. Three of them asked  me to make the cassette tapes available on
> CD's as they have portable CD players. I have a CD burner, but am unsure
> how to complete the process. Do I need special software or expensive
> equipment to make it happen? I tried an Internet search and found mostly
> businesses that would do the copying for me. Any ideas or directions
> would be appreciated.

Hi Carol.

You'll need a couple of things:

1. Some way to pull the audio into your computer from your casettes
2. A method for converting the resulting sound files into AIFF files (for
standard audio CDs, which is what you'll need if you want to be able to
play the CDs on standard/portable CD players)
3. Software for burning the CDs, which you probably got with your CD
burner

If you gave a cassette player with RCA "line-out" capability (most
stero-component players have this), you can get a converter that takes RCA
plugs in and gives a microphone jack out for a few bucks at Radio Shack.
Be sure to tell them you need the converter for a computer microphone
input, not a stereo microphone.

You can also get a digital-to-analog converter box if you want to do video
as well; I recently picked up a Canopus ADVC-100 that has digital and
analog input and output for audio and video.  A little pricey at $300, but
it's an amazingly useful device.  I have racks of old videotapes I'm
digitizing to CD/DVD, and this box is insanely useful for that
purpose.  It's overkill if you just want audio, though.

You'll then need software to record the audio; basically, you hook up your
player, connect its output to your microphone input, use your software's
"record" function and press "play" on your tape player.  You will probably
want to experiment with this a bit to get the best results, so plan a few
trial runs.  You might want to split the audio up into parts, or have one
long track, for example.  You might also want to do some editing/cleaning
to crop parts that aren't relevant.

Then you'll need to save your resulting files as AIFF, which is the format
used for CD tracks.  They will be fairly large: typically around 10
megabytes or so per minute depending on the audio settings you recorded
with.

Then you just run your CD-burning software to create an audio CD, and
arrange the tracks as you want them.  On Macs, iTunes is a very nice free
program that can do this, and Toast is great if you want a little more
control.  You can also search on sites like versiontracker.com for
freeware/shareware/commercial software that will let you do the recording
and editing; there are many on the Mac side, some free and some
commercial, that will do this for you.  I'm sure there are Windows
programs too, but I'm not familiar with them personally.

Cheers,

Steve

--
Steve Linberg, Chief Goblin
Silicon Goblin Technologies
http://silicongoblin.com
Be kind.  Remember, everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.



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