[Dtb-talk] DAISY to iPod with navigaton

[Fred Wurtzel]

Hello,

I am just now learning to enjoy true Daisy books.  I absolutely think pag
navigation is good.  For study purposes, particularly.  In class, the
teacher may say "turn to page 54.  The reader could quickly go there and
read at the same time.

Re: images, if this is for sighted persons with reading disabilities, the
images would be a great help and probably make the difference between
acceptance and non-acceptance.

Well, that is my opinion, for what it is worth.  It sounds like you are on a
great track.  I wish you well.

Cordially,

Fred

-----Original Message-----
From: dtb-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:dtb-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Greg Kearney
Sent: Friday, September 07, 2007 9:53 PM
To: technical-developments; Discussion of Digital Talking Books
Cc: Mary Beth Janes; Mike Shebanek
Subject: [Dtb-talk] DAISY to iPod with navigaton

I have been working on a program that will take DAISY audio recording  
and generate an iPod audiobook file. The reason for doing this is that  
some young people, in particular dyslexics, object to carrying a DAISY  
playback device around with them. iPods on the other hand have that  
cool factor. My hope is that this might one day lead to audio feedback  
of the iPod's menus and DAISY playback in the iPod itself.

To that end I have developed a small utility called DTB2iTunes this  
utility will rejoin the audio of a DAISY book into a single mp3 or m4b  
(iPod audiobook format) file. For this utility to work the files must  
named in playable order and must be in MP3 format. DTBmaker produces  
book in this way and many other DAISY books from various producers are  
also in this form. This form also has the advantage of making the  
books playable on non-Daisy players such as MP3 enabled CD players.

The problem is that such books loose all their DASIY navigation when  
this is done. You can stop and come back to a book in m4b format but  
you can not navigate as you can with DAISY.

This is where the next part of this system comes in. I have modified  
my DTBmaker program to produce a file called chaptertool.xml.

This file is an xml file (sample below) that is used by a tool from  
Apple called chaptertool. This program will place chapter markers that  
can be navigated to with the iPod. DTBmaker will produce this file as  
it produces the book itself. Using the text from the various headings  
as the titles of chapters.

DTB2iTunes now looks for the chaptertool.xml file and if found will  
use it to add the chapter markings to the reassembled audiobook file.  
If the chaptertool.xml file is not present with the other DAISY files  
then DTB2iTunes simply makes a non-chaptered audiobook file.

This provides a means of moving DAISY books to iPod while retaining  
some of the navigation. Here are some questions:

I could have it do pages too. Should I?
It seems like it should be possible to produce a chaptertool.xml file  
from an existing DAISY book would that useful?
Right now only DTBmaker makes these chaptertool.xml files would other  
production systems be interested in making them as well?
Could the DAISY pipeline have a tool that makes them?
The system supports images, would this be useful? They would show up  
on the iPod's screen.

Any comments are welcome.

Greg Kearney
535 S. Jackson St.
Casper, Wyoming 82601
307-224-4022
gkearney at gmail.com


Sample chaptertool.xml file


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<chapters version="1">
	
<chapter starttime="00:00:00">
					<title>2007 Meeting of the National
Federation of the Blind  
Computer Science Division</title>
				</chapter>

<chapter starttime="00:02:53">
					<title>Introduction</title>
				</chapter>

<chapter starttime="00:03:19">
					<title>About this Digital Talking
Book</title>
				</chapter>

<chapter starttime="00:16:39">
					<title>Captcha</title>
				</chapter>

<chapter starttime="01:53:34">
					<title>Apple</title>
				</chapter>

<chapter starttime="02:39:11">
					<title>Oracle</title>
				</chapter>

<chapter starttime="02:26:02">
					<title>Mozilla</title>
				</chapter>

<chapter starttime="03:51:39">
					<title>Bussiness</title>
				</chapter>

<chapter starttime="03:24:19">
					<title>Programming</title>
				</chapter>

<chapter starttime="04:56:09">
					<title>Serotech</title>
				</chapter>

</chapters>



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