[Dtb-talk] DAISY to iPod with navigaton

[Brett Winches]

Greg,  Add pages and Images.  While some blind folks may not need them,
I think that having them might aid in interactions with others about the
book in question.  If a description or caption (those in the book for
sure) could be added this would be great as well.   


###
BRETT WINCHESTER
bwinchester at icbvi.idaho.gov 
208-639-8386
###


-----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 7:53 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>



_______________________________________________
Dtb-talk mailing list
Dtb-talk at nfbnet.org
http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/dtb-talk