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<div>Pascale,</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>You are right that conversion of audio files to mp3 doesn't solve
the problem, that was just a suggestion for saving space, and so
making it easier to have all the data on one hard disk.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>The question of accessing timed points within a large media file
is central to all of our work and needs to be addressed by anyone
wanting to link to media. I suggested a streaming server as one way of
dealing with this. There are others, and my thesis used quicktime in a
purpose-built application called Audiamus to links in this way. For a
dictionary, we need to have a way of instantiating the links from
whatever software we have the dictionary in. If you can convert the
dictionary into html and maintain the timecodes, then you can have the
audio data sitting on a streaming server and just those bits of it you
want at any given link being called by clicking on the link. A
streaming server allows you to access just timecoded parts of
the media file. This implies that you want it all to be accessible to
people via a web interface, but does not imply that this data is
freely available to anyone, as access is only given via your
dictionary interface. To the user, the interface is the web page
and they get to hear the sound.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>To do this locally (that is, not on the web), you need to be able
to call points in the media file. And, as Dave Nathan said, there may
be ways of doing this with SMIL.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>I don't think the answer is to segment the media files, but we
all need to find a solution that works easily. Any other suggestions
anyone?</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>nick</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>At 9:29 AM +1000 17/8/04, Pascale Jacq wrote:</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Thank you to all who have given advice
and links and comments etc. to my queries posted last week. I've been
chasing up all the papers on line and trying to get a grasp on the
implications each path taken would hold.<br>
<br>
I still find it unclear<i> how</i> MP3 conversion (which to me seems
to be a way of reducing the size of a file without affecting
quality/time codes etc., nothing more) or audio streaming (which seems
to make a single large file of all data to enable searching etc.)
actually solve the issue of how to locate a few seconds of material
within one audio file (whatever format).<br>
Is it possible at all? Does it require some small program to be
written? Or is the only real answer to segment/extract each of those
small seconds of material for document linking purposes?<br>
<br>
I'd love to get a clear answer to this question (which I perhaps
didn't phrase succinctly in the first place) and then hopefully I can
stop bugging you all! : )</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Cheers,</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Pascale</blockquote>
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