Audio questions

[David Nathan]

Hi Andrea

A short reply to your question - I dont know of any software that will automatically chop up your sound files, although there should in principle be something around. For video editing, for example, a method is to construct an EDL "edit decision list" which contains basically the time markers (as in ELAN); the software then chops up (and reassembles) the parts. Perhaps a search for key terms here might turn up something.

The other (better, perhaps) line of enquiry is leaving the sound file whole and playing parts of it in synch with the ELAN text stream. You probably already know that it is not possible to do this with ordinary web pages. I think the answer is in using some kind of "wrapper format" that allows some software to control the sound in terms of time codes. Possibilities include MP3 and Quicktime. For example, you could use MP3 and set up your data within Flash; a simpler solution would be to use Quicktime - you could convert your ELAN files to Quicktime text format and also import your sound. Users would then be able to play it from a web page via a Quicktime plug-in.

Let us know what you eventually decide.

David Nathan
Endangered Languages Archive
SOAS London