Creation of autorun cd's of narration

[Ed Stanley]

I am evaluating your demo version of AMS6 for the purposes of creating an autorun cd of a narration of the complete Bible in mp3 format. Of the 2 or 3 programs I have looked at yours seems to be the most extensive, especially in regards to your user guide. I have found it to be very informative. Though I am confused by the information about codes and strings, since this is my first exposure to this type of cd creation. From reading your instructions I understand that the audio files must be in .wav or .ogg or other formats not mp3, in order to function in mp3. I can convert the mp3's to .ogg or .wav; would it be better to convert from the original aiff files as opposed to the mp3 files? More importantly, I am unable to determine how to assign the individual tracks into a page. Do I need to create a button/action for each chapter? Or, is it possible to link all the chapters of one Bible book to a single button/action? For example, this would mean having 50 buttons per page for the book of Genesis, 150 buttons per page for Psalms, etc. Is there another source you can recommend that will help me to better understand the coding language used; that will simplify for a real novice? Thanks for any response. I'm leaning toward recommending the purchase of AMS6 but I would like to understand it a little better before I actually do?

Regards,

Ed Stanley

[rhosk]

As far as your initial concern, you can use the built-in, free Windows Media Player plug-in to play your mp3's (there are other ways, but we'll keep it simple for starters). I sort of understand how you want to go about this and you can be confident that, if you run into any problems building your application, someone here at the forum will help you along. I can think of 10 different ways you could execute this project. And that's just it, even though you're thinking of one way to do it, there's many others, I assure you. And finally, don't be afraid of the scripting/code stuff. APMS is extremely intuitive, even for a novice like yourself. You have to simply dive in, Ed - don't go by only what you read. Place a button on the stage, select an action, and you'll see how easy it is to perform that action.

And alas, you won't find a more supportive group of people anywhere on the Net, guaranteed.

[Corey]

I am evaluating your demo version of AMS6 for the purposes of creating an autorun cd of a narration of the complete Bible in mp3 format. Of the 2 or 3 programs I have looked at yours seems to be the most extensive, especially in regards to your user guide. I have found it to be very informative.

Hi Ed, nice to meet you. Thanks for the kind words.

Though I am confused by the information about codes and strings, since this is my first exposure to this type of cd creation.

There is also a simpler tool which takes care of that stuff automatically and may be better geared to your workflow at http://www.autorun.com. If you have any questions about Autorun MAX! please post them to the forum at the autorun MAX! site linked to above.

From reading your instructions I understand that the audio files must be in .wav or .ogg or other formats not mp3, in order to function in mp3. I can convert the mp3's to .ogg or .wav; would it be better to convert from the original aiff files as opposed to the mp3 files?

AutoPlay Media Studio can play .mp3s but due to the legal hassles surrounding Thomson media we left it out as a format. In general though if you are converting, you would definitely want to work from the .aiff files and not the .mp3 files. If you converted the .mp3 files you would be re-compressing an already compressed file, which would result in unnecessary quality loss.

More importantly, I am unable to determine how to assign the individual tracks into a page. Do I need to create a button/action for each chapter? Or, is it possible to link all the chapters of one Bible book to a single button/action? For example, this would mean having 50 buttons per page for the book of Genesis, 150 buttons per page for Psalms, etc.

That's a design decision. The power of AMS lies in it's flexibility. If you can envision it, you can pretty much design it. So the question there is really, "How would you prefer the GUI to work?" and from there you can pretty much use AMS to bend the project to meet that vision.

Is there another source you can recommend that will help me to better understand the coding language used; that will simplify for a real novice?

There are legacy training CDs available at http://www.speedytraining.com which would probably be perfect for you. Additionally we have some updated video training for version 6.0 arriving in the new couple weeks.

Hope that helps.

[Ed Stanley]

Thanks to both Ron and Corey for your words of encouragement and insight into the program. The more I have worked with it the more I understand it and recognize its versatility. Tho, in some cases I still have difficulty in determining the correct action. And I really like the way the finished page looks using the built in butons, etc.
We are evaluating the mp3 issue. I'm assuming we will probably go
with .wav. Windows Media Player nor Nero would play .ogg files. And since this will be a product available commercially we will want it to be as universally adaptable as possible. And, as Corey suggested, I was thinking that it would be better to go back to the original aiff files to re-convert. It will be time consuming to do it for this project, but necessary for using in AMS6.
Thanks again for your input. I'll let you know what we decide and if we purchase the AMS6 program, I know I'll need to come back here to the forum for help.

Ed Stanley

[Corey]

Hi Ed, sounds good. A couple thoughts for you from an old AMS hand:

1. If I'm understanding you correctly you want the audio files to play both in AMS or if they are clicked on in Windows? The most viable approach for you then would be to go with MP3. AMS can support that, no problem. Wav files are very large. Just use what you have, no need to re-convert. Load the WMP plug-in into your AMS project and just play them through that. If you need help figuring out how to do that simply start a new thread entitled, "How do I load the WMP plug-in?" and help will be sure to follow.

2. You'll be amazed how easy it is to learn AMS once you dive in. It's incremental but exponential, once you get over the initial learning curve it gets much easier to learn new stuff. This forum is full of people who are happy to help you, we've got excellent help files both online and offline (in AMS), and I've got some really fantastic video training modules coming out sometime in February which are affordable and will take you from the absolute beginning right through to some advanced techniques.

3. If you have to convert your files from .aiff for whatever reason there's no reason for that to be time consuming for you, there are quite a few "batch converters" on the market which will do that all automatically. Depending on which audio editor you use, you may even have that functionality at your fingertips right now. Audio production is a hobby of mine, if you let me know what audio editing software you use I might be able to offer some helpful tips in that regard. At any rate batch converting audio files is a breeze with a batch converter. There may even be some free ones, here's a $29 title though just as an example (not endorsing it, just using it as an example):
http://www.riverpast.com/en/prod/aud...r/features.php

River Past Audio Converter is a batch converter. You can add a list of files, set the output format, and let it run. A well organized progress dialog will predict how long it takes to convert all the files, so you can do something else and come back when it finishes.

4. .ogg files can be played back in your AMS projects with no codec needed. To play .ogg files in your favorite audio player (in Windows) you just need to install the free ogg codec. My personal opinion is that .ogg offers you more "quality per byte" than MP3 however on "spoken word" material the difference is insignificant.

If you ever have any more questions about any of this let us know.

[Ed Stanley]

Thanks for the additional suggestions, Corey. For audio editing, I use PTLE6 on a Mac G4/400 & a G4/466. I also have iTunes, but I prefer to use PTLE for converting because I think the end product sounds better than it does by using iTunes.

Yes, I think we should offer the options of playing the files in both AMS as well as WMP or Nero, etc. I have also used Audio 3 which worked quite well, too.

I tried to install the ogg codec you suggested but got an error saying the download file was corrupted or had some other problem. I'll contact the source later for help.

And there is at least one question I have now about AMS. I have created a title page and 7 following pages. On the title page I have a button for each following page. On page 2 is a button for each chapter for the book of Genesis with the intention of selecting a button to play each chapter. However, in preview, when I click the button on the title page to go to the Genesis page and that page opens up the audio for Genesis 1 begins playing. How do I turn off the autoplay for when the page opens up?

Thanks again for your insights.

Ed Stanley

[Gabis]

It sounds to me like you have the Audio in the Pages On Load or Preload. You need to put it on the button properties instead. Im not sure though, i have never actually messed with the audio side of AMS, yet.

to check, right click the page in the tree on the left of the screen and go to properties > scripts> and then check the onload and preload.

the script for the audio should be on the button itself. Just double click the button, properties> script> OnClick. hope this helps, and good luck with your project.

[Ed Stanley]

Thanks, Gabis. After a little searching I found the correct script page and sure enuf, I found auto play commands. Deleted them and it corrected that problem. I'm still having trouble getting the audio to play when I select the play buttons and I have assigned "audio.load" and the desired audio file to occur On Click.

Thanks for your help.

Ed Stanley