Question about embedded transcripts
joannah
May 31, 2008, 12:22 PM posted in General DiscussionI'm considering buying a new mp3 player. Once of the things i'm looking for is one that will display the transcripts embedded in the lesson files. Am i correct in understanding that a 3rd gen ipod nano will display these?
joannah
May 31, 2008, 12:56 PMHere's a print screen of it from itunes (click to view full size)
The 64k lessons don't have full transcript but the 64k dialogue does. I'm pretty sure it is in both for the 128k and was in both for the 32k
lostinasia
May 31, 2008, 12:59 PMNot so sure about with the iPod nano. On the embedded files...
In the lesson podcast, it's embedded twice: once in the "Podcast information" field and once in the "Lyrics" field. It's also embedded in the "Lyrics" field for the Dialogue file, and the vocab and sentences are embedded in the "Lyrics" field for the Fix MP3.
On my iPod Photo I can view it the 3rd or 4th time I press the button. Unfortunately, my iPod's of a vintage that can't view lyrics, so I see the not-so-good version reproduced below. On older iPods, you see what I show below; on newer ones, I believe you can see what joannah shows above.
I'm not entirely sure if this is a Basic or a Premium feature.
An example from the barbecue lesson (I'll cut off early to avoid annoying our ChinesePod Overlords who do, after all, make a living by selling this stuff):
********
The apparatus may be the same. The venue, similar--give or take a few trees. The wafts of the mouth-watering scent of roasting flesh. You begin to reminisce over the long days of summers past-- replete with hot dogs, steak, jacket potato...
Dialogue:
你周末打算干什么？ ni3 zhou1mo4 da3suan4 gan4 shen2me5? What do you plan to do this weekend? 烧...
********
(And so on through dialogue with, alas, no line breaks. This gets REALLY messy on the Upper-Intermediate lessons.)
lostinasia
May 31, 2008, 02:00 PM
Totally forgot that my wife has an iPod nano... not sure what generation, but it's one of the newer squarish ones, bought last Christmas.
And the bad news is: lyrics functionality is weird. (This is based on a few minutes of trial and error, so don't take it as gospel.)
If you got the ChinesePod files through iTunes, as a podcast, then you CANNOT view the transcript/ lyrics - you can only view the "messy" transcript in the information field. And for the Dialogue and Fix files, you can't see anything.
If you got the MP3s by directly downloading from the website, then you CAN view the lyrics field.
I assume this has something to do with podcast vs "general MP3" encoding.
When I one day get a lyrics-capable iPod, this will drive me totally crazy, since all my ChinesePod files came via iTunes and suddenly I'll want to reload them to get transcripts... especially for Dialogue files...
joannah
May 31, 2008, 10:43 PMThats really strange. I would have thought it would work the same for both since the files i got of itunes have the transcript in the lyrics field too
lostinasia
June 01, 2008, 12:42 AMI know, it is strange and seems really silly. I did check the files in iTunes - they all have the Lyrics field there, regardless of how I got the MP3. But files recognized as "Podcasts" don't seem to have a lyrics field available when viewed on the iPod nano.
If you got the files as podcasts, one possible workaround *may* be to burn the relevant MP3s to CD or DVD, then re-import them. That often seems to change the encoding and it's worked for me in similar situations before.
It's not enough to simply change the genre to "Education" instead of "Podcast" - the encoding is deeper than that.
If you download the MP3s directly from the site, or at least not through iTunes, then you've probably got nothing to worry about.
Remember as well that you can still view the "messy" transcript in the main podcast file.
(This is all with a Mac PowerBook G4 and iTunes. I'm not sure if a different set-up would make a difference.)
joannah
June 01, 2008, 08:44 AMI brought the ipod and loaded it up with chinesepod. Got into a transcript which was OK apart from being a bit small for the characters. Just can't work out how to get back there
joannah
June 01, 2008, 01:15 PMI've now got it worked out how to access it. The transcript i got to doesn't have line breaks which is OK for short newbie dialogs but would probably be a pain for longer intermediate ones
light487
May 31, 2008, 12:42 PMthere are transcripts embedded in the mp3 files? I didn't know that.. What kind of transcript? Just Hanzi? Pinyin? English?
Does anyone have an example?