Journal Chacham's Journal: Chronicle: Listening to LoTR in th car, splitting MP3 files 2
With a 20 to 30 minute drive to and fro the office when traffic is light, i might as well listen to something. Being too lazy to read LoTR, maybe i can listen to it.
The 98 Honda Civic has a radio, though not much else in the way of audio. A friend lent me an FM transmitter, and then we realized it only transmits but does not play mp3s. An external device is required for that. And they seem expensive, until i found this item, which a number of sellers have for varying prices, but seemingly is the same product. There are many negative reviews on it, though one review which appears on top, really does set the record straight. So, for under five bucks, which includes (free) shipping, i gave it a shot.
I ordered it on 2/20 and got it last week, probably about 3/20. The plastic container was crushed, i didn't see any instructions, i set it to 87.7, and it works nicely. A day or two later i remembered to get the correct USB stick into the car, and started listening to LoTR.
LoTR, the book, is quite enjoyable (who woulda thought?) And the reader is pretty good too, changing his voice for the different characters which makes me giggle as i listen. Usually i change the speed to get the information faster. For example, i'm watching in anime at 2.55x (VLC is really strange sometimes). It's an anime aimed at teens so they speeeak veeerrrrrry sloooooooooooowly and........................pause..............a....lot.................in.................between.................words. I watched DBZ, iirc, at 1.7x, It's all a matter of how long the subtitles stay for, or in English, how long the pause in between words is. It can be sped up until just before the point where there is no pause. Regardless, i am enjoying this audiobook too well to want to speed it up.
But there is one issue. While the MP3 player does remember the track it is up to (by ordinal, that is, change the thumb drive or the tracks and it'll pick up a different track at that ordinal). So, i heard a lot of repeats for things before chapter 1. But chapter 1 itself is over an hour long. What to do, what to do...
Duh! Split it at every five minutes, or maybe just every one minute. Okay, but that sounds tedious, and what about splitting on silence. Enter MP3Split. On the "Batch & automatic split" it has an option "Silence - split with silence detection." "Threshold level (dB)" is set to -48.00, so i set "Minimum track length (seconds)" to 60 and gave it a shot. There were very few splits. Guessing, i set threshold to 0, but that resulted in no splits.
Giving up on the silent treatment, i set to split every 60 seconds, and got 3209 files (starting with Book 1). That is hard to manage and the player only has three digits for the ordinal. So, i set it to 200 seconds, resulting in 988 files. It splits words, but that seems ok, there's just a small click or something as it switches tracks. I wonder how it will sound in the car.
cool (Score:2)
let us know how it works out.
Re: (Score:1)
Up to chapter 2. The breaks at just over 3 minutes means not too much repeated. Though, ironically, yesterday, the first time i tried it, i left off right before the end of one (no way to know without timing, really) and got a full 3 minute repeat.
I do not often read fiction, per se. One reason being, i am enthralled by nearly anything i read. LoTR is especially good, and the reader did an excellent job on top of that. Add the British accent and i simply don't want to get out of the car. I am embarrassed to