Thinking to put lots of audio files on Flashcards Dexlue

[jason_fc]

Hi Erin,

First of all. Thank you for creating such a wonderful app. I would recommend to my friends whenever possible. Also thanks for the constant update and improvement on the app. Keep up the good work!!

I would like to get some assurance and suggestions before putting a large amount of audio files into Flashcards Deluxe.
I have 10 decks of vocabularies, which has 500 words. I would like to put audio files into all of them. And these vocabs all contains statistics already.
My question would be:

1. Would it drain lots of system resources if I load a big number of audio files in the flash cards? In my case?
2. If I want to keep the statistics of the cards, and just to add the audio. What would be the best way to import the audio? Should I export the cards back to my computer and import the audio?
3. Is there any disadvantage to do that that I may not be aware of?

Also I haven't tried to put a large amount of decks into the app. Would it slow down the resources if say, to have 100 decks of 500 words vocab?

Thanks in advance,

Jason

[Ernie]

Jason,

I wouldn't worry about speed or resources. The app should be able to handle thousands of flashcards with audio just fine.

So, how do you add the audio... I will assume that you have the sound files on your computer. Export your deck (tap Edit, the deck, Export) back to your computer, and make sure you turn ON the statistics option. Take the text and paste into Excel. Add new columns for "Sound 1" and "Sound 2", and fill in the column with the file names.

Now comes the question of how to download all the media files into the app. One option is to upload your new text to my website and then upload all the sound files. If you use Dropbox, I would recommend putting all your sound files there and using the "Medial Dir URL" option to tell the app where your dropbox folder can be found. Let me know if you need more specifics on all this.

Ernie

[jason_fc]

Thanks, that answers my question.

In addition is there any Windows software anybody would suggest which be able to break a mp3 file into smaller segments, and use silence as cut points?

Thanks,

[Ernie]

I've used and like Audacity (free)
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

"use silence as cut points"... Well probably not, but you can definitely cut tracks, and it has some keyboard shortcuts that make editing fairly easy. Anyway, something to at least check out if you haven't.

[aristide]

Hello Jason!
For me, FCDL handles more than 3800 sound files without any problem.
Since different decks frequently use the same sounds and/or images, I've found more convenient to create one "false" media deck, which sole purpose is to contain all the media.
Also, Audacity does have a "Sound Finder" mechanism which let me split a single sound file into litte chunks.
Best regards,
A.

[Ernie]

Aristide,

Do you use the "Media Deck" feature? I kind of removed it for this last update. It still works, but I just removed the setting in the deck edit screen... basically seeing if any cared/complained.

Ernie

[jason_fc]

Hi,

So do you mean using Media Deck? Would you tell me how to do it?

Yes, Audacity also does that. I used another app called MP3DirectCut that also do the job, after searching a bit on the net. Thanks for the info!

When organizing the media files, do you rename the files as vocab? Or do it any other way?

Thanks,

Jason

[aristide]

Yes, I heavily rely on a unique Media Deck, for three reasons:
- several decks make use of the same media (e.g. chinese-french / french-chinese (*));
- several decks make use different kind of media (e.g. regions of china = maps (standalone) + sounds (from vocabulary decks);
- all the media are in the same place, which is far more easy to deal with (update, browsing, corrections, etc.)
Ernie, please don't remove such a "power-user" feature. Downgrading is a pain on the iPhone.

Jason, I am not sure what you mean with "rename the files as vocab". I do have a rather complex naming scheme, i.e., generating a md5 hash for each sound file:
0a35e149dbbb2d10d744bf675c7744b1.m4a
0a60b24f661e4881c6baac0979c615e4.m4a
0a60c7a1be58c68b6f78f347fad2a75d.m4a
There are several advantages to this, but I could not encourage you in this way if you're not yourself a programmer

(*) Reverting the order is simply not an option for me, due to the complexity of my cards. Symmetric decks != same sides.

[Ernie]

Jason,

The "media deck" functionality is only useful if you use the same sound files in multiple decks. (e.g. chinese-french and french-chinese). This means you don't have to upload the same sound file in two different decks. My guess this is not a common need, so you probably don't need to worry about this. I say use the normal documented procedures to add sounds to flashcards.

[Ernie]

Aristide,

Ok, thanks for the info. I was just trying to clean up the screens. You can probably still assign a media deck using the appropriate header in your text file, though you can't assign it in the app. I'll be releasing a new update in a couple weeks. I'll make sure you can do what you need, though I haven't decided how I'll show that setting yet.

[Ernie]

Jason,

Oh I missed one of your questions:
"..... Please elaborate if I got it wrong."

You seem to have it correct. Sound file names much be unique for a given deck since they are stored in a directory for that deck on the device.

[aristide]

You can probably still assign a media deck using the appropriate header in your text file, though you can't assign it in the app.

Thanks for the tip.

I was just trying to clean up the screens.

What about using Apple advanced standard widgets, e.g. slider vs. text fields (for numerical values) or selection wheel vs. 5-6 input fields?