Good Voice Recording Software?, for SL-C3000 Options

[daniel3000]

Hello,

I have installed the "Voice Recorder" application ("voicerec" on the console), but it seems to be very limited: Only 12 seconds of recording, and it is not playing back the voice correctly. I know the hardware works because I can use the microphone for VoIP telephony.

Is there any other software which allows me to record via microphone as long as the hard disk free space allows? I'd like to use the Z as a voice recorder as well...

It may well be a console application.

Thanks

daniel

[chrget]

Is there any other software which allows me to record via microphone as long as the hard disk free space allows? [...] It may well be a console application.

I'm doing voice recording on my Collie using a tiny hacked-up OSS interface tool in combination with the Speex codec.

I've attached the naked files, if you're interested. The ZIP archive includes the (granted, no longer current) speexenc and speexdec executables in version 1.1.8 as well as my little OSS recording utility (oss, complete with source). Together with the also included 'one-liner' shell script spxrec which illustrates usage, you should be able to record for a couple of days

The resulting .spx Speex files can be played back either using speexdec directly or a reasonably recent and complete media player build, many of which contain the speex codec as well these days.

Best regards,
Chris.

Attached File(s)

 spxrec.zip ( 130.23K ) Number of downloads: 67

 

[daniel3000]

Thanks!!
Will try it ASAP. Sounds as if that is exactly what I need.

Is there also a converter from SPX to WAV so the sound files can be stored and distributed easily?


daniel

[chrget]

Is there also a converter from SPX to WAV so the sound files can be stored and distributed easily?

Apart from the fact that I personally would see that as counterproductive -- speexdec will also produce PCM .WAV files if you ask it nicely

Best regards,
Chris.

[daniel3000]

Well, counterproductive by means of disk usage and efficiency. But if I need to transfer a voice note file to a collegue, he will probably will have les problems playing it back if it is MP3 than if it is speex coded.

So I'll see if I can get lame to work on the Zaurus as well... :-)

thanks

daniel

[chrget]

So I'll see if I can get lame to work on the Zaurus as well... :-)

I seriously doubt you will be able to make it work in realtime unless you are able and willing to recode its floating point algorithms in integer arithmetic.

If it's mp3 you want, you should probably go for shine, an integer mp3 encoder. Didn't mention it before since you were explicitely targeting voice recording.

Best regards,
Chris.

[daniel3000]

Thanks for your hints! I didn't know about shine yet.

I tried speexenc with your spxrec script. Had to recompile the "oss" tool with device namd /dev/dsp instead of /dev/dsp1 and then it worked like a charm! Great sound quality / file size ratio!

How do you stop recording? Hitting Ctrl-C on the script running doesn't have any effect, I had to kill the oss process.

Do you have something "user-friendly" built around that, e.g. an opie-sh script or something like that? If not, I'll probably do that later. But I don't want to reinvent the wheel.

The problem with shine is that it does not seem to support PCM data to be passed to it through a pipe, so encoding as MP3 would mean two separate steps. I liek the one-step recording/encoding of your setup a lot.

daniel

[chrget]

How do you stop recording? Hitting Ctrl-C on the script running doesn't have any effect, I had to kill the oss process.

Eeeeek, forgot to mention that the OSS program changes the terminal's interrupt key from ^C to ESC (mainly so you don't have to slide open the 5500 to stop recording -- you just hit the Cancel key)

Do you have something "user-friendly" built around that [...]

'Fraid not, sorry. I only record occasionally, so it doesn't really warrant putting all that much effort in.

The problem with shine is that it does not seem to support PCM data to be passed to it through a pipe, so encoding as MP3 would mean two separate steps. I liek the one-step recording/encoding of your setup a lot.

AFAIK there is a version of shine out there that will take the audio device as a source file and thus record directly into an mp3 file. You may want to ask dreadlocks about it, IIRC he uses shine regularly to record lectures.

Best regards,
Chris.