Univ of Iowa Chinese Collection Audio Downloand problems

[paike]

Greetings,

Through this website I came across the Univ of Iowa Chinese reading website which is awesome to say the least. I print out articles, read them, put the words I learned into my flashcard program and listen to the dialogues.

The next step would be for me to download the short audios and put them onto a MP3 player, put it on shuffle and listen to them again and again. A man can only sit at his computer for so many hours a day. I want to go to the park or sit in the sun and listen.

Problem A: The program on the website that streams the audio is Quicktime which I didn't have much experience with before. I downloaded it, seems to work fine. BUUUT, it says if I want to download the "movie" (this I dont understand, its clearly an audio file) I need to PAY for the Pro version of Quicktime which will set me back 30 dollars.

Problem B: Now, 30 dollars is still something to people like me who live in China. I also am worried that if I download the real version of Quicktime, then I wont be able to download the "movie"/audio files like I thought, or wont be able to put them on my cheap MP3 player.

Solutions: ???

Anyone have a cracked version of Quicktime Pro so that I don't have to pay the 30 dollars and can see what these "movie"/audio files are all about, or even if I can turn them into a mp3 type file.

Perhaps someone loves those Iowa texts as much as me and has ALREADY done just this. If so, shout it out from the rooftops! If you haven't checked them out, the website, do so.

Pai Ke

EDIT

http://www.zwtm.com/2009/03/how-to-get-quicktime-pro-7-free-pc-and-mac/

So on this page I found out how to turn Quicktime into Quicktime Pro for free. At the bottom it includes registration codes and a name to put into the program. As it is online and has been for many months, with Apple doing nothing about it, perhaps they don't care? =)

Edited September 25, 2009 at 03:57 PM by paike
Answered own question

[renzhe]

Can you post a link to the page?

In any case, the first thing I'd try is a civilised media player, like VLC. I believe that it saves things happily.

[paike]

http://collections.uiowa.edu/chinese/topic_intermediate.html

Here is the website of which I was speaking. Univ of Iowa Chinese project.

EDIT

So after I put the registration code into my program, it works great.

New Problem. They are in fact (.mov) files. As well, they are streamed. I thought Quicktime would smart enough to stream and save them into a nice file, but it doesnt do that. It simply save a 1kb file that is only a name. No information.

I dont think it matters much, even if it was saved, it would be saved as a (.mov) file, which is worthless. Technology frustrates us common folk. I think a lot of people here are tech savy. I just use brunt force and try a lot of things hoping one will work. Or put a search into google. This time, got the program running, but it doesnt do what I thought it would.

Bah!

Pai Ke

Edited September 25, 2009 at 04:09 PM by paike

[jbradfor]

So to solve there, there are two steps:

• You need to download the audio file
  
• You need to convert the audio file to mp3 (I presume), since mov format is not supported?
  

If you look at the source of the webpage, it provides the URL of the audio file. In this case, if you go to the URL you provided, then click on "audio" for one of the lessons, then just change the "html" at the end of the web site address to "mov", you have the audio file. For example, http://collections.uiowa.edu/chinese/readings/intermediate/i_audio/i_audio_u02/i_audio_u02_01.mov . However, I'm not sure how to download it. Under linux there is the wget command, anyone have any suggestions on a windows way.

Next, likely you need to convert it. I'm not sure which windows programs can convert mov, any suggestions? Under linux mplayer should be able to.

Or, maybe you could email them and ask them to provide a link you can download?

[renzhe]

It doesn't look that easy. There is no link, the html webpage automatically loads the mov file when you load it, and there isn't a direct link in the .html (just a relative one), so you have to piece it together.

And even if you wget the resulting file, nothing will play it, including mplayer. It won't stream in anything I've tried either.

Looks like they went out of their way to make sure people can't play it.

[jbradfor]

Yup, you're right. The link to the mov file in my previous post does not seem to be the audio file, but rather a reference to quicktime on how to get it.

Since it seems they don't want you to download it, ande they went to all the trouble to provide this to us at no cost, we should probably respect their wishes, as frustrating as it may be. You could try emailing them and see if you could get them to change their mind?

[hunanfan]

Since you can't download the audio file, you need to record it.

There are a couple options. I like Total Recorder (www.totalrecorder.com) because you can save it in different formats and edit the file as needed.

But if you use Firefox, you can download the free Ask and Record toolbar from Ask.com made by Applian (great software) which you can get it at http://www.applian.com/asktoolbar/.

Before you start playing the audio file, click on the "Record Audio" button in the toolbar. After it opens, you click the play button of the audio, and it will record it in real time. When finished, stop the recording, and upload it to your player. I just tried it out with Unit 1 Lesson 1 for high-speed internet users, and it worked perfectly.

This may be breaking copyright law, so use according to your own conscience, but don't make your copies available to anyone but you.

[paike]

Since it seems they don't want you to download it, ande they went to all the trouble to provide this to us at no cost, we should probably respect their wishes, as frustrating as it may be. You could try emailing them and see if you could get them to change their mind?

So, I have tried just that. Here is the webmaster's amazingly quick reply.

Ni hao Pai Ke,

First of all, thank you for your message and your kind words. That’s very encouraging to our work.

I just fixed the error that you pointed out. I would really appreciate it if you could write me messages whenever you see a similar error like this. I’ll have it fixed as soon as possible.

As to the audio clips, the project investigator intends to make those clips only available when our readers are online. One of the reasons is the copy right issue. We have received lots of messages to request for the audio clips. However, the decision has been made by the project investigator. Please understand that I will have to follow the project regulation.

Once again, thank you for your message and for using the Chinese Reading World.

Best wishes to your Chinese learning.

Sincerely,

Chen-hui Tsai

So. Although the record option looks great, its MORE time at the computer than I would like to do. I guess I could sit down one rainy afternoon and plow through 50 or 100 or them, get all my ducks in a row as it were.

-------> HunanFan

Thanks for the idea. I am just use this, but not at the moment. A few more weeks til HSK time and I'm hoping a 7-8ish. Just missed the 7 last time because I write like a foreigner, who would have thought?!?!

Pai Ke