Pronunciation practice tool on iPad - Looking for beta testers

[simple101]

Hello

I am developing an iPad app that I will hopefully soon be submitting to the apple app store. I spent some time with some Chinese speaking friends over christmas who complained that my chinese sounded too feminine - I am male. I decided that my pronunciation and language usage needed some work so began work on this application which should be ready for beta testing within the next week. It's main purpose is to facilitate imitation practice but its features help with listening to and understanding foreign language media.

The application is a media player for audio and video with the following main features:

1. The user can mark sections of media which can then be replayed, checked for meaning and imitated, etc.

2. The user can quickly bookmark clips from these sections for later practice.

3. Clips can be played back at any time and looped if desired.

4. Clips can be labeled if needed.

5. The user can record there own voice and compare to it to what they are imitating.

6. When watching or listening to media, the user can easily jump back five seconds if they miss something.

7. Bookmarks can be shared between different users.

These are the current main features. Many more are planned.

Anyway I am looking for around 10 users from this site to beta test the app. As well as reporting any bugs you may come across I am hoping for feedback on the user interface and usability of current features. I have been testing the app on iPad 2 with iOS 5 but am looking for testers with either iPad 1 or iPad 2 and iOS 4.3 and above ( including iOS 5).

If anyone is interested please message me.

Thank you

Sam

[carlo]

Sounds like a good idea. Unfortunately I cannot help as I have iOS5 running on Ipad2. Have you considered making it available on Iphones also? That would make it even easier to carry it around.

There was one function in the old KMPlayer for Windows that I used to find very useful back in the day: the ability to write your own "subtitles". In fact, the way I used it was as a way to mark short sections of the audio/video with a caption of the 生词 I wanted to review. Then I would review only those sections by clicking on the subtitles list. As a review strategy, nothing beats hearing the word in the actual context you heard it first, IMHO.

Also it would be useful if your player could read many video and audio formats, rather than having to go through itunes.

[simple101]

Hi Carlo

I guess my post is not that clear. If you have an iPad 2 with iOS 5 I would also be very happy for you to beta test it. Let me know if you are interested.

Thanks for the suggestion for adding your own subtitles. As it is you can add your own labels to clips but I think it would be a good idea to allow the user to view these labels above the video (as in subtitles). I will look into it

Thankyou

Sam

[simple101]

Also...

Yes I plan in making it available for iPhone in the second release.

Thankyou

Sam

[CleverClogs]

I'm very interested to test your new app, Sam. I have a first-gen iPad that runs iOS 5. I'm especially interested in how you'll implement the voice comparison feature. Will your app offer the ability to create and play back interactive captions too? Is the app specifically targeted at learners of Mandarin Chinese?

Good luck with the development process!

[simple101]

Hi CleverClogs.

I'll PM you in a minute about testing the app.

At the moment there is nothing clever about the comparison feature. You can simply play the original and play your own recording at the same time or one after the other, loop the original, etc. I haven't done much research about systems to compare audio. I have thought about a simplified wave form for both the clip and and recording as a visual indicator of pace, sentence stress etc, but nothing is implemented as yet.

If by interactive captions you mean something similar to what youtube has, each clip can have a label and by tapping the clip the video will jump to that point in the movie so it works in a similar fashion to youtube. Currently the labels are not displayed over the actual video, they are in a list bellow, but as per Carlo's suggestion above this might soon change. I plan to add an import subtitle feature soon (for text based subtitles), which will allow users to read the subtitles as a list and jump to that part in the movie.

The app is not specifically targeted at learners of Mandarin Chinese. I hope it will prove useful for studying any language.

Thank you

Sam

[simple101]

Hi CleverClogs

I was unable to message you, but if you email me at the following address I will set you up as a tester.

parrotables@gmail.com

Thank you

Sam

Edited March 8, 2012 at 07:53 PM by simple101