Best Practice - how to rename soundfiles recorded with flex

[Bart Eenkhoorn]

L.S.

Flex does a great job recording audio. These .wav files can even be cleaned and normalised by external software and flex will still show and play the changed result. However, depending on the filename, not all audio files will be played by the DAB produced app.

A filename like 638526651455390395sheraha.wav will play fine in the DAB produced app, but a filename like 638533696697147926kpaunsɛɛ.wav will not, because DAB does not support unicode in filenames.

Now, to circumvent this, I tried to rename the 638533696697147926kpaunsɛɛ.wav filename to 638533696697147926kpaunsee.wav by editing the .fwdata file outside of flex. This resulted in Flex deciding that there was no audio recorded for the particular entry. So in fact it did not work.

Question : what is needed to successfully rename a soundfilename recorded with flex and for flex to accept the new filename ?

A second way to deal with this is to edit the exported xhtml, and create an alternate set of  (renamed) .wav files separate from the .wav files "inside" flex. It will probably work, but is potentially a lot of repetitive effort for each app release, as the files with these characters in our database now number 800+ and new recordings are planned.

What can you share from your experience? What other ways are there to circumvent this shortcoming of DAB?

Thanks in advance for your tips and ideas,

Bart.

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[Jean Paul Gotopo Maldonado]

I don't have much experience recording audio but I do have experience with xhtml files.

Make sure that this line of code is in the xhtml: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

Usually on the first line

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[Tim Kempton]

Hi Bart

I don't have much experience with DAB (we plan to use Language Forge with our community because they have internet access on their phones). But a possible answer to your question:

• for individual sound files, delete the audio entry and then hold down shift when you click on the record button to select the newly renamed wav file.
• for multiple sound files, you can use "Bulk Edit Entries":
• ensure that you display the audio writing system in the columns; you should now see all the wav filenames listed
• use "Bulk Replace" or "Process" to rename the wav files according to some find/replace rule or script

Tim

[Bart Eenkhoorn]

Thanks for the tip Tim. The Bulk Edit filename changes worked as you described. What I had not considered was that the actual files needed to have the name change at the same time. I used the Bulk Rename Utility (BRU) to do that at the same time as making the changes inside flex. With both the reference to the file as well as the actual filename changed, the audio is now ready to be used by DAB as well. (hopefully) 

Much obliged,

Bart.

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[Tim K]

Hi Bart

I don't have much experience with DAB, partly because we're betting that Language Forge will work for our community since they have internet access on their phones. But a possible answer to your question:

• For individual sound files you could delete the audio entry in Flex, then hold shift when you click the record button to select the new renamed wav file
• For batch processing, you can use "Bulk Edit Entries" to change the wav filenames
  • e.g. using "Bulk replace" or "Process" (assuming that there is some mechanical process to change the filenames)
  • ensure that you show the audio writing system in the columns

Tim