AUDIO PLAYING, COPYING AND SOUND EDITING FROM THE KEYBOARD BY JOHN WILSON First Edition Copyright 2001-2005 ******** TABLE OF CONTENTS (To find a particular section or heading, use your word- processor's or editor's search facility, e.g. type ">section 6" to find that section. Putting a > sign (capitalised full stop) before the word section will ensure that you do not stop on an earlier cross-reference to that section. Type the string "Downloading Winamp from the Internet" to find that subheading or just type "10.1." to find it via its paragraph number. Additionally, all main sections are separated by a centred row of eight asterisks.) Foreword and Restrictions Available Tutorial Formats Target Group Conventions Suggested Approaches for Effective Learning with this Tutorial Section 1: Introduction Section 2: Types of CD Drives, DVD Drives and Disks 2.1. Types of Recordable CD Disks 2.1.1. Write-Only Compact Disks 2.1.2. Re-Writable Compact Disks 2.2. Compact Disk Capacities 2.3. Types of CD Drives 2.3.1. CD-ROM 2.3.2. CD-R 2.3.3. CD-RW 2.4. CD Labels and Duel Case Inserts 2.5. Types of Recordable Digital Versatile disks (DVD) 2.5.1. Write-Only DVDs 2.5.2. Re-Writable DVDs 2.6. DVD Capacities 2.7. Types of DVD Drives 2.7.1. DVD-ROM 2.7.2. DVD-RW 2.7.3. Combined CD and DVD Drives 2.8. CD and DVD Cleaning Section 3: Installing an Internal CD Drive 3.1. Hardware components 3.2. CD Drive Description 3.3. Installation Procedure Section 4: Basic Compact Disk Music Playing Directly from the CD Drive 4.1. Features of the front Panel of a CD Drive 4.2. Enabling the AutoPlay Feature of Windows 4.3. Windows Music CD AutoPlay 4.4. Changing CD Playback Volume and Quality Section 5: Windows CD Player 5.1. Playing a Standard Music CD with the CD Player 5.2. The View Menu--CD Player Volume Control 5.3. The Options Menu 5.4. The Disk Menu 5.5. The Play List 5.6. Windows CD Player Shortcuts Section 6: Sound Cards and Windows Volume Control 6.1. Sound Cards and Their Capabilities 6.1.1. Types of Sound Cards 6.1.2. What Does Such as 5.1 and 7.1 Surround Sound Mean? 6.2. Putting Your Screenreader to Sleep 6.3. Enabling a Multi-Channel Sound Card 6.4. The Windows Volume Control 6.5. Example of Changing a Sound Property--The Microphone Settings Section 7: Windows Media Player 6.4 7.1. Launching Media Player 7.2. How to Play Media Files on the Internet 7.3. How to Save a Media File to Hard Disk 7.4. Where to Find Media Files to Play on the Web 7.5. Playing a Media File from CD-ROM or Hard Disk 7.6. Playing Encrypted Packaged Media Files 7.7. The three Media Player Screen Displays 7.8. Previewing the Contents of a Show 7.9. Customising Media Player 7.10. Adding Media Files to Your Favourites Menu List 7.11. Organising Your Favourite Media Files 7.12. Playing a Favourite Media File 7.13. The View Menu Options Property Sheets 7.14. Shortcut Keys Section 8: RealPlayer 8 Basic 8.1. Downloading RealPlayer Basic 8.2. Pen-picture of the RealPlayer Basic Screen 8.3. Using RealPlayer Basic 8.4. Loading a Clip in RealPlayer 8.5. Searching for things to Listen to or Watch 8.6. The Play List 8.7. The RealPlayer Basic Favourites Folder 8.8. RealPlayer Help 8.9. RealPlayer Basic Shortcut Keystrokes Section 9: What are MP3 Files and Where can they be Downloaded from? 9.1. What is MP3? 9.2. Where to Look for MP3 Music and Other Audio Files 9.3. Sources of Legitimate MP3 Listening and Downloading 9.4. Commercial MP3 Download Sites 9.5. MP3 Specific Web Search Engines 9.6. Peer-to-Peer Music Sharing Sites 9.7. The Ask MP3 Link Portal 9.8. MP3 Lyrics Databases 9.9. The Wavethemes Theme Music Download Site Section 10: Winamp Version 2.7 10.1. Downloading Winamp from the Internet 10.2. Installing Winamp and Disabling the Winamp Agent 10.2.1. Installation 10.2.2. Disabling the Winamp Agent 10.3. Playing a single MP3 File 10.4. Playing all of the MP3 Tracks in a Folder 10.5. Playing Standard HI-FI CD Audio Disks 10.6. Playing Non-Consecutive Tracks 10.7. Playing MP3 Tracks from the Internet 10.8. Playing Streaming Audio Radio from the Internet 10.9. Making Personal Tone Changes in the Winamp Graphic Equalizer 10.10. Making Preset Tone Changes in the Winamp Graphic Equalizer 10.11. The PlayList Editor 10.12. The Winamp Menu Structure 10.13. Obtaining Attribute Details of a Sound File 10.14. Winamp Preferences 10.15. The Winamp Context Menu 10.16. Sending an MP3 File as an E-Mail Attachment 10.17. Using Winamp Plugins 10.18. How to Convert an MP3 File to a WAV File 10.19. How to convert a CD HI-FI or WAV File to an MP3 File 10.20. Increasing the Winamp Playback Volume without Increasing the Volume of Your Screenreader Speech 10.21. Winamp Shortcut Keys Section 11: Quick and Easy Method of Playing MP3s Section 12: Using Stand-Alone Encoders to Create MP3 and other File Formats from Digital Compact Disks 12.1. What is an Encoder? 12.2. Why Use a Stand-Alone Encoder? 12.3. The FREERIP.MP3 Freeware Encoder 12.3.1. Downloading FREERIP.MP3 12.3.2. Installing FREERIP.MP3 12.3.3. Launching and Configuring FREERIP.MP3 12.3.4. How to Copy Tracks 12.3.5. The FREERIP.MP3 Menus 12.3.6. How to Convert 16-Bit WAV Files to MP3 or OGG Vorbis Formats 12.3.7. The FREERIP.MP3 Help System 12.4. Some other Stand Alone MP3 Players and Rippers Section 13: The MP3 File Context Menu 13.1. Quick Commands 13.2. Changing the Associated Program for Playing MP3s 13.3. Send To 13.4. MP3 File Properties Section 14: Adaptec Easy CD copier 14.1. Installation 14.2. Types of Disks CD Copier can Clone 14.3. Copying Directly from One CD Drive to Another 14.4. Copying via the Hard Disk 14.5. CD Copier Shortcut Keys Section 15: Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4 (Standard) 15.1. Installing Easy CD Creator 15.2. Pen-Picture of the Easy CD Creator Screen 15.3. What can I do with Easy CD Creator? 15.4. Launching Easy CD Creator 15.5. Creating an Audio Music CD from Your CD-ROM Drive 15.6. Obtaining CD Title and Track Titles from CDDB Online 15.7. Creating an Audio CD When You Only have One CD Drive 15.8. Playing a music CD with Easy CD Creator 15.9. Converting an Audio Music CD Track into a Windows WAV or MP3 File 15.10. Creating a Data CD from Files on Your Hard Disk Drive 15.11. Creating a Data CD When You Only Have One CD Drive 15.12. Creating a Mixed-Mode Cd 15.13. Creating a CD Extra CD 15.14. How to Add More Data to a Partly Used Data CD 15.15. Deleting the Contents of a CD 15.16. Saving a Layout 15.17. Opening a Saved Layout 15.18. Viewing Cd Layout Properties 15.19. Testing that Your Computer is Running Optimally for CD Copying 15.20. Other Main Menu Features of Interest 15.21. Downloadable JFW SScripts for Easy CD Creator 4 15.22. Easy CD Creator Shortcut Keys 15.23. Upgrading to Easy CD Creator Platinum Section 16: Adaptec Direct CD CD Disk formatter Version 2X and 3X 16.1. What does the Direct CD Wizard Do? 16.2. Uses for Formatted Direct CD Disks 16.3. Launching Direct CD and Formatting a CD 16.4. How to Copy to a Formatted Data Compact Disk 16.5. Deleting Files from a Data CD Section 17: Windows Sound Recorder with JFW 17.1. JFW Special Shortcut Commands 17.2. Capabilities and Limitations of the Sound Recorder 17.3. Audio Properties, Quality and Volume Changes 17.4. Recording a Sound File 17.5. Opening and Playing a Saved Sound File 17.6. Editing and Effects 17.7. Changing the Quality of a Recording 17.8. Joining Sound Files together 17.9. Merging Sound Files 17.10. Inserting One Sound File into Another Section 18: Sound forge XP 18.1. Introduction 18.2. Versions of Sound Forge and Where to Buy Them 18.3. Installing Sound Forge 18.4. The Sound Forge Data Window and Keyboard Movement Keys 18.5. How to Start a Recording from Mic, Turntable, Cassette Recorder or Other Sound Source 18.6. Saving a Sound File 18.7. Opening a Sound File 18.8. Checking Your Position in a Sound File 18.9. Editing a Whole Sound File 18.10. Editing Part of a Sound File 18.11. Example of Editing Using the Square Brackets 18.12. Example of Editing Using the Shift Key 18.13. Resaving a File to Different formats 18.14. Sound Forge Direct Mode 18.15. Inserting Place Markers for Quick Re-Location in a Playing File 18.16. Inserting Place-Finding Markers in a File as You Record it 18.17. The Markers List 18.18. Normalising the Recording Level of a Sound File 18.19. Working in More than One Editing Window at a Time 18.20. Mixing One Sound with Another 18.21. Changing the Volume of a Sound file 18.22. Fading a File in or Out 18.23. Cross-Fading One Sound File with Another 18.24. Inserting a Segment of Silence into a File 18.25. Increasing or Decreasing the Length of a File without Changing its Pitch 18.26. Sound Synthesis 18.27. The GoTo Feature 18.28. Observing Sound File Properties 18.29. Sound Forge Property Options 18.30. Saving Only One Channel of a Stereo Sound File 18.31. Examples of Some of Sound Forge's Other Features 18.32. Combining Sound Forge XP with Other Sound Recorders 18.33. Main Sound Forge XP and 4.5 Shortcut Keys Appendix 1: List of Shortcut Keys for All Software Covered Appendix 2: Glossary of Audio and General Computer Terms Appendix 3: Other Tutorials by this Author ******** FOREWORD AND RESTRICTIONS I have written this manual and tutorial for the use of blind and otherwise visually impaired computer users and/or their trainers. It is free of charge and only available from its author's Website and from no other distributer. No individual or organisation is permitted to sell copies of this tutorial either as a stand-alone tutorial or as an integral part of any other literary, software or training package. ******** AVAILABLE MANUAL FORMATS The manual is only available in ASCII text format, as a free download from the author's Website at: http://web.onetel.com/~fromthekeyboard This tutorial and guide has been created with a minimum of formatting, in plain text, so that any word-processor or text editor can read it. In this format it should also be suitable for any one to run it through an embosser but, with some embossing software, you may still wish to make some line spacing and heading format changes to suit yourself and your software. A simple construction such as this should also make reading by arrowing up and down in your word-processor less labour intensive than would be the case with columns, shorter lines, and the like. Colloquialisms, such as don't, haven't, doesn't, etc, have been avoided in this guide in order to make it easier to follow and understand via a speech package. Hopefully, any loss of conversationality and warmth will be compensated for by increased clarity. ******** TARGET GROUP Visually impaired computer users are the target group for this tutorial. Keyboard access methods and descriptions, using screenreaders and no mouse or monitor, are the basis of this work. The guide assumes a basic understanding of the Windows operating system and an understanding of how to use the Internet would be an advantage when working through a few of the sections. ******** CONVENTIONS In the writing of this manual, terms have the following meanings: ALT F, A Means hold down the left ALT key and whilst still holding it down press the letter f, then release both and press the letter A. CONTROL S Means hold down the control key and whilst keeping it held down press the letter S and then release both. SHIFT END Means hold down the SHIFT key and whilst keeping it held down press the END key. ALT E, C, and press ENTER Means hold down the left ALT key and whilst keeping it held down press the letter E key, then release both and then press the letter C key followed by the enter key. When a key combination such as ALT T (for Tools), O (for Options) is suggested to go into the "Tools" menu and run the "Options" menu option, the user may follow this method of operation or may prefer to ARROW up and down a menu and press ENTER. In this latter case, the keystrokes would be: press the ALT key, right ARROW to the "Tools" menu heading, then ARROW down (or up) until the "Options" line is spoken, then press ENTER. ******** Suggested Approaches for Effective Learning with this Tutorial It is, of course, entirely up to the individual as to how they glean information and work through this tutorial, but a few suggestions might assist the learner who is relatively new to computers. I would propose that you read through the whole of a section before attempting to practise it to obtain an overview of what is being done. There are a number of approaches which might be taken to make reading the tutorial as a text file and simultaneously carrying out the instructions more fluid and easier to follow. Try one of the below methods. Ideally, if you have two computers, you can load the tutorial into your text editor or word-processor on one PC and have the software program running on the other. You can then listen to the directions on one computer whilst practising them on the other. Alternatively, as is likely to be the case, if you only have the one computer, you could launch your word-processor and load the tutorial into it for reading. You could then launch the program you wish to learn how to use in order to practise the lessons. You would have to keep cycling between each running program by pressing ALT TAB in this case. Yet another approach might be to take a tape recorder or dictaphone and get your screenreader to read the contents of a given section or sub-section onto the tape. You could then play the tape back and follow the instructions through on your PC without having to keep moving from one running program to another. Other options would be for you to print out a copy of the tutorial in large print if you can use this and work from this hard copy, or you could get your local library or resource centre to produce a Braille version for you to work from if you have one in your area and you are a Braillist. ******** >SECTION 1 INTRODUCTION This tutorial aims to introduce the beginner to computer generated sound files, including playing standard CD music, playing MP3 music files, converting standard CD, tape and vinyl disk music to compressed MP3 music files, recording music and speech to disk. It will also cover an introduction to sound and speech editing with programs such as Sound Forge and Windows Sound Recorder. These sound programs will be operated without the use of a mouse or monitor, so a keyboard only plus a screenreader will be used. You will learn how to find and download MP3 audio files from the Internet and play them on your PC as well as making your own standard CD music audio files for playing on a regular HI-FI system. You will also learn how to convert an MP3 file to a HI-FI audio file to play on your home or car stereo. Many of the programs reviewed and demonstrated are the most common which are supplied with modern compact disk read/write drives, e.g. Easy CD Creator 4 and CD Copier. Others will be shareware or freeware programs. Remember, as many of the packages covered here will have tool tips, you should run your screenreader's automatic graphics labeller on them for maximum speech feedback. The hot keys for automatically labelling graphics are left CONTROL right BRACKET with HAL and INSERT G with Window-eyes and JAWS. Be aware that, whilst you can download many types of files directly to your hard disk or floppy disk (if it has sufficient capacity), you cannot normally download a file from the Internet and immediately get it copied to a CD. To do this you must firstly download the file to your hard disk and then use your CD burning software, such as Nero or Easy Cd Creator, to burn it from the hard disk to the CD-RW drive. These days more and more music CD production companies are employing copy protection methods to stop you from copying CDs. There are several Websites which specialise in helping you to get around this copy protection by giving advice about how to circumvent it or letting you download programs to assist in beating copy protection. Two such sites are: www.gamecopyworld.com www.cdmediaworld.com ******** >SECTION 2 TYPES OF CD DRIVES, DVD DRIVES AND DISKS 2.1. Types of Recordable CD Disks There are two main modern kinds of recordable blank CD disks: 2.1.1. Write-Only Compact Disks Write-only disks, once written to and closed or finalised, cannot be used again. However, if you do not close a disk after half filling it, you can normally write more to the end of where you last copied MP3 or data files but you will not be able to play an audio disk until you close it. An Audio (HI-FI music) disk falls into the write-only category. It is a disk capable of holding digital audio tracks recorded in CDDA format (compact disk digital audio). Such audio files have a .CDA extension. These audio CDs are usually 74 or 80 minutes long and can hold up to 99 separate tracks--but the tracks would have to be very short to get this many on in the 74 or 80 minutes! 2.1.2. Re-Writable Compact Disks A re-writable disk, as its name implies, can be used over and over again in the same way that a hard disk or floppy disk can be re-used. You can either write music files straight to the disk with a program such as Easy CD Creator or you can configure (format) the disk and use it like a hard or floppy disk by creating folders or directories and sub-folders and sub- directories, for instance, with Adaptec Direct CD or Nero IN-CD software. 2.2. Compact Disk Capacities Typically a write-only or re-writable CD disk will hold around 650 Mb of music or data files. From a music point of view this means that it can hold 74 minutes of regular audio, HI-FI style music tracks. Some CDs, if your copying software and/or Cd drive will support this, can hold 80 minutes of traditional music or 700 Mb of data. Very recently 90 minute CDs have come into being but, again, your software and CD-RW drive will have to support this new standard. On the other hand, if you wish to format a re-writable disk, in order to create folders and use it in the same way as you might use a floppy diskette, then the resultant disk space is reduced, because the formatting itself takes up some of the disk's capacity. After formatting a 650 Mb re-writable CD, you will be left with around 545 Mb of disk space to copy files to. 2.3. Types of CD Drives There are three main standards for modern CD drives: 2.3.1. CD-ROM A CD-ROM drive (compact disk read-only memory) is only able to play sound files and allow you to remove programs and other data from it. It cannot itself record onto blank CD disks. This is the traditional CD drive which has been supplied with most computers for a few years now. The CD-ROM is the type of drive which you would install your Windows programs and other software from. You can play traditional HI-FI music CDs from a CD-ROM, as well as speech or music compressed MP3 files. The first CD-ROM drives were very slow at reading data from a cd disk but modern ones are much faster. 1-speed CD-ROMs can only read data on a disk at around 150 kilobytes per second and it is this benchmark reading figure which is multiplied to derive the speed of faster CD-ROMs, e.g. a 50 speed CD-ROM would read data at a maximum speed of about 50 X 150 Kb per second. Modern CD- ROMs can read a CD at 50 or 60 times faster than the first drives. Today's CD-ROM drives run at typical speeds of 52or 60 speed but it is true to say that the increase in speed is not exactly proportionate to the number a drive carries, as there are diminishing performance returns the faster a CD drive is rated. You must also be aware that, when using a CD-ROM drive to burn (copy) audio tracks from such as a music CD to a second CD drive (a CD-RW drive), the copying speed is likely to be much slower than the 40X or 50X speed which can be obtained when copying plain data files. Some CD-ROMs can only achieve a speed of 2X or 3X when copying audio tracks by this drive to drive method. 2.3.2. CD-R CD-R (compact disk recordable) drives have now mainly been replaced by CD-RW drives. A CD-R can read files as with a CD-ROM but, in addition, it can write (copy) music and other audio media and data to a blank disk, such as copying HI-FI music or MP3 files. However, it cannot re-write to a re-writable CD disk in the way that a CD-RW can. 2.3.3. CD-RW A CD-RW drive (compact disk re-writable) is a drive which can read, write and re-write to a compact disk. This means that, in addition to being able to perform what the above two drives can achieve, you can insert re-writable disks into this type of drive and use them over and over again. For example, you can format a CD disk in a similar way to formatting a floppy disk and copy files to it, make folders/directories on it, etc, and then delete these later and re-write other files or folders to the same disk to over-write the space which the first files occupied. CD-RWs typically quote specifications such as 12X8X32 speed. These figures mean that the drive is able to read the information on a disk at 32 speed, write data to a blank write-only disk at 12 speed and write data to a re-writable disk at 8 speed. The speed at which data can be written is also based on multiples of the 1-speed benchmark of 150 Kb per second, e.g. a 12-8-32 speed CD-RW drive can write data to a disk at approximately 12 X 150 Kb per second. Thus, it would typically take around 7 minutes to completely fill a 700 Mb CD if writing at 12-speed. 2.4. CD Labels and Duel Case Inserts A CD label is the small round sticker which you would stick to the centre of the back of a CD with the CDs title, artist's name, etc, on it. A duel case insert is the double-sided information insert which you read through the see-through plastic case, with such as CD title, artist's name, individual track titles, artist's picture, etc, on it. You can create and print out such labels and inserts on plain or coloured A4 paper and then cut them out with scissors or you can purchase specially printed and die-cut labels and inserts which do not require cutting with scissors from shops such as PC World, Staples, etc. Most CD burning programs like Nero Burning-ROM and Easy Cd Creator provide software to permit the creation of these labels and inserts but not all of them are very accessible. You can also buy all-purpose packages from PC World and no doubt other computer suppliers which contain the die-cut labels and inserts plus a round spindle or template to use to ensure that you get your label onto the back of the CD in the correct centred position. You place the label onto the spindle in its centre, adhesive side up, and then lower the CD down onto the spindle to pick up the label. There is also a Website where you can go to create or download CD labels and to produce paper inserts from A4 paper. Its URL is: www.papercdcase.com 2.5. Types of Recordable Digital Versatile disks (DVD) As with CDs, there are several types of DVD disks. 2.5.1. Write-Only DVDs Similarly to with CDs, you can only fill a write-only DVD once, after which it can no longer be used again. 2.5.2. Re-Writable DVDs rewritable DVDs can be used over and over again just like a rewritable CD or floppy disk. You can clear the disk by burning its contents off (erasing it) and then refill it by burning new data to it. 2.6. DVD Capacities A DVDs capacity ranges from 4.38 Gb to 15.95 Gb. This depends on whether it is single sided, single layered; single sided, double layered; double sided, single layered; or double sided, double layered. However, the most common capacities are single sided 4.7 Gb disks and double sided with twice the capacity. 2.7. Types of DVD Drives At present there are two format standards with DVDs, one being DVD+ and the other DVD-. Most computer drives can normally play both formats, but external DVD recorders can usually only play their own format and not the opositions, although there are some more expensive stand-alone external DVD units which can deal with both formats. 2.7.1. DVD-ROM A DVD-ROM drive (digital versatile disk read-only memory) is only able to play sound and video files from a DVD disk and allow you to remove programs and other data from it. It cannot itself record onto blank DVD disks. This is the first kind of DVD drive which has been supplied with most computers for a few years now. You can play traditional HI-FI music and video DVDs from a DVD- ROM drive, as well as speech or music compressed MP3 files. The benchmark single speed which DVD drive speeds are calculated from is different from that of CD drives; it is a faster starting point. The original 1-speed DVD-ROM drive could read at 1.25 megabytes per second, so 4 times DVD-ROM speed would mean that it could read data at 5 Mb/s. In comparative terms in relation to the speed of a CD drive, this means that a 1 times speed DVD is approximately equivalent to an 8 times CD-ROM. 2.7.2. DVD-RW A DVD-RW drive (digital versatile disk re-writable) is a drive which can read, write and re-write to a DVD disk. This means that, in addition to being able to perform what the above drive can achieve, you can insert both write once only disks and also re-writable disks into this type of drive. If using rewritable disks, you can use them over and over again. You can fill a disk and then erase its contents and refill the disk with new ddata at a later date if you like. The typical speed of a DVD-RW drive would be something like 20 times 12 times 8. The way the speed figures are written is often the oposite to how CD drives express them. So, with a 20 times 12 times 8 specification, you would have a DVD drive which reads DVDs at 20 speed, writes to write-only DVDs at 12 speed and can write to rewritable DVDs at 8 speed. Note: Some DVD drives only specify two speeds, e.g. 16 times 8, in which case this drive would have a 16 speed reading ability and an 8 speed ability for both writing to write-only and rewritable disks. 2.7.3. Combined CD and DVD Drives You can purchase drives which will read, write and rewrite to both CDs and DVDs. Such a drive will not normally be as fast as dedicated stand-alone CD or DVD drives, as thereis usually a trade-off or compromise in speed with combination drives. For example, a combination drive may have a specification of such as 16 times 4 times 2.5 for DVDs and it may have such as 16 times 12 times 24 for CDs. 2.8. CD and DVD Cleaning Remember, you can purchase special CD and DVD cleaning fluid from many outlets. If you cannot get hold of any of this or prefer to keep your cash in your pocket you should try the following. Always follow the specific cleaning and general maintenance instructions which come with a particular make of CD or DVD. In the absence of any instructions, the below-described means of cleaning CDs and DVDs when they are not performing correctly should work fine. 1. Take a very soft, clean cloth and wet it with warm clean water. 2. Wipe the CD or DVD from the centre outwards. Do not clean in a circular motion, as this could damage the tracks. 3. If a disk is very dirty or sticky, you might also use a little mild toilet soap on the cloth as well and then thoroughly remove this from the disk with clean water. ******** >SECTION 3 INSTALLING An Internal CD DRIVE As a visually impaired person the idea of opening up your computer and installing a Cd drive may not appeal to you. Others may have sighted friends to help them in this and may relish the challenge. This section will help you install a new CD-ROM, CD-R or CD-RW into a desktop PC or at least give you an insight into what has to be done and the components involved. Alternatively, you may wish to take the easy way out, albeit a little more expensive, and purchase an external CD-RW instead of an internal one. This is also the route you are likely to have to take if you have a laptop and not a desktop computer. External drives simply plug into a port on the back of the computer, such as a USB or serial port, if you have a spare one. If not, you may have to purchase a port splitter or fit another port to the PC or connect it via a SCSI card. Whether you connect an internal CD-RW drive via the IDE socket on the motherboard or via a SCSI card in a slot on the motherboard there will be no difference in performance, although the latter method will be more expensive. By contrast, if you connect an external CD-RW using the parallel port, this will result in slower performance than if you had attached it with a SCSI card. Please note, however, that opening your own PC and installing new components may invalidate your hardware warranty, if it is still running. You should therefore check the warranty clauses to ensure that you do not invalidate this, unless, of course, you are confident of what you are doing and not too concerned about the possible ramifications of doing your own upgrade work. 3.1. Hardware Components The three types of CD drives all have the same essential components. These are: * The disk drive box itself. * Four securing screws. * A thin audio cable. * A wide IDE cable about 30 or 40 cm long. 3.2. CD Drive Description For a description of the front of a CD drive, see Section 4 below. For the present, a description of the back of the CD drive box is all that is required. If you hold the CD drive in front of you, with the back facing you, the right way up, the following plugs and switches can be observed: 1. At the very left side there is usually a small square or oblong hole, which can be ignored. 2. Moving right by a centimetre or so, will bring you to the plughole for the audio cable plug. 3. Now move a further centimetre or two to the right and you will encounter a small oblong cavity which holds a "jumper". A jumper is a small squarish, thin piece of plastic which has a thin vain of metal running through it and can therefore conduct an electrical signal. It slides between two small pins in this jumper bay, which grip it fairly tightly. Normally, a jumper will be factory set to the "slave" (SL) position, which is in the middle of the jumper bay. If the jumper is pulled out with the finger nails or a pair of tweezers, it can be reinserted a millimetre or two to the left to place it in the "master" (MAR) position. There is also a third jumper pin position to the right of the middle slave position but this does not affect this type of installation. 4. Another centimetre or so to the right of the jumper cavity is the biggest socket at the back of the CD drive box, which is a 40-pin IDE plug socket. It is about 5 centimetres long and quite thin. 5. Just to the right of the IDE socket you will find the last component at the back of the drive. This is the power supply plug socket. 3.3. Installation Procedure 1. With the computer switched off, remove the PC cover, after detaching the cables at the back. 2. To remove any static from your body, earth yourself by touching the box metal of the PC frame. 3. Remove one of the plastic covers at the front of the computer to reveal a spare drive bay. There may also be a metal plate-like tag behind this to pull off as well. 4. Slide the CD drive box into the slot at the front of the PC where you just moved the plastic facing cover from and use the four securing screws to hold it in place. They insert through the metal housings provided in the interior of the Pc case. You may not wish to fully tighten them up immediately, as you may have to slide the drive backwards and forwards a time or two whilst completing some of the below steps. Afterwards make sure that the drive box is flush with the front of the PC and the screws are tightened up. 5.A. If you do not already have a CD-ROM in your PC, you can connect your new CD-RW onto the same IDE cable that your hard disk is connected to. The IDE cable will have two identical plugs near its end. This means that you do not have to use the extra supplied IDE cable which came with your drive. Genteelly insert the second IDE cable plug into the IDE Socket at the back of the CD drive. It will only normally go in one way. This means of connecting the CD drive to your motherboard is the "slave" method, which means that the jumper should be in the slave position. This is likely to be the way it is set up when you receive the drive. 5.B. Alternatively, if you already have a CD-ROM in your computer and are fitting your new CD-RW as a second CD drive, you will have to use the new cable which came with the drive. Insert one of the two plugs at the end of the IDE ribbon cable into the IDE socket at the back of the drive and plug the other end onto the IDE pins on your motherboard. Most motherboards have two IDE sockets which are normally located very close together and parallel to one another. Just follow your hard disk IDE cable to where it is plugged into the motherboard and the second IDE plug connector should be next to that one. In this configuration, you will need to move the jumper from the slave position to the left and reinsert it in the master position. Note: A PC normally only has two IDE sockets on its motherboard (a primary and secondary connector) and each can only take two drives. This means that, if all four connectors are already in use, you will have to purchase a SCSI card to connect your new CD-RW drive to. Warning: Do not place your CD-R and CD-RW drives on the same single IDE cable, as this may cause your burning software to generate error messages when you try to fast copy on the fly directly from your CD-R drive to your CD-RW drive. 6. Take the thin audio cable and plug it into the audio cable socket on the back of the CD drive box, which is almost at the very left. The other end of the audio cable should be plugged into the sound card, if your sound card is separate from the motherboard and is the PCI type, or plug it onto the pins on the motherboard if it is the sort of card which comes as an integral part of the motherboard itself. If the latter, you may need sighted assistance to find these motherboard pins amongst all of the other cables and bric-a-brac as they are only small. Your motherboard manual will tell you which are the correct pins. 7. You should now take one of the free power cables which sprout out of the side or bottom of your computer power supply at the back of the PC and plug it into the power in socket at the very right of the CD drive box. It should only go in one way round but if you find that it can be inserted both ways, then do not switch the computer on before getting sighted help to tell you which is the correct way to plug this in. Switching your computer on with this plugged in the wrong way is likely to damage the drive and may also damage your motherboard. 8. This is the end of the installation, so replace the computer cover, plug everything into the back, screw everything up and turn the PC on. If there is no blue flash or loud bang, chances are that you've done it correctly! 9. The plug-and-play facility of Windows 9X should find your new CD-RW and recognise the new CD drive automatically. It should be working OK at this stage. 10. If you also like your CD drives to be accessible from DOS, you should install a suitable generic or specific CD drive driver which permits access via the command line. It is likely that your new CD-RW came supplied with one of these on a standard floppy disk. Just insert the floppy and type "A:\install" and press ENTER to install it. If this does not work, consult the readme or other file which should be provided on the disk for instructions. Note: You are now ready to commence testing your internal or external CD-RW. You should have received at least two complimentary CD disks with your Cd drive purchase. Typically, one of these will be a standard disk which you can write to only once but the other should be a re-writable disk which you can use to practise on without wasting several standard disks. ******** >SECTION 4 BASIC COMPACT DISK MUSIC PLAYING DIRECTLY FROM THE CD DRIVE 4.1. Features of the Front Panel of a CD Drive Typically, your CD-ROM or CD-RW drive front panel is likely to be the same as or similar to this description. Usually the panel has one or two lights to show that it is powered up and working. Obviously, it also has a drawer which ejects to permit the insertion of a CD disk in the same way you would insert a music CD into your HI-FI CD player. On the left side of the panel you are likely to find a mini jack stereo plug socket where you can plug in headphones. Next to this will be housed a small wheel for increasing or decreasing the volume of the headphones only. On the right of the CD drive there is likely to be two press buttons, the right of which is the CD drawer close/eject button and the one just to its left is the skip/recommence play button for skipping from the current music track to the next one. Just above the close/eject button there is generally an emergency eject hole, which should only be used if the automatic eject button fails. You activate this by inserting something like the end of a straightened-out paperclip into the whole until the disk drawer pops out a little, then you gently pull it out the whole way by hand. 4.2. Enabling the AutoPlay feature of Windows The AutoPlay feature is what makes your audio music CDs commence playing as soon as you insert one into the CD drive and shut it. If you do not want AutoPlay to start up immediately, you should hold down the left SHIFT key and then shut the CD drive drawer and keep the SHIFT key down for several seconds before releasing it. AutoPlay for CDs should already be enabled by default but, if it is not, you can turn it on by: 1. Press Windows Logo key followed by S (for Settings), then press C (for Control Panel) and lastly press S several times until you get to System, then press ENTER. 2. You will land in the "General" property sheet, so press CONTROL TAB to get to "Device Manager" and then ARROW down or press C until you reach "CD-ROM". You then open this folder by pressing right ARROW. ARROWing down will now reveal your single or several CD drives by manufacturer names. With the focus on the one you wish to enable AutoPlay on you should TAB to "Properties" and press ENTER. 3. From Properties you should CONTROL TAB to the "Settings" property sheet and then press TAB until you reach "Auto Insert Notification" and if this is not already checked, press the SPACEBAR to check and therefore enable it. 4. After this TAB to "OK" and press ENTER and do the same on the next dialogue, followed by pressing ALT F4 to exit the Control Panel. 4.3. Windows Music CD AutoPlay 1. As stated above, when AutoPlay is enabled, all you need do to hear a standard HI-FI music CD is insert it into the CD drive drawer and press the close/eject button. It should start playing automatically within a few seconds without you doing anything else. If it does not start playing, just press the skip/recommence play button. The disk will play until the last track has been played and then stop. 2. Whilst playing, if you wish to skip to the next track, just press the skip button. Repeated presses will move you further into the CD track by track. 3. If you wish to pause the playing of a track, you can press the close/eject button once. To recommence the playing of the track, press the skip button once. 4. To eject the CD, press the close/eject button twice. Note: To hear music using the headphone socket at the front of the CD drive you do not need a sound card. On the other hand, if you wish to hear tracks via your PC external stereo speakers, you would require a sound card. 4.4. Changing C D Playback Volume and Quality 1. Whilst a CD is playing you can alter the music volume in several ways: A. If using headphones, adjust the volume wheel to the right of the headphone jack socket. B. If listening to speakers, either use the volume knob on the speakers; or C. If the speakers do not have a volume knob or the volume knob does not increase the volume sufficiently, you may be able to increase the playback volume in a more permanent way via the Windows Volume Control. You can go straight to this from within the menus of some music playing programs, or through the System Tray or by navigating to it via: C:\Program Files\Accessories\Multimedia\Volume control in Windows 95, or C:\Program Files\Accessories\Entertainment\Volume Control in Windows 98. (See Section 6 below to discover how to use the Volume Control). 2. You can also make adjustments in volume and quality of music output from the Multimedia section of the Control Panel. Do this by: A. Press Windows Logo key followed by S (for Settings) and then C (for control Panel). B. Then press M several times until Multimedia is selected, then press ENTER to open it. C. You will fall on the "Audio" property sheet. TAB down this and make your desired changes to the "playback volume" and Recording Volume" with the ARROW up and down and PAGE up and down keys. D. Then TAB to "Preferred Quality" and ARROW through the choices. You should set this to CD quality for best quality playback results. E. Press ENTER on "Apply" and then press CONTROL TAB to look at the other three property sheets in this multi-sheet dialogue box. They include "Video", "MIDI", "CD Music" and "Advanced". Make any changes you think would suit your particular needs and set-up. For instance, if you can make use of large scale pictures/print on a monitor, you might wish to ARROW to the "Double Original Size" option in the "Video" sheet and therefore select this. In the "Advanced" sheet you have a tree of multimedia audio, video, mixer devices, etc, which you can change, select, view the properties of or remove, as you like, but you are likely to have to go into navigation or mouse mode to be able to use your right mouse key to open and thus view or change any of a particular device driver's properties. F. You should ensure that, in the "CD Music" sheet, "Headphones" is set to 100 per cent by pressing PAGE down to achieve this. G. Then TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to finish. ******** >SECTION 5 WINDOWS CD PLAYER If you are still running a copy of Windows 98(SE) or earlier, a basic but more flexible way of playing your music CDs rather than just using the CD drive front panel buttons is to launch the Windows CD Player to do this. You can then use keyboard shortcuts to play, skip, repeat play, pre-select which tracks to play and which to never play, etc. From Windows XP, however, the CD Player's duties have been taken over by the Windows Media Player and the old style CD Player is no longer supplied. 5.1. Playing a Standard Music CD with the CD Player 1. Launch the CD Player from an icon on your Desktop if you know how to place one there. Otherwise, run it by navigating to it via: pressing Windows Logo key, then P (for Program Files), A (for accessories), E (for Entertainment) and lastly C (for CD Player) The player will load. In Windows 95 the path is slightly different, as you are going to: Program Files\Accessories\MultiMedia\CD Player 2. With a CD in the drive, press CONTROL P to commence playing from track one. 3. To pause the current track, press CONTROL P again. Another press of CONTROL P will recommence play. 4. To stop play, press CONTROL S. 5. To jump to a future or earlier track, press ALT K and then ARROW down or up. You are in a list of all the tracks on the CD, so if you wish to move to a track several further on, just keep pressing the down ARROW until you reach it. Each track as you press the ARROW keys will automatically start playing for you. 6. Pressing the TAB key will cycle you through several buttons which hold some useful information, such as the name of the artists on the CD (if you have labelled this CD with this information in the Playlist dialogue), the number of the current track, etc, but most of the rest of these buttons will be found to be of little use, as pressing ENTER on them does not achieve anything unless you go to the trouble of using your screenreader's mouse or navigation mode. Whilst in the "Artist" field, you can ARROW up and down your CD drives if you have more than one and change from playing one CD to another in a second CD drive. Instead of TABBING through to the "Artist" field, a press of the A key will take you straight there. 7. To exit and close the CD Player, press ALT F4. 5.2. The View Menu--CD Player Volume Control Whilst the CD Player is running, pressing ALT V then V again takes you to the Windows Volume Control, where you can increase the default volume of music output if it is not already on full. This may or may not be necessary, depending on the type and quality of your sound card and speakers. If the volume knob on your speakers will not give sufficient volume, have a look in the Volume Control as follows: 1. As mentioned, press ALT V, V to open up the Volume Control. 2. Then press SHIFT TAB several times to the "CD Audio" Volume field and Page UP to increase the volume in large jumps or use the up ARROW key to move in smaller stages. 3. A further press of SHIFT TAB takes you to the "Balance" control where you can use ARROW or Page keys to change the sound balance in the speakers.Fifty per cent is obviously the correct balance ratio. Do not check any of the "Mute" buttons or you may loose the sound all together, possibly including the sound to your software speech synthesiser if you use one! 4. To leave the Volume Control and keep your new settings, just press ALT F4. You can also find other viewing features in the View Menu by pressing ALT V and pressing ENTER on any of the options, when things like the amount of time already played of a track or disk will be displayed on screen, or you can change this to the time still left, or you can turn on or off on-screen disk and track information. You will have to go into mouse mode to view most of these details. 5.3. The Options Menu This is where you can make selections for how your CDs will play, in a similar way to what you can do on a traditional HI-FI CD player. For instance, press ALT O (for Options) and then by pressing ENTER on "Random Order" you will check this and this will mean that all of your CD disks will now play with the tracks out of their normal disk order, randomly. After doing this, check the result by pressing ALT K to get to the tracks list and ARROW down this to observe that the tracks are no longer in track 1, 2, 3, etc, order. Some of the other options in the Options Menu are "continuous Play" and "Intro Play", where only the first 10 or so seconds of each track on a disk will play, perhaps useful if your looking for a particular track and can't remember its title. There is also "Preferences" in the Options Menu, where the way that disks play can be further fine tuned. For example, "Show Tool Tips" may be checked and you may wish to press SPACEBAR on this to uncheck it so that your screenreader is not distracted by such messages. The "Intro Play Length" editfield is also found here where you can change the default 10 seconds that IntroPlay will play a track for to any other value you personally prefer. Just use the up or down ARROW keys to change the time. TAB to "OK" to save any changes you have made. 5.4. The Disk Menu This only contains "Exit" and "Edit Playlist" but the latter is of interest. The Playlist is where you can ensure that CD Player can recognise any Music CD you place in the CD drive and all of the tracks on it or just your own selection of tracks, if you wish to exclude a few tracks which you do not like so will never wish to hear. 5.5. The Playlist To use the Playlist: 1. Place a CD in the CD drive and press ALT D followed by ENTER to bring up the Edit Playlist dialogue. 2. You will fall in the "Artist" editfield, so type the name of the group or individual who recorded the music CD. 3. Press TAB to the next editfield, which is "Title", and type the CD title in here. 4. Press TAB until you reach the "Available Tracks" list and use the ARROW up and down keys to put focus on one of the tracks you wish to have played when you play this CD. The tracks will be named "Track 1", "Track 2", etc, at this stage but you can replace these default titles with the correct track names if you wish, as directed in 7 below. 5. Press TAB to the "Add" button and press ENTER or just press ALT D to achieve the same thing. 6. You can carry on in this way for all of the tracks you wish to have played regularly on a CD. Then TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. 7. If you wish to replace the default track numbers with the actual track titles, you can also do this during the track selection stage at 4 above by TABBING on once to an editfield and replacing the track name/number shown there. Do this by pressing BACKSPACE and then typing the actual track title in. Then press TAB to the "Set Name" button and press ENTER. 8. There are also "Clear All", "Remove" and "Reset" buttons which appear at certain stages to remove track selections, put things back to how they first started, etc. 9. At any time you can go into this Playlist dialogue and observe the tracks which you have selected for automatic play by TABBING to the "Playlist" list of tracks. 5.6. Windows CD Player Shortcuts Press the letter A: To jump to the "Artist" field in order to be able to ARROW up and down your several CD drives, if you have more than one, to change from playing one CD to another in a different drive. Press ALT F4: To exit the CD Player. Press ALT K: To jump to a past or future track with the ARROW keys. Press TAB: To cycle through buttons displaying information such as CD title, artists name, title of current playing track, and so on. Press CONTROL P: To start a CD playing from track one. Pressing CONTROL P again will pause play. Another Press of CONTROL P will re-start play. Press CONTROL S: To stop play. ******** >SECTION 6 SOUND CARDS AND WINDOWS VOLUME CONTROL 6.1. Sound Cards and Their Capabilities 6.1.1. Types of Sound Cards For best results, you will need a good quality sound card. The more up-to-date Creative Labs Sound Blaster cards should meet this requirement, such as the Sound Blaster 128 or 1024 Live (preferably the latter as it is multi-channel whereas the former is not). Even more recent and better Sound Bllaster cards are the Sound Blaster 5.1, the Audigy I and the Audigy II cards, which provide such as extra speeker support and greater depth of sound sampling. Another range of good multi-channel sound cards is made by Roland and there is also the Turtle Beach Montigo card. You can listen to music and voice recordings with more basic 16- bit sound cards but the quality may be substandard. You can also make music and voice recordings with basic 16-bit sound cards but, again, the quality of the recording may be affected, for instance, you may get more background hiss and you may find that the volume of the recording, even with the Volume Control levels on full, is well below that obtained with a better quality card. Using the option to increase the volume of a recording after it has been made, which some recording programs provide, may succeed in bringing the volume of a recording up but you may also experience a proportionate increase in background noise, crackle and hiss. This type of substandard audio input recording result is often found with the on-the-motherboard varieties of 16-bit sound cards, so you may have to upgrade these to Sound Blaster Live or equivalent standards. Just because your software synthesiser works well and is plenty loud enough through a basic sound card does not mean that music or voice recordings will be as loud or clear. Note: Some sound cards may not allow a software synthesiser and music or speech from such as an MP3 file to work together. This may be because your sound card is single-channel, not the recommended multi-channel type. In this case, you would have to unload your screenreader before the music or other sound file can play, e.g. with HAL do this with CONTROL SPACEBAR, then ALT SPACEBAR followed by Q and then ENTER; with JAWS use INSERT F4 and then press ENTER; and with Window-Eyes use CONTROL \, then ALT F4, X and ENTER; after first placing focus on the link you wish to play, then press ENTER to hear the audio content. Alternatively, if your screenreader has a "sleep" mode, you may find that using this has the desired result (see "Putting your Screenreader to Sleep" in the section below entitled "Putting Your Screenreader to Sleep"). 6.1.2. What Does Such as 5.1 and 7.1 Surround Sound Mean? A couple of years ago sound cards were produced with 5.1 surround sound capabilities, e.g. the Sound Blaster 5.1 card. This means that you have a six speaker system with two stereo speakers in front of you, two stereo speakers behind you and a bass speaker located anywhere else in the room you like. the sixth speaker is the dialogue speaker, which you would normally place at the source of any speech which may come through your system, e.g. on top of or underneath your TV set. More recently, 7.1 systems have been supported by sound cards, such as the Audigy II and the Video Logic Sonic Explosion DVD sound and video cards. A 7.1 system replicates the type of all- round sound you would expect to hear at a cinema and has the same speaker configuration as that just described for a 5.1 system but also features two more stereo speakers, one immediately to your left and another to your right. You can purchase the above-mentioned types of 7.1 surround sound sound and video cards from such as: Audigy II: WWW.Creative.com Video Logic: www.puredigital.com Turtle Beach: www.turtlebeach.comYahamah: www.yamaha.com Terratec: www.en.terratec.net Yamaha: www.yamaha.com 6.2. Putting Your Screenreader to Sleep You may wish to silence your screenreader by permanently putting it to "sleep" whenever a particular program is launched rather than unloading it if it prevents you from getting the required sound card throughput or if the screenreader speech chatters at the same time as you are trying to listen to other audio output. This may be especially annoying if you are trying to record speech onto disk via your microphone in programs such as Windows Sound Recorder and Sound Forge. You should consult your screenreader manual to find out how to do this. However, I have provided below an example of how this is done with the JFW screenreader: 1. Launch your audio program, e.g. RealPlayer, and then press INSERT F2 to load the JAWS Manager. 2. From the list provided, press ENTER on "Configuration Manager", which will open the RealPlayer configuration file. 3. Press ALT S (for Set Options" and ARROW up to "Advanced Options" and press ENTER. 4. In the Advanced Options dialogue you will immediately be on "Sleep Mode Enable". You should press the SPACEBAR to enable this and therefore reduce the chance of JFW speaking and interrupting the flow of streaming audio. 5. TAB to "OK" and press ENTER twice, followed by CONTROL S to save the change and then ALT F4 to leave the manager. You will have to unload and then reload JFW to have the changes recognised. 6. If you wish to return to how things were before, you should, without Realplayer running, open and edit the realplay.jcf file in a plain text editor such as Notepad (not in a word-processor unless you then know how to save the result as a text file) and change the line which reads "sleepmode=1" to "sleepmode=0", save the file and then unload and reload JFW. The realplay.jcf file is found in the folder: c:\jaws37\settings\enu\realplay.jcf Note: Putting JAWS into sleep mode will, of course, drastically reduce the amount of screenreader feedback which you get wilst using such programs and you will have to be able to remember the keystrokes to make things work, so some users may not be happy with this and may rather leave their screenreader as it is and just unload it at times when it conflicts with other sound files. Warning: Do not mess with these settings if you are likely to be unable to reverse the above procedure or if you are not comfortable with reinstalling your screenreader should you get into trouble. 6.3. Enabling a Multi-Channel Sound Card Somewhat in contrast to what we have just done above, but just as essential for general PC use, a multi-channel sound card may need to be enabled before it will work properly. With JFW, to ensure that a multi-channel sound card works properly, allowing your synthesiser and other sounds to be heard symultaneously when this is desirable, rather than operating as a single-channel card: 1. With no program running, press INSERT F2 again and hit ENTER on "Configuration Manager". 2. Press CONTROL SHIFT D to open the "default.jcf" file. 3. Press ALT S (for Set Options) and then S (for Synthesiser Options). 4. TAB to "Allow Wave Files with Software Synthesisers" and if it is not already selected, press SPACEBAR to check it on. 5. Tab to "OK" and press ENTER. 6. To save this change and leave the manager, Press CONTROL s, then ENTER followed by ALT F4. Now unload and then reload JFW to have the saved changes recognised. Note: Obviously, this type of enabling will not be necessary if your sound card already works satisfactorily with both your synthesiser and other sound files. 6.4. The Windows Volume Control You can enter the Volume Control by going to the Windows System Tray (if your screenreader is able to take you there, e.g. INSERT F11 with JAWS, INSERT S with WE or left SHIFT Numpad SLASH with HAL 5) or by: pressing Windows Logo key, P (for Program Files, A (for Accessories), M (for Multimedia) and then V (for Volume Control) in Windows 95; or Pressing Windows Logo key, P (for Program Files), A (for Accessories), E (for Entertainment) and then V (for Volume Control) in Windows 98 and ME. When in the Volume Control you can change the various levels of volume, the balance between left and right channels and mute a particular type of sound if you do not want it coming through. You can do this for various types of input and output media, such as the volume of sound out of your speakers, the volume of ringing tone you hear when your MODEM dials, the volume of your line in and microphone sockets at the back of your computer where the sound card interfaces with the outside world, etc. When you first enter the Volume Control, you can TAB through several balance and volume adjusters. The most important for output and input of audio data are "CD Audio Volume" which, depending on the quality of your sound card, you may need on between 70 and 100 per cent. The "Volume" option may also need adjusting, depending on your sound card and how loud you want output volume as against input volume, e.g. if you are using a headset with its own microphone, you may wish to have the "Playback" setting lower for your ears and the "Microphone" setting louder for any voice recording you are doing. 6.5. Example of Changing a Sound Property--The Microphone settings To change the microphone settings you would: 1.A. Launch the Volume Control by the Program Files\ path method outlined above; or 1.B. If you elect to launch the Volume Control via the System Tray, you should press ENTER on the (Open Volume Control" choice. Do not get side tracked at this stage with this--come back to it later--but Note that there is also an "Adjust Audio Properties" choice in here as well which, if you press ENTER on it, will give you a list of five or so preferred recording devices, such as SB Live, Use any available device, game compatible device, etc. In this second choice dialogue, you can also press ENTER on "Playback Advanced Properties" and select from several types of playback speaker types, such as Desktop stereo speakers, Stereo headphones, laptop mono speakers, etc, and you can CONTROL TAB to a "Performance" property sheet to reduce speaker performance playback demands to less than 100 per cent if things are not working as well as you would like because your computer is not powerful enough to take the maximum settings. You can also TAB to a slider to move the "Sample Rate Conversion" from zero to either 50 or 100 per cent to further enhance sampling conversion quality but be aware that increasing the levels in here can also slow down the speed of response of your computer due to extra CPU overhead. Experiment with the various options to see what is best for your PC set-up. 2. Press the ALT key to open the "Options" menu. Then ARROW down to "Properties" and press ENTER. 3. You will land on the line which tells you the type of sound card in your PC which is being used, e.g. SB Live . . .. 4. Press TAB once to "Adjust Volume For" and the first option will be "Playback". ARROW down once to "Recording" and then TAB once to a list of recording options. 5. ARROW down this list to "Microphone", ensure that it is checked (pressing SPACEBAR will do this if it is not already checked) and then TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. 6. You will now have entered the Microphone adjustment controls where you can make alterations to the input volume for your microphone input to the jack on the sound card at the back of the computer. If you are not already on it, TAB forward to "Microphone Volume" and view its volume level, increasing or decreasing this as suits your PC set-up, microphone and sound card sensitivity. Use the PAGE up or down and ARROW up or down keys to increase or decrease this. ARROWING or PAGING up increases the volume, although some screenreaders may announce decreasing levels of calibration, making this a little misleading. 7. Then TAB to the "Select" button and press the SPACEBAR to turn it on if it is not already selected. 8. Sometimes you can just TAB again at this stage to the "Advanced" button and press ENTER; otherwise, see how to get into advance settings in 9 below. In here you can make a few further fine advanced adjustments, such as checking on the "Mik Boost (20 Db)" box for further volume increases if these are required. Then TAB to "Close" and press ENTER. 9. If you did not find the "Advanced" button as described above in 8, you can now press ALT O (for Options) again and press ENTER on "Advanced" to enable the advanced features, which may vary depending on the type of sound card you have. If you do not enter the advanced features box when you do this, it is because the advanced features are already enabled. In this case, you can enter the Advanced dialogue to view the Mik boost feature by pressing ALT and then ARROWING to "Advanced" and pressing ENTER or SPACEBAR. 10. Lastly, press ALT O (or just ALT Iif ALT O does not work) and ARROW to "Exit" and press ENTER to finish. Note 1: Some of the features in the Volume Control can vary, depending on the type of sound card your PC is fitted with, so some may have, for instance, more "Advanced" features and some may have none. The above example was done with a Sound Blaster Live 1024 card fitted. Note 2: You will normally use the microphone jack plug on your sound card and the microphone settings in the Volume Control for your mic and the line in jack plug and line in setting in the Volume Control for inputting sound data such as from a tape recorder, record deck, mini Cd player, etc, if you have a good sound card. The mic input is usually much more sensitive than the line in socket. However, if you have a poorer sound card, such as an on-the-motherboard type, you may find the line in socket not sensitive enough and so wish to use the mic jack socket for both mic and tape recorder input. You will have to experiment with sockets and various volume levels until you find out what is best for your requirements and sound card. Note 3: If you would like to experiment with a different way of manipulating the Volume Control, which may suit some screenreaders, you can try a utility called "Sound Control Plus". This is downloadable from: http://software.reallyeffective.co.uk ******** >SECTION 7 WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER 6.4 I have chosen to explain how to use Windows Media Player 6 at this time (February 2001) rather than the recently released Version 7, because most computers will have this already installed and because Version 7 is written for Windows 98, 2000 and Millennium Edition and does not work on Windows 95 or NT4. Thus, at the time of writing, more people have access to Version 6 than to Version 7. Windows Media Player is supplied with your Windows 9X operating system and is a program which combines the ability to play audio, video or both together. It can play to you online videos, music tracks, pop concerts, news, clips from new films, etc. It is able to do this using "Streaming audio", which is the ability to start playing media to you before it has completed downloading to your computer, thus reducing response delays. The Favourites Menu contains many links to audio and video content on the Internet to take you straight to and the "Internet Radio Guide" and "TV Guide" provide facilities to find even more online media sources. You can also save your favourite media Websites with the "Add to Favourites" option (note the American way of spelling favourites without a U in it). 7.1. Launching Media Player The quickest way to load Media Player is to place a shortcut on your Desktop or Start Menu. However, the path to use to launch it is: c:\Program Files\Accessories\Multimedia\Windows Media Player If you are using Windows 95. If you are using later versions of Windows, such as 98 it is: c:\Program Files\Accessories\Entertainment\Windows Media Player for example, you would get to the latter by pressing the Windows Logo key, then P (for Program Files), then A (for Accessories), followed by E (for Entertainment) and lastly W (for Windows Media Player). 7.2. How to Play Media Files on the Internet To play a sound/video file from the Internet: 1. You should have your Internet browser running and be on a Web page which contains links to the media content that you want to play. Press ENTER on one of these links and the media file will be downloaded to your PC and play as soon as enough of the streaming file has hit the player's buffer; or 2. Press ENTER on a media file in Windows Explorer or on your Desktop; or 3. If you know the Web address to a media file on the Net, you can: A. press CONTROL O (for Open) and then type the exact path to the audio file or audio Website content home page. For example, try one of the following: www.whrb.org www.allmusic.com www.dotmusic.co.uk http://pages.sprint.ca/radioclicks/files/default.htm (These media content Websites do exist, so try them.) B. TAB to one of the links and press ENTER on it to hear a radio station. 7.3. How to Save a Media File to Hard Disk To save a currently open media file: 1. Press CONTROL S. 2. In the editfield type the path to the folder you wish to save it in, e.g.: c:\Media Files (assuming, of coarse, that you have already created a folder called Media Files beforehand.) 7.4. Where to Find Media Files to Play on the Web It is more likely that you will play audio and/or video files directly from links on Web pages while you are browsing around Websites but you can also use the Favourites Menu of Windows Media Player to go to a good variety of preset links to Web pages that contain media files. So, if you want to listen to album and/or music tracks online, you would: 1. Press ALT A (for Favourites) and ARROW down to "Capital Records" and press ENTER. 2. Your default browser, such as Internet Explorer, will launch and you will be taken online to that audio media site. 3. On the Web page that loads in, TAB to a music track or video file and press ENTER. If you choose a video file, it is almost certain that you will also get background music as well. 4. There may be a minute or so wait until enough of the media file gets into the player's buffer before you hear anything but then the file should play. 7.5. Playing a Media File from CD-ROM or Hard Disk 1. Press CONTROL O to obtain the "Open" dialogue. 2. In the editfield that comes up press the BACKSPACE key once to clear any old text from the box and then type the full path to the media file you wish to play, e.g.: c:\Windows\Media\Jungle Windows Start.wav and press ENTER to commence playing. (This file does exist and contains a few seconds of jungle-like sounds, so try it.) Or if you cannot remember the path to the file: 1. Press ENTER on the "Browse" button. 2. SHIFT TAB back to "Look In" and ARROW up and down to the drive and folder where the file is. 3. TAB to "Files of Type" and select the type of media file you are to play or if you are not sure select "All Files". 4. Then TAB to "Open" and activate it with ENTER. The file should play. 5. When the track finishes, you can normally get it to start playing again from the beginning by pressing the SPACEBAR. You can also press the FULL STOP at any time to stop play and SPACEBAR to restart from the beginning. Yet another way to play such an on-disk file (but without Windows Media Player already being launched) is simply to go to the file with the Find feature in the Start Menu or navigate to it with Windows Explorer and then press ENTER on the file. This will launch the Windows Media Player and play the sound or video file. Be aware, though, if you have more than one media playing program on your computer, e.g. Windows Media Player, RealPlayer, Winamp, etc, it is possible that one of those will open instead of Windows Media Player and play the media file, depending upon which media player has been selected as the default player for certain types of media files (see "Changing the Associated Program for Playing MP3s" for an example of how to make or change file associations. Note 1: It is possible that your screenreader speech will prevent a sound file from playing or cover up the sound file if it is only a small sample of sound. If this happens, just unload your screenreader temporarily and then press CONTROL O again followed by ENTER and you should hear the file, as Windows Media Player remembers the last file you requested and will play it again if you do not change the filename in the "Open" editfield. You may also be able to achieve this by using your screenreader's "sleep" mode, if it has one (see "Putting Your Screenreader to Sleep" above). Note 2: Many types of files are not encoded with the Windows Media codec (coder/decoder) and so, whilst you will be able to pause and restart them with the SPACEBAR, most of the other controls, such as fast forward, skip, etc, will not work, nor will they contain markers to jump to with the CONTROL G hot key. You are more likely to find codec formatted media content on the Net itself. Note 3: If you wish to apply commands whilst a file is playing, you will have to pause playing of the file with the SPACEBAR in order to do this. In most cases, you will also have to do this because you will not be able to hear your synthesiser over the sound track either. 7.6. Playing Encrypted Packaged Media Files Secure encrypted media files exist on the Net which you can only gain access to if you register yourself for a license to do so. These files are known as "packaged" files. If you try to access an unlicensed media file, your browser will open and take you to the license registration page of the provider's Website. You are granted a license after completing the online form and Windows Media Player will then play the media file's content. A decryption key will be copied to your hard disk so that you can continue to play files from this particular site. The license you are granted may be open-ended or for a given period. When playing packaged media, details such as artist's name, content title, copyright details, etc, will be displayed on screen and it is sometimes possible to click on these lines to be taken online to the provider's or artist's Websites. 7.7. The Three Media Player Screen Displays You can have a full screen display, compact display or a minimal display. If you use the full display and do not turn any of the bars off, it will contain such as: 1. The Navigation Bar: This contains things like back and forward buttons, Radio and TV Guide buttons, etc. You may wish to turn this off as it is for mouse clicking on and there are shortcut keys to achieve these things. 2. The Video Area: This is where the video pictures, if there are any, are displayed. If this is no use to you, you may wish to shrink this to 50 per cent. 3. The Captioning Area: Displays closed captioning for deaf people, so you would wish to turn this off in the View Menu if it is not already unchecked. 4. The Seek Bar: This is where you can observe the progress of the current playing clip. It has many other controls but they are all duplicated by hot keys. You may wish to turn this off or leave it on for the progress indicator facility. 5. The Go To Bar: This displays the markers which some media files contain that you can jump to to play media from that point. You can access this with the CONTROL G shortcut, so you may want to turn this bar off. 6. The Display Area: This can contain such information as show title, clip title, author and copyright. It may or may not be of use to you. 7. The Status Line: Here the player's current status is shown, such as if still connecting with a Website, if awaiting sufficient streaming media to get into the buffer before starting to play, if currently playing, if currently paused, the amount of the track or clip which has already been played, and so forth. The reception quality of the media and whether it is in mono or stereo will also be indicated. You may wish to retain this because of its worthwhile status details. The compressed and minimal displays reduce the amount of information bars on the screen without you having to personally turn features off. However, you can make choices about which bars will be displayed in these two views as well (see "The View Menu Options Property Sheets" below). You press CONTROL 1 to switch to compact view and CONTROL 3 to go to minimal view. Pressing CONTROL 2 returns you to standard view. 7.8. Previewing the Contents of a Show A show is a list of clips (chunks of audio or video) which play in order when a media file is opened. With media in show form you can press CONTROL V to get a small portion of each clip in the show played to you. 7.9. Customising Media Player 1. To increase or decrease the playback volume press ARROW up or down respectively several times. For other such keyboard adjustments, see the list in "Shortcut Keys" below. 2. To play a file repeatedly: A. Press ALT V (for View) then O (for Options). B. You will fall on the "Playback" property sheet. TAB to the "Playback" control and it should be on "Play". TAB once again and change the default frequency of play times from one to as many as you want by BACKSPACING and then typing the new number in. If you want something to play continuously until you close Windows Media Player down, in the "Playback" control, ARROW down to "Repeat for Ever". C. Now TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to finish. 3. To change the Microsoft audio decoder settings (but this only works with a Microsoft codec decoded media file): A. With a media file playing, press ALT V (for View) and ARROW up to "settings" and press ENTER. B. Press ENTER on "Microsoft Audio Decoder". C. Adjust the sliders with the ARROW keys, moving towards a lower frequency to affect base or upper frequencies to adjust treble sounds. D. TAB to "Apply" and press ENTER to apply these new settings to the audio stream currently being listened to. E. You can activate "Reset" to return all settings to their original default values. 4. To Change the MP3 Decoder Settings: A. With a media file currently playing, press ALT V (for View) and ARROW to "settings" and press ENTER. B. Press ENTER on "MP3 Layer 3 Decoder" and press CONTROL TAB to the "Statistics" sheet to observe the stats for the currently playing file, if these mean any thing to you. C. You can make adjustments in the "Quality" sheet to adjust such as frequency, sound depth with 16 or 8 bit, select the type of stereo, the type of CPU you have, etc. D. TAB to "Apply" and press ENTER to finish. Note 1: the settings mentioned in 3 and 4 are only available if the media file was encoded with the Windows media audio Codec. Note 2: In 3 and 4 above you will only be able to observe and change settings by going into mouse mode and even then this environment is not very easy to work within. 5. To change Windows Media Playback settings: See "The View Menu Options Property Sheets" below. 7.10. Adding Media Files to Your Favourites Menu List If you want to add the currently open media file to your Favourites list, i.e. create a place-finding link to it so that you can go back there again any time quickly and easily, you should: 1. Press ALT A (for Favourites) and press ENTER on "Add to Favourites. 2. The existing name of the sound or video file will be used, unless you change this to one you prefer by typing another name in here. 3. It will save to the Favourites Menu list but you can, if you wish, TAB to "Create In" and press ENTER on one of the folders listed there to save it in. Otherwise, TAB to "New Folder" and press ENTER and type in your own new folder name, then press ENTER. Now TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to complete things and have your media file save to this sub-folder. 4. If you now go into the Favourites Menu and ARROW down it, you will see your new folder listed there and if you press ENTER on this the saved file will be found. 5. Pressing ENTER on the saved file will access the media file, wherever you saved it from, e.g. it will be located on your hard disk and played if it originated there, it will be played from your CD-ROM if it originated there (so the disk will have to be in the drive ready) or if the file was originally located on the internet you will be taken online to hear the file. 7.11. Organising Your Favourite Media Files To organise your favourite media files into folders of your choice for ease of location: 1. Press ALT A (for Favourites) followed by O (for Organise Favourites). 2. TAB to the list of folders and ARRow to the folder which contains the file you wish to move to another folder, then TAB to "Move to Folder" and press ENTER. You should now press ENTER again, when you can now ARROW down to the folder you want to move the file to and press ENTER. 3. if you want to create a new folder to move media files to, you should first create it by TABBING to "Create Folder" typing in the new folder name you want and then press ENTER. You can now move the desired file to it as in 2 above. Note: It is in this "Organise . . . " dialogue that you can delete files and folders from the Favourites Menu and any sub- menus. 7.12. Playing a Favourite Media File You can do this by: 1. Press ALT A (for Favourites). 2. ARROW down (or up) the list of favourites media files and press ENTER on the one you wish to play. This menu list of favourites will have many preset favourites for you already placed in it, e.g. "ABC News and Entertainment", "Capital Records", "Windows Media Showcase", etc. 7.13. The View Menu Options Property Sheets You can enter this multi-tabbed property sheet by pressing ALT V (for View) and then O (for Options). There are five sheets in here which you might like to observe and make some changes in, depending on how well the player is functioning and your own likes and dislikes. I will mention some of the more interesting ones below. Move between the sheets by pressing CONTROL TAB AND CONTROL SHIFT TAB. They are: 1. The "Playback" sheet: A. In the "Audio Volume" option you can observe the audio level setting and change it by pressing the right and left ARROW keys. Note, however, that this is much more easily done with the ARROW up and down shortcut keys when a file is playing. B. You can change the balance in the speakers from 50 per cent if you wish. C. The "Play" and "Repeat for Ever" options have been mentioned above. D. You may wish to change the "Video View" to 200 per cent if you can then make any use of the screen. E. In the "Video Hardware Acceleration" area you may, if you can not benefit from the screen, wish to ARROW left and put this on 0 to reduce the overhead on your PCs processor; otherwise, leave it at 100 per cent. F. After making any changes, TAB to "Apply" and press ENTER and then CONTROL TAB to the next sheet. 2. The "Player" sheet: A. In the "AutoZoom Player" control you should leave as checked to ensure that your preferred zoom (magnification) level for video clips is automatically retained. B. Make any other changes which suit you and then TAB to "Apply" and activate this with ENTER. Note there will not be an "Apply" button if you have not changed anything. 3. The "Custom Views" sheet: A. What you change in here depends on if you (or anyone else) can use the monitor and a mouse. If neither are of use to you, you may wish to turn everything off by pressing SPACEBAR on each line, except for the "Status Line" which can contain important progress and status information. These on and off options are available for both "Compact" and "minimal" views. B. TAB to "Apply" and press ENTER. Then CONTROL TAB to the next sheet. 4. The "Advanced" sheet A. It is not likely that you will need to change anything in here. This sheet is concerned with the filters which are used in streaming media, the type of protocol used to communicate on the Web, the ability to use your current browser's proxy settings, the number of seconds of buffering before a streaming file will play, etc. B. If you have the knowledge to make such changes, you should activate the "Change" button and do so. 5. The "Formats" sheet: A. The available audio and video formats Windows Media Player has at its disposal are listed here. B. If you are having problems with Windows Media Player not being able to play certain media types, pressing ENTER on "select All" may remedy this. In other cases, it may happen that a certain media format is not accessible by the player. 7.14. Shortcut Keys (Note: some menu options and shortcut combinations will only work whilst you have a media file playing, either on the Internet or from CD or hard disk. You will also have to press the SPACEBAR to pause the playing of the media file before you can make some of these changes so that you can hear your speech synthesiser instead of a sound track.) Press F1: To bring up the Help Contents sheet or to obtain context help whilst in a menu. Press ALT F4: to exit the player. Press up ARROW: to increase playback volume. Press down ARROW: to decrease volume. Press left ARROW: To rewind until you release the key. Press right ARROW: To fast forward until you release the key. Press SPACEBAR: To play or pause a media file. Press . (full stop): To stop playing a file. Press ESCAPE: To return to full screen mode and stop the player. Press PAGE up: to skip back and restart the current clip or play the previous clip. Press PAGE down: To skip forward a clip. Press ALT left ARROW: To go back. Press ALT right ARROW: To go forward to the next media file in the list of files played in this session. Press ALT 1: to resize the video to 50 per cent. Press ALT 2: To resize the video to 100 per cent. Press ALT 3: To resize the video to 200 per cent. Press CONTROL left ARROW: to continuously rewind. To stop this press another key. Press CONTROL right ARROW: To continuously fast forward. To stop this press another key. Press CONTROL F: To be taken online to radio stations. Press CONTROL G: To open the Go To dialogue and find a marker to play from. Press CONTROL HOME: to be taken on line to the Media Guide. Press CONTROL M: To mute the playing of a file. Press CONTROL O: To open a media file. Press CONTROL S: To save a file. Press CONTROL u: to be taken online to music Websites. Press CONTROL V: To obtain a preview of each section in the Play List. Press CONTROL 1: To obtain the standard screen view of the player. Press CONTROL 2: To obtain the compact screen view of the player. Press CONTROL 3: To obtain the minimal screen view of the player. Press ALT ENTER: To make the player full screen. Press it again to return to the previous size. Press CONTROL T: To have the player always appear on top of any other windows but it is recommended that this is turned off for use with a screenreader. Press SHIFT F10: To open the context menu. Note 1: The above hot keys concerned with skipping forward, backward, rewinding, etc, do not, for obvious reasons, work when you are listening to live shows or concerts. They are appropriate to playing online music tracks, archive shows, and the like. Note 2: If you are using Windows Media Player 7, most of the above shortcuts will not work and some of them do different things, e.g. CONTROL S stops the playing of a file rather than saving a file. You would use CONTROL F to skip forward a track and CONTROL B to jump back a track. Additionally, Media Player 7 does not have a Favorites menu and its Options are not found in the View Menu but rather in the Tools Menu. ******** >SECTION 8 REALPLAYER 8 BASIC 8.1. Downloading RealPlayer Basic the minimum version of this program is approximately 4.1 Mb in size and may take about 20 minutes to download. To download it: 1. Go to the Realnetworks Website by running Internet Explorer, pressing CONTROL O and typing the URL in of: www.real.com and press enter. 2. When the page loads in, TAB to the "Download Now" link an press ENTER. 3. ARROW down to a heading of "Download" and move underneath this to a "Realplayer" link and press ENTER. 4. The "realPlayer Plus or RealPlayer 8 Basic" page will load. TAB to or search with CONTROL F to the "RealPlayer 8 Basic" link and press ENTER. 5. The download form will then load and you will have to TAB forward again several times to a form which starts with a "Email" editfield and enter your e-mail address. then press the TAB key. 6. Keep on completing the personal details fields as normal but remember when you get to the listboxes you may have to press the ENTER key before the lists of countries, OSs, CPUs, etc, will display for you to ARROW through. There is a list of download sites for you to choose from, including one in Leeds in the UK. 7. After completing/selecting all of the options on the form, TAB to the "Download Free RealPlayer 8 Basic Beta" button and press ENTER. 8. The file will commence downloading and you should choose to have it saved to disk for you to open and run/install in the normal way. The set up should place a shortcut on your desktop called "RealPlayer Basic" for you to run it from. Note 1: If you choose to check the "Spinner" download as well in step 5 above, the downloaded filename will be slightly different and the file size will be 13 Mb. In this case, the download may take an hour or so. What you will get is a full suite of Real Networks programs, including RealPlayer 8 Basic, RealSpinner, Real Jukebox, RealDownload and a number of other components. Some of the links above may also be slightly different and the word "Beta" may no longer be there. Note 2: During the installation, if you do not want RealPlayer to be the default player for most of your sound files (the one which automatically loads and plays them) you will have to check this off during the installation. Note 3: If you already have the older version of RealPlayer G2, you will be able to use its update facility to achieve the above more easily. Note 4: As another alternative, you may find it easier to download RealPlayer 8 Beta from the ACB Radio Website at: www.acbradio.org by TABBING to "Visit our Download Page" and then from there TABBING to the RealPlayer 8 Beta download link. Just follow the on screen prompts and accept the default options by pressing ENTER on all of the "Next" buttons until you get to "Finish". You can then locate the "rp8-setup.exe" compressed file which will drop onto your Desktop (or wherever else you indicated it should go) and complete the registration form, indicate the speed of your modem, etc, and then accept all of the "Next" buttons to the "Finish". The program should automatically start with music and a few welcome sentences and offer to take you online to send the registration form and start your first media session. You can also download Winamp from this page and several JFW and Window- Eyes script and set files to make audio programs work more easily with your screenreader. RealPlayer 8 Basic (or beta) run for 120 days but you can then download another 128 day copy if you wish. If you download the full suite of Real Networks programs, you will also get Real Jukebox. With this you can record your own MP3 files plus other real audio formats via your sound card line in or mic jack plugs. 8.2. Pen-Picture of the RealPlayer Basic Screen The likely layout of the RealPlayer screen as its default is as follows. At the top of the screen is the standard Title Bar with the word "realPlayer" displayed as the running program. Just under this is the Menu Bar, with File, Edit, etc and below this there is a Toolbar of options to click on. Below this appears the "Location Bar", which shows the address of the file you are currently playing. Below this is the rest of the screen with, on the left, the "Content Panel", which displays advertisement-type details, such as Take 5, Bloomburg, ZD TV, etc. to the right is the majority of the main display panel where any script or video clips, etc, would be displayed when you are running realPlayer. Then, at the very bottom of the screen, comes the "Status Bar" showing the state of progress of clip downloads, etc. However, you may wish to reduce the number of panels displayed so that the screen is less cluttered and so that your screenreader does not continually chatter the contents of the "Contents Panel". You can do this by pressing ALT V and unchecking the "Location Bar" and "Content Panel". You will probably want to keep the "Status Bar" checked and, in order to give you access to Realplayer's search facilities, you may wish to check the "RealPlayer Media Bar". This Media Bar will pop up just above the Status Bar. Alternatively, if you press CONTROL M, you will get a compact view of the screen with most of the bars turned off and with a reduced Toolbar and Status Line. The view is similar to the display of a CD player and suitable for audio playback. Pressing CONTROL N will return you to the normal screen view. If you want to know the title, author and copyright for the current clip or portion of a multiclip you should enable the "Clip Info Bar" with ALT V, I. 8.3. Using RealPlayer Basic Start RealPlayer by pressing ENTER on its shortcut on the Desktop. It will come up with a short burst of introductory music and your screenreader may get into a loop and continuously speak what is called the "Content Panel". To stop this, press ALT V to get into the View Menu and ARROW down to "Content Panel" and uncheck this by pressing ENTER. There are many more of these panels or bars in the View Menu and you may wish to uncheck some or most of these in order to obtain a less cluttered screen. However, it is recommended that you leave the "Status Bar" and "Realcom Media Bar" checked. The former keeps you up to date on the state of clip downloads, the stream bandwidth, etc, and the latter makes four useful buttons available to you. RealPlayer plays media in "clips", which are blocks of video or audio data. These may be snippets of news, whole lectures or a block of several music tracks. The latter are called multiclips. 8.4. Loading a Clip in RealPlayer You can load a clip in several ways: 1. Press ENTER on a media link on an Internet page and RealPlayer will launch automatically and play it. 2. Drag a media file or link to the RealPlayer or RealPlayer icon on the Desktop, when RealPlayer will play the clip. 3. Select a favourite from the Favourites Menu, when the media will automatically be accessed without opening a browser, even if the media is on the Web. 4. By pressing CONTROL L and then entering a location on the Web (Internet address path to a video or audio media file) which begins with "rtsp://" or "pnm://" or "http://" in the dialogue box that appears. For example: http://www.acb.org/acblive/mainstream.pls Note: You can only play a media clip in this way if you have the full path to the file. 5. By pressing CONTROL O and choosing a local (on your hard disk) media file. For instance, press CONTROL O, and type in the editfield the full path to the media file, e.g.: C:\Program Files\Real\RealPlayer\firstrun.rm and Press ENTER. Or you can browse to it by TABBING to the "Look In" button where "RealPlayer" should be highlighted (or you can ARROW to it), then TAB again once to a list of audio and video files which you can play by pressing ENTER on one of them, e.g. press ENTER when you get to "firstrun.rm and the RealPlayer introduction file will play or ARROW to "videotest.rm" and press ENTER to see this video test file run. 6. By pressing ALT f and ARROWING down to a recently opened clip at the bottom of the File Menu to replay one of these. By default, the last eight clips you played are stored here. The Channels Menu (ALT C) holds quick links to services, such as news, sports, etc. It updates headlines from the services it is associated with on a regular basis when connected to the Internet. 8.5. Searching for Things to Listen to or Watch You can find media to watch or listen to by navigating to the "Realcom Media search Bar" buttons (just above the Status Bar) with your mouse cursor and pressing ENTER on either: 1. Radio Tuner: To find radio stations. 2. TV Guide: To open Real.com Guide which is a Realnetworks site which searches the Internet for interesting content and pulls it all to one place for you to find. 3. Search: This is the same as a typical search engine on the Net but it only finds links which include streaming media. What happens is that Realcom opens www.real.com in your browser which allows you to choose search and find content by pressing ENTER on links or typing in words or phrases to do with the subject you are interested in. 4. Message Service: This keeps you up to date by automatically updating channels and channel headlines, so that the best Web content is always available to you. 5. Another good way to find radio and video stations to listen to or view (but you do not hae to have a media player open to do this--just go there from Internet Explorer) is to go directly to a specific screenreader-friendly site such as: www.mikesradioworld.com Where you can select a country and then display a list of radio stations. You can also get these stations categories into genres such as pop, easy listening, classical, etc. Note: Some Web media sites house their own realaudio player links and will play video and audio directly from those links if you press ENTER on them without you having to start a media player first. 8.6. The Play List Open the Play list with ALT V, Y. While a multiclip is playing the play list will display the currently playing track of the multiclip. This is not available with single clips. To see the rest of the play list or table of contents, e.g. album track titles, press ENTER on it to view a dropdown menu and select a different heading to cause the player to jump to that position within the multiclip. RealPlayer, wherever possible, uses streaming audio so that sound/video playback can commence before the full audio or video has been downloaded to your PC. 8.7. The RealPlayer Basic Favourites Folder This menu option lets you return to your favourite media and programmes quickly. You can add a favourite by pressing ALT A and pressing ENTER or by pressing CONTROL A while playing a clip. When you next want to go to this entertainment source, you just go into Favourites, select it and press ENTER. If you want to go to some sites with interesting realaudio on them already set up for you in RealPlayer, press ALT A and ARROW down to "Websites" and press ENTER. A list of such sites will appear for you to press ENTER on any one to be taken to that site, e.g. Musicnet, Live Concerts.com, etc. 8.8. RealPlayer Help Some versions of RealPlayer Basic do not come automatically with an online help file as part of the downloaded program but others do. The version of RealPlayer Basic which I have included on the CD-ROM version of this tutorial does contain the online help file. You just press F1 or ALT H and then Enter to open it. If you have the RealPlayer 8 Basic Beta version, this does not come with the help file, so you may wish to download a more up-to-date copy. If you have a version with no online help file, after downloading the help file from the Real.com site (see the "Note" below the list of shortcut keystrokes, you can successfully use the standard Windows-type help file with your screenreader but you will need to maximise the help window (with ALT SPACEBAR and then press X) so that the information lines are not truncated. Note that the help file is the whole RealPlayer Plus help document, so some of the features mentioned in it will not work in the free basic version, e.g. you cannot stop a clip partway through and mark it to recommence later, you cannot make your own recordings, you do not have the use of "Perfect Play", etc. Press F1 (or ALT H and ENTER) to load the RealPlayer help menu bar just below the normal Windows menu bar and to hear the initial help introduction. Use PAGE DOWN to hear the next page of information. There will usually be a number of links at the end of the help text which are related to the topic which you can TAB through and press ENTER on to obtain more details. After perusing the initial help pages, you can only get back to the help contents sheet to obtain more detailed headings and subheadings by going to the "Contents" button at the top of the window with your mouse cursor (the JAWS cursor, HAL navigation mode, Window-Eyes mouse keys, etc) and pressing the left mouse click key on it. You can then ARROW down the help file main headings and open them with ENTER as you go along. When you have read the whole of a particular topic, go back to the "Content" button and left click on it again to return to the contents list. By pressing ALT H, there are also FAQ (frequently asked questions) files which you can be taken to on the Real.com site in the Help Menu under "Common Questions" and a whole "Knowledge Base" from which to get answers to technical questions.The "Check for Update" option will enable you to download the latest versions of any of the realnetworks software you already have. If you are using JFW 3.5 or higher, you can obtain more RealPlayer help and information by activating JAWS application help by pressing INSERT F1 twice. However, be aware that, whilst most of this is still applicable to RealPlayer 8 Basic, the version of RealPlayer they are referring to may be the older RealPlayer G2. 8.9. RealPlayer Basic Shortcut Keystrokes RealPlayer Basic has a standard Windows-type Menu Bar which you can view by pressing the ALT key and ARROWING left and right. Most of the more important functions, however, can be achieved by use of shortcut keystrokes, and these are outlined below: Press F1: To load the help contents sheet. Press F5: To refresh the HTML. Press ALT F4: to exit the RealPlayer. Press CONTROL P: To start and pause play. Press CONTROL S: To stop play and take it back to the start. Press CONTROL left ARROW: To rewind play. Press CONTROL SHIFT left ARROW: To super rewind play. Press CONTROL right ARROW: To fast forward play. Press CONTROL SHIFT right ARROW: To super fast forward play. Press CONTROL up ARROW: to increase the volume. Press CONTROL down ARROW: To reduce the volume. Press PAGE UP: To go back to the previous clip in a multiclip file or the next location when scanning. Press PAGE DOWN: To go to the next clip. Press CONTROL H: To initiate a search. Press CONTROL L: To open location and let you play real media files on the Net without using your Web browser. You then enter the URL of any streamed content, such as .rm, .ra or .ram file. Press CONTROL O: To open a local file on your hard disk and play it, after selecting a media file, such as a .ra, .rm or .ram file. Press CONTROL N: To obtain normal view displaying all RealPlayer buttons and controls. Press CONTROL M: To switch to compact view, where only the image area is displayed, together with a subset of the buttons and a reduced Status Bar and menu selection. ******** >SECTION 9 WHAT ARE MP3 FILES AND WHERE CAN THEY BE DOWNLOADED FROM? 9.1. What is MP3? Basically, an MP3 file is a compressed audio file, making it more suitable in size for storing on your hard disk and for up and down loading to an from the Internet. An MP3 file can be compressed to around one eighth or one tenth of its original size, but there are different intensities of compression, depending upon the quality of the sound file you wish to create. MP3 files have the extension ".MP3". MP3 is the layer 3 audio equivalent of the MPEG video standard set by the Motion Picture Experts Group. The first and still most common MP3 files were copied at a constant bit rate (C.B.R.), meaning that the same consistent bit rate through the whole file is used during the encoding. More recently, MP3 V.B.R. (variable bit rate) has become available, which allows the bit rate for different sections of a sound file to change according to how complicated given parts of an audio file are; more complicated parts are allocated a higher bit rate than simple parts. 9.2. Where to Look for MP3 music and Other Audio Files There are thousands and thousands of sites on the Internet which hold MP3 files, of news items, shows, tutorials in speech and, of course, many music tracks. "MP3" has been the most frequent search request typed into Internet search engines for the past year or two. Many MP3 music sites are perfectly legitimate and the music held there is freely and legitimately downloadable, e.g. from www.mp3.com. However, there are many sites of doubtful legitimacy which provide either directly or indirectly MP3 sound files which contravene the artists' copyrights, e.g. Napster. I have no intention of moralising on these points. Below are a small selection of both legitimate and not so legitimate Websites for you to browse. It is up to you whether you participate in their offerings or not. There is one point about up and downloading of MP3 files, however, which should be mentioned. Despite the fact that MP3s are compressed files to around 50 to 10 per cent of their original size, they are still, nonetheless, substantial files to download. With a standard 56K MODEM or lower, it could take you around four hours to download an album of MP3 music which would play for an hour on your PC. For quick up and downloading of MP3s you need an Internet connection like universities and commercial companies use, such as a T1 or T3 connection. Otherwise, a home user could invest in an ISDN or DSL high-speed connection, if they were serious about MP3 music. 9.3. Sources of Legitimate MP3 Listening and Downloading The MP3.COM Site This is to be found at: www.mp3.com and is where many up-and-coming musicians deposit tracks of their music for free download as a means of getting publicity and becoming better known. You can sometimes download whole tracks of music and, in other cases, you may only be able to download a snippet of several tracks for evaluation. Similar to MP3.com is Emusic.com at: www.emusic.com Another music Website, which has thousands of MP3 files, players, audio editors, monthly and weekly news and review e-mail magazines and news letters, and much, much more is Hitsquad. It can be found at: www.hitsquad.com AT Hitsquad you can download a small free utility which permits you to split MP3 files into smaller files, e.g. if you wanted to post one to someone on several floppy disks or just work with it in smaller chunks. However, this software is not particularly screenreader-friendly and you will have to play with it a bit to get used to how to use it, what buttons and graphics to what, etc. Alternatively, MP3 Scissors can be downloaded from: www.tfm.ro 9.4. Commercial MP3 Download Sites Some commercial sites to purchase MP3s from and pay for them by credit card online are: www.eclissical.com www.napster.com This latter site is the new commercial Napster 2 site but at the time of writing it was only usable by US residents. Those outside of the US cannot download the playing and shopping software required to use it. A UK version is expected sometime during 2004. US citizens can download individual music tracks for around 99 cents each or whole albums for around 10 dollars each. 9.5. MP3 Specific Web Search Engines With these you can narrow your search for MP3 files to sites which specialise in MP3 provision. Some such search engines are: www.scour.com www.imesh.com www.listen.com (This is now part of Rhapsody) 9.6. Peer-to-Peer Music Sharing Sites Peer-to-peer music sharing sites are illegal but there are still dozens of them around. The first, as you will know, was the original carnation of Napster but this has now been closed down. It has been replace by Napster 2, which is no longer a file sharing site but rather a legal, commercial site to purchase and download music files from. Peer-to-peer file sharing sites spring up all of the time and can just as quickly disappear. I am not touting the use of such sites and neither am I moralising about them. If you wish to participate in such file sharing, it is up to you and none of my business. I simply list several such sites below for your information. The normal modus operandi of file sharing communities is that you download specialist participation software from the peer-to-peer site and you then create a folder on your computer to hold music MP3s and other files for free sharing with others. The other participants do likewise. Examples of such peer-to-peer free file sharing sites can be found at: www.kazaalite.com www.grokster.com www.blubster.com www.slsknet.org/download.html www.musicseek.com www.xolox.com www.winmx.com www.sonicnet.com www.audiofind.com www.toadnode.com www.bearshare.com www.morpheus.com www.peerbuddy.com www.filetopia.com Note 1: At any time one or more of the above download sites could be closed down as legal suits catch up with them. Note 2: Your screenreader maker's e-mail discussion and help list Website may hold several of these music download programs plus set or script files for using them, e.g. www.jfwlite.com holds 9.7. The Ask MP3 Link Portal The Ask MP3 portal has hundreds of links on it to MP3-related sites and information. It is at: www.askmp3.com It links you to places where you can find MP3 players of all kinds, MP3 files, video players, MP3 FAQs, MP3 books, free and legal MP3 music, MP3 search engines and numerous more MP3 resources. If you go to the "Free and Legal MP3 Music" download link, you will find many sources of free MP3 music. 9.8. MP3 Lyriics Databases In a similar vein to obtaining MP3 music itself, there is a freeware program called MP3 Lyrix which you can download and is reasonably usable with a screenreader. You search for a particular song and the software interrogates a number of Internet-based song lyrics databases and will display the words of the song if it is there. You can personally add more databases to its list if you know of any more. MP3 Lyrix is downloadable from: www.killersoftware.com/software/mp3lyrix.exe 9.9. The Wavethemes Theme Music Download Site You can download many Radio, TV and film theme music clips, such as the Dr Who theme music, from: www.wavethems.net ******** >SECTION 10 WINAMP VERSION 2.72 Winamp is probably the world's favourite MP3 file player and creator. The most up-to-date offering as of February 2001 is Version 2.72. You can download this or any later version from: www.winamp.com Alternatively, Winamp is frequently given away with free software disks on computer magazines, or can be bought cheaply from PC software vendors or software mail order companies, who just charge for the disk, postage and the service, not for the freeware programs themselves. You can also often find this sort of software provided on free ISP disks from sources such as ESO garages, PC World and Freenet. Note: Whether you have Winamp Version 2.72, 2.5 or 2.77, you will find no noticeable difference in how they work. 10.1. Downloading Winamp from the Internet 1. Launch your browser and go to the URL: www.winamp.com 2. ARROW down to the "Download Winamp 2.72" link and press ENTER. 3. Now, on the next page, move down to "Select Version", where there are three version choices, Full, Standard and Lite. The "Full" version is checked by default and you should leave this as it is. Just below these version options is the "Download" button, so press ENTER on this to commence the download. 4. The download will take about 10 to 15 minutes with a 56K modem and the file is 2.6 Mb in size. 5. The file will copy to disk and normally place a link to itself on your Desktop. It is a self-extracting file called "winamp272_full.exe". Alternatively, you can obtain Winamp from the specialist Website for visually impaired people which also holds downloadable JFW and Window-Eyes scripts and set files to make Winamp easier to use: www.winampfortheblind.com Another place to download Winamp from is: www.winampheaven.com 10.2. Installing Winamp and Disabling the Winamp Agent 10.2.1. Installation To uncompress and install the win272_ful.exe file: 1. Go to your Desktop or wherever your downloaded files download to and put focus on the downloaded .exe file, then press ENTER. 2. Read the license agreement if you wish, which tells you that Winamp is freeware. Then TAB to "Next" and press ENTER. 3. TAB to the next "Next" button and press ENTER to obtain a full installation. Note that you can, at this stage, choose Standard or Lite installation versions if you wish. 4. After a short while you will be asked how Winamp should connect to the Internet--via LAN, Dial-UP MODEM connection or no connection available. ARROW to the appropriate one for you, e.g. Dial-Up MODEM if you have a standard MODEM connected to your phone line in your home. 5. Winamp will preserve file associations, link itself up with audio CDs, place an icon on the Desktop and on the Start Menu, etc, so just TAB to "Next" and press ENTER, unless you wish to change any of its default selections. The Defaults, as not all screenreaders can identify which options are checked or unchecked, are for all options to be checked except for options 3 and 7. I recommend that you check the Winamp Agent off by pressing SPACEBAR on it. 6. The file finishes instalment quickly and then offers you three choices to TAB through: "Walk Through", "Winamp.com" and "Run Winamp". You may as well press ENTER on "Run Winamp", unless you wish to go back onto the Winamp.com Website. The "Walk Through" option does not seem to do much for a screenreader user. 7. Winamp will launch and you are ready to go--or would be if you knew how to use it! It is probably advisable, as well, to exit Winamp and reboot your PC at this stage, then launch Winamp again from the Desktop icon. 10.2.2. Disabling the Winamp Agent The Winamp Agent is suppose to provide you with easier access to the Winamp features but it is recommended that you turn the Winamp Agent off, as it can subject screenreader users to more trouble than it is worth and may cause your computer to run sluggishly. If you were not able to deselect the Agent at installation step 5 above, you can do so as follows: 1. Press CONTROL P to get into Preferences. 2. Go to the "Agent" section and press the SPACEBAR to check it off. You may be able to TAB to it or you may have to do this in mouse mode, depending on your screenreader. 10.3. Playing a Single MP3 File To Play an MP3 music or speech file: 1. Load Winamp from the shortcut which will have been placed on your Desktop during the installation. otherwise the long way to launch it is via the path: "c:\Program Files\Winamp\winamp.exe" You can do this by browsing to the winamp.exe file via the Program Files option on the Start Menu or by using the Run command on the Start Menu (Windows key R) and then typing the above pathname into the editfield, including the double quotes and pressing ENTER. 2. The standard interface which Winamp presents is not screenreader-friendly and nothing very legible is likely to be gleaned by observing it in mouse mode. 3. Press the letter L key to bring up the "PlayList" dialogue box. Now you have to tell Winamp where to find an MP3 file to play. This could be on a CD disk in your CD-ROM drive or in a folder on your hard disk, for example. 4. Winamp provides a sample MP3 file for you to experiment on. This is in the path: c:\Program Files\Winamp\demo.mp3 So for this example identify this as the file you wish Winamp to play, as follows. 5. After pressing L above, you will fall in the "Filename" text box. Just TAB forward to "Files of Type" and ARROW up and down these to get an idea of the large number of default audio types Winamp can play. Then go to the "MPEG Audio Files . . ." option. 6. Next SHIFT TAB back three times to a "Look In" list of your drives and main folders. ARROW to your C drive with left or right ARROWS or up or down ARROWS. 7. Then TAB once to the list of folders on the C drive and press the P key until "Program Files" is highlighted and then press ENTER. 8. From here press the W key until "Winamp" has focus and again press ENTER. 9. Now press D until the "demo.mp3" file is found. 10. You are now set to hear the file, so press ENTER to activate it. You will hear this short, spoken, file together with a few sheep in the background. If the file is too quiet use the ARROW up key to increase the volume. The ARROW down key decreases it. 11. If you go back into the PlayList by pressing L again, you will find that the path to the "demo.mp3" file is remembered and retained by Winamp, so you could easily hear more MP3 files from this folder, if any more of them actually existed in it. 12. When you have finished with Winamp, press ALT F4 to exit the program. In practice, however, you are more likely to be navigating to a separate folder with many MP3 speech or music files in it or to your CD-ROM or CD-RW drive to play such files and so retaining the location of these folders makes finding and playing other tracks from the same location quicker and easier. Of course, if you are wanting to play music tracks from your CD drive, at stage 6 above, you will be ARROWING to your D or E drive, depending on where you have your CD-ROM configured to work from. 10.4. Playing all of the MP3 Tracks in a Folder You are more likely to wish to play a whole album of MP3 tracks than just an isolated single track. Typically, the tracks on an MP3 CD data (not HI-FI audio) disk are copied into folders (directories) which contain all of the tracks on a given album. A data CD disk may contain as many as 10 or 12 of these MP3 album folders. Remember, MP3 sound tracks are normally placed on a data CD disk and not an audio disk, unless you want to mix HI-FI audio tracks with MP3 music files, but, of course, they can only generally then be played on your PC and not your HI-FI, although I am sure that it will not be long before HI-FI systems will also be able to play MP3s. To play a whole Mp3 or other music format album from CD disk you can use one of two methods: 1. The preferred method, no doubt, will be: A. Press SHIFT L to open the "Open Directory" dialogue. B. The list of folders/albums on a CD disk or in a hard disk directory (whichever you last were working in) opens up. You can ARROW up and down to other albums on the disk or to other folders on your other drives. If this does not happen (and it will not if this is the very first time you have run Winamp), just ARROW up and down the list you are in until you get to the CD drive or hard disk folder you want to be on. C. After ARROWING to your desired album, TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. all of the songs on that album will play. D. To pause play at any time, press the letter C key and press C again to recommence play. To stop play altogether, press the letter V key. 2. Alternatively, you can achieve this by: A. Follow the steps outlined in 1 to 4 in "Playing a Single MP3 File" above. B. To play MP3 music files, TAB to "Files of Type" and select the MPEG MP3 format. C. TAB forward to the "Look In" list and ARROW up or down to the drive letter that your CD drive is on, e.g. typically the D or E drive. D. TAB once to the next list where the folders/albums will be listed. ARROW down this list to the album you wish to play and then either press ENTER on it or press right ARROW to open up all of the individual tracks on that album. E. You will fall on the first track in that album. Each track will have a track number before it and the track name ill follow this. You must now highlight all of the tracks in the album in the usual Windows way, i.e. Press CONTROL A. F. Lastly, TAB to the "Open" button and press ENTER. The tracks will start playing. Adjust the volume with the up and down ARROW keys. 10.5. Playing Standard HI-FI CD Audio Disks Use the menu system to play an audio CD which is not in MP3 format: 1. Press ALT and then ARROW down to "Winamp". 2. Press ENTER to activate the sub-menu and then ARROW down once to "Play". 3. Press ENTER to open the sub-menu and then ARROW up to "Audio CD" and ensure that the correct CD drive is highlighted if you have more than one. 4. Press ENTER to commence the playing of music from the music CD in that drive. 5. All of the standard Winamp shortcut keys work in the same way as they do with playing MP3 files. 10.6. Playing Non-Consecutive Tracks To play selected non-consecutive tracks from an audio HI-FI CD, an MP3 data CD or WAV files from somewhere on your hard disk, you would: 1. With focus on the Main player window, press the letter L to bring up the PlayList. 2. If the folder which the tracks are in is not already displayed when you SHIFT TAB backwards to check, you should navigate to the correct drive and folder, as instructed earlier in this section, to display them. 3. In the "Filename" editfield, type the names of the tracks, enclosed in double quotes and with a space between each, e.g. "track02.cda" "track05.cda" "track10.cda" or "strawberry fields.mp3" "let it be.mp3" "sergeant pepper.mp3". 4. TAB to the "Open" button and press ENTER to commence the playing of tracks in the order you specified. 10.7. Playing MP3 Tracks from the Internet If you know of any specific MP3 files, either songs, news files, shows, spoken tutorials, etc, you can be taken online and have them played to you. Do this by: 1. Press CONTROL L to enter the "locations" dialogue. 2. Type in the URL (Website address and filename) of the MP3 file you wish to hear, e.g.: http://www.mp3.com/albatross.mp3. 3. TAB to the "Open" button and press ENTER. 4. You will be taken onto the Net and the file will be played. Note: The above URL and music filename is an example only and trying to play the "albatross.mp3" file will not work because it does not exist. It is an example only. 10.8. Playing Streaming Audio Radio from the Internet If you want to hear a continuous radio station on the Internet: 1. Launch Winamp. 2. Press CONTROL L and type in the editfield the radio station's location address, e.g.: http://166.90.143.149:10998 and press ENTER. 3. You will hear the Radio Caroline radio station from this location, after a short delay whilst the audio fills Winamp's buffer. Note: This radio station did exist at the time of writing but these things can change rapidly on the Internet. 10.9. Making Personal Tone Changes in The Winamp Graphic Equalizer To make personal adjustments in bass and treble of a sound file: 1. CONTROL TAB to the "Winamp Equalizer" window. If it is not spoken, it may not be presently enabled, so press ALT G to open its window and you can then CONTROL TAB to it. 2. Press S to open a presets Context Menu. 3. Then press ENTER on "Load". 4. ARROW to "Default" and press ENTER. this should flatten (change to zero) the current 10 equaliser settings levels. 5. To increase each of the 10 bands from this zeroed state, you use the 1 to 0 keys on the keyboard (not the numpad). To decrease the range of bass and treble influence on a sound, you use the row of keys underneath the number keys, i.e. the letters Q to P. After making your desired sound changes, press ENTER. 6. Press CONTROL TAB until you get back to the Main player window and press C to recommence playing of your sound file if you paused it. 7. Whether or not these equaliser adjustments make much difference to the tone of the sound you are playing will very much depend on the quality of your sound card and speakers. You will probably prefer to use your speaker bass and treble controls if they have any. 10.10. Making PreSet Tone Changes in The Winamp Graphic Equalizer There are many preset selections you can make in bass and treble in the equalizer, depending upon the type of music you wish to play, for example, for classical music, soft rock, full bass and treble, etc. Do select one of these: 1. put focus on the Graphic Equaliser window by pressing CONTROL TAB until you get there. 2. Press S to enter the "Presets" Context Menu and then press ENTER on "Load". 3. Activate the "Preset" dialogue you fall on by pressing ENTER. 4. You will land in a listbox to ARROW up and down in to select your preferred tone setting. 5. After ARROWING to your choice, TAB to the "Load" button and press ENTRE. 6. The track will play (or re-commence playing if you paused it) with the new tonal quality. Note 1: When you are in the "Load" sub-menu in 2 above, you can ARROW up and down and obtain more options, such as "Auto-Preset", where you can select particular tone presets and have them automatically applied to particular tracks or file folders. At the stage before you enter the "Load" sub-menu, you can also ARROW down other options for saving and deleting preset files. Note 2: Not all screenreaders can read the contents and dialogues which are presented when working in the Graphic Equalizer, Mini- Browser and PlayList Editor, e.g. HAL 4.5 struggles. 10.11. The PlayList Editor This is not very easy to work in but you can achieve several operations and changes to lists of tracks, track names, etc. For example, if you wish to change the name of a track to something else, you can do this. Of course, you can only do this to tracks on re-writable disks, such as MP3s on a re-writable CD disk or sound tracks of all types on your hard disk, not on read-only music tracks on a HI-FI compact disk. 1. Change the name of a track by: A. CONTROL TAB to the "Playlist Editor" and open it by pressing the letter L. B. SHIFT TAB back twice to the list of drives and folders and find the place where the tracks you wish to work on are located, whether on your hard disk or on a flopy disk or rewritable CD. C. TAB forward to the list of individual tracks in that folder or CD and go into mouse mode. D. Place focus on the current track name and then press your left mouse simulation key once. E. An editbox will open up and you can just type the name you wish to give to the track straight in there and then press ENTER. F. Ensure that you give the track name the same filename extension that it originally had, e.g. .mp3, .wav, etc, and confirm your name change by pressing Y (for Yes) when asked. 2. Move the position of a track by: If you wish to move the position of a track in a playlist, you can do this by placing focus in the Playlist Editor on the track you wish to move and then using either ALT up ARROW or ALT down ARROW to move the track up or down in the list respectively. You can also delete the selected file by pressing the DEL key. 10.12. The Winamp Menu Structure Winamp has a simple initial one menu menu bar. Just press the ALT key to enter this. 2. Up and down ARROW through the menu list and note that, other than the "Nullsoft Winamp" option, it is very similar to a typical Windows Control Menu. It has the screen maximised as its default. 3. Press ENTER on the "Winamp" option to open another single menu list. 4. ARROW up and down in here. Their are some basic details about Winamp but, unfortunately, I have not found the options in here, such as "History", Keyboard", etc, to be accessible, but by the time you read this there may be some set or script files available to help in these areas from the Winamp for the Blind Website at: www.winampfortheblind.com 5. Press BACKSPACE to return to the first menu list and ARROW through all of the features. Some of them have sub-menus and dialogue boxes of there own. This should give you some idea of Winamp's features and shortcuts. 6. You will notice the phrase "Skins" in here. Skins are simply the name Winamp gives to many different interface screen layouts it has available to it. Several are provided in the preferences sheet during the installation and others can be downloaded but you are probably best sticking with the standard default Classic one. 10.13. Obtaining Attribute Details of a Sound File You can get information on a file by: 1. Start a file playing and then pause it by pressing the letter C. 2. Then press ALT 3 (not F3). 3. The "File Info" dialogue opens and you may be able to TAB through details or you can use your navigation or mouse mode to observe such file information as size of file in bytes, length of file in seconds, whether stereo or mono, sampling rate in Hz, name of album and track, etc. 4. There is an "Update" button in this dialogue box but I have not found the resulting fields to be screenreader-friendly. In theory you can change details such as track name, artist, etc, and resave these. Later versions of Winamp and/or screenreaders may make such editing accessible in future. 10.14. Winamp Preferences You can observe and make changes to Winamp's default preferences but, from a screenreader point of view, many of these changes make no difference, unless you have specially written set or script files to help in this environment. To see what is in here: 1. Press CONTROL P or CONTROL K to enter the preferences sheet. 2. CONTROL TAB between the property sheets in here and TAB through the many options. Versions of Winamp later than 2.72 provide this preferences information in a single TABBABLE list with other lists to ARROW through and open with the right ARROW. 3. Some changes which might improve things for you, if you can make any use of a monitor, are the "Display" and "Visualisations" options; "PlayList Font Size", you may wish to change this to something bigger than 10 point; and just experiment with any of the other options. 3. When finished, TAB to "Close" or "OK" and press ENTER. 10.15. The Winamp Context Menu You can bring up a Context Menu of most of the more common commands to perform on a track/file by: 1. Go into the PlayList by pressing the letter L. 2. SHIFT TAB backwards once and place the focus on one of the sound or speech files. 3. Press SHIFT F10 to open the Context Menu for that file. 4. Now ARROW up and down the various options. Many of the commands are obvious but some of the less obvious things you can do on the selected file are in the following options: A. "Open With": This command allows you to choose from many programs to open your file with. If the file is an MP3, you will, of course, have to select an MP3 playing program. If you check the "Always Use This Program . . ." box, only the program you chose above will be able to open such a file in future. It is probably not a good idea to do this therefore, as you may disable other MP3 players from playing files with an .MP3 extension. B. "Add to ZIP": This launches Winzip (if you have it) and permits you to convert the file to a .zip file, possibly for later uploading to the Internet. C. "Send To": This has a sub-menu which permits you do perform operations such as sending the file to a floppy disk, to the clipboard, to your Desktop as a shortcut, to someone as an attachment by e-mail, etc. 10.16. Sending an MP3 File as an E-Mail Attachment As mentioned above (in option C), you can send a music or speech file as an e-mail attachment. After performing the above steps your e-mail client, e.g. Outlook Express, Netscape, Eudora, etc, will automatically load and you will be at the "To:" field. Just complete the e-mail headers as normal. The "Subject:" line will already be completed for you. The MP3 file will be automatically attached as usual. You need only TAB to the message body field and type in your accompanying message before sending it to the recipients in the normal way. Warning: Sound files can be very large and may therefore take a long time to up load and download. If the recipient does not want the file you send, he/she may not be very happy that you made them run up their phone bill downloading it. 10.17. Using Winamp Plugins Winamp has a rich array of plugins, the most commonly used of which are supplied with the installed program. You can obtain others from the www.winamp.com Website. These plugins are DLL files which provide ways to make Winamp do more than just play MP3 and other file formats. Winamp has plugins for "Input" or "Output" operations, such as converting HI-FI audio CD tracks to MP3 files, converting MP3 files to WAV files, converting Microsoft WMA files to WAV files, etc. However, the environment in which you have to achieve this is not very easy to use and some screenreaders are unable to focus very well on the dialogues involved. Nonetheless, it can be done. The two examples below provide an insight into how to use these plugins. However, if you find this process unusable or over tedious, have a look at FREERIP.MP3 in Section 12 to find a much simpler and easier, if less fully-featured, MP3 file encoder than Winamp. 10.18. How to Convert an MP3 File to a WAV File If you would like to convert an MP3 music file, for example, one which you have downloaded from the Internet and now have on a data CD, to a WAV file to play either on your PC or on your HI-FI system, you would do this by: 1. With the data cd of MP3 files in the CD drive and Winamp running, press CONTROL P (for preferences). You can also press CONTROL K to get there. 2. PAGE up in the Preferences sheet and then ARROW down until you reach "Plugins" and if it is not open, open it with the right ARROW key. With versions of Winamp llater than 2.72, you may have to activate this "Plugins" button by left clicking on it in mouse mode. Underneath there should be two sub-folders called "Input" and below this "Output". Leave the focus on the "Output" line. 3. Then TAB twice to a list of possible output plugin DLLs. With the ARROW keys place the focus on "Nullsoft Disk Writer . . ". If it is not already highlighted, do this by pressing the SPACEBAR. 4. Now TAB to the "Configure" button and press the SPACEBAR to activate it. If this does not work for you, you will have to go into navigation/mouse mode to do this. When on the "Configure" button in mouse mode (near the bottom of the screen), press your left mouse simulation key twice quickly. 5. The preferences sheet will close and you will be in a new dialogue box in which you must specify the location where you want the converted file to be placed. You are in the normal type of Windows browsing dialogue, so use TAB or SHIFT TAB and ARROW keys to the drive where you want to be, e.g. C:, TAB forward and ARROW to (or press the first letter of) the folder you want the converted file to go in on your hard disk, e.g. MP3files, My documents, etc. Alternatively, place the focus on such as the E or F drive if you have a second CD drive which you want the files to go straight to--a CD-RW drive, of course. 6. Now TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. Then press ESCAPE to leave the preferences sheet. 7. You must now select the MP3 files on the compact disk which you want to convert to WAV files. So you press the letter L to enter the standard PlayList, use the drive, folder and file lists in the Playlist as usual (see "The PlayList" above) and when you have focus on the track you wish to convert TAB to "Open" and press ENTER. 8. The converting and copying to your specified location will commence. Your speech is likely to stop or become choppy, as this process is heavily CPU-intensive. 9. You can now use such as Windows Media Player to play these WAV files from the folder you converted/copied them into. Alternatively, if you did not elect to copy the files onto an audio compact disk initially above, you could now manually copy the WAV files onto an audio CD disk for playing in a HI-FI system. Note 1: The process of converting MP3 files to WAV files can be time-consuming on slower pentium computers. Note 2: Not all HI-FI systems will be able to play all audio disks of this type. Sometimes a CD-RW is incompatible with certain HI-FI CD players and some older HI-FI systems are temperamental about what they will play, accepting only native .cda files. If you rename the .WAV files to .CDA files before copying them to the audio CD, this may resolve the problem, e.g. rename albatross.wav to albatross.cda. Note 3: As indicated in the title of this section, the above procedure is how to use preferences and output plugins with Winamp 2.72. These dialogues, procedures and available plugins change from one version of Winamp to another. 10.19. How to Convert a CD HI-FI or WAV File to an MP3 File You would do this in exactly the same way as converting a MP3 file to a WAV file as directed above, only at stage 2 you would select the "input" option, TAB twice to the list of possible input plugins and place focus on "Nulsoft MPEG Audio Decoder". All of the steps up to this point and thereafter are the same. Note: As the above does not always work, you may instead wish to obtain a different MP3 ripping plugin from the Winamp4theblind Website at: www.winamp4theblind.cjb.net but, as ripping CDs to MP3s in Winamp is more complicated than with many other free MP3 rippers, I would recommend that you use something else, e.g. FREERIPMP3, CDEX, etc. 10.20. Increasing the Winamp Playback Volume without Increasing the Volume of Your Screenreader Speech Normally, when you ARROW up or down to increase or decrease the Winamp playback volume, you may find that your speech also increases or decreases. To ensure that this does not happen you can make changes in the plugins, as follows: 1. Press CONTROL P to get into the preferences. 2. Press PAGE up and then ARROW down to the "Output" plugin or go to it in mouse mode and press your screenreader's left click simulation key. 3. The "Nulsoft Wave Out" plugin should be selected (this may be called something like "Wave out Output V2.0.2A . . ." in later versions of Winamp). If it is not, ARROW to it. 4. Now TAB to "Configure" and press SPACEBAR to activate this. 5. Then TAB to "Volume Control Enable" and ensure that this is checked on. 6. Then TAB to "ALT Setting Mode" and press SPACEBAR to check this on. 7. Lastly, TAB to "OK" and press ENTER and then to "OK" again or "Close" and press ENTER again to finish. 8. In future you will be able to use the up and down ARROW keys to make Winamp volume changes without your screenreader speech also changing. 10.21. Winamp Shortcut keys Now that you have got MP3 music and other sound files playing, you will wish to know how to manoeuvre within tracks and between tracks. Here are some of the most frequently used hot keys: Press F1: To get context sensitive help but this is hit and miss and very brief in parts. Press ARROw up: Increases the volume. Press ARROW down: Decreases the volume. Press Left ARROW: Jumps back 5 seconds in the current playing track each time you press it. Press Right ARROW: Jumps forward 5 seconds in the playing track. Press z: To jump to the Previous track. Press X: To play/restart/unpause a track. Press C: To pause and unpause a track. Press V: to stop playing a track. Press B: To jump to the next track. Press R: To have a track or album repeated. Pressing R again turns this off. Press S: To have files played in shuffled (random) order. Pressing S again turns this off. Press J: To jump to a specific file in the PlayList Editor. Press ALT E: To toggle the PlayList Editor window on and off. Press ALT G: To toggle the Graphic Equalizer window on and off. Press ALT T: To toggle the Mini-Browser window on and off but it is recommended that you leave this off at all times if using a screenreader. Press ALT W: To toggle the Main window on and off. Press CONTROL V: to stop playing when the present track finishes. Press CONTROL J: To jump to a specific time point in the track but ensure that you have paused the playing first. You have to BACKSPACE the current time position out and then type in the one you want, in the following format: 0:50 to go to 50 seconds into a track, 10:00 to go to 10 minutes further into a track, etc. TAB to "Jump" and press ENTER. Press CONTROL P: To enter the preferences property sheet. Press CONTROL D: To double the size of the Winamp window. Press CONTROL TAB: To cycle through the four possible Winamp windows which can be open at once, if more than one is already open. These can contain the Main Player window, the Graphic Equalizer window, the PlayList Editor window and the Mini-Browser window. You will find the Main player and Graphic Equalizer windows easier to use than the PlayList Editor or Mini-Browser windows. You may even wish to turn the latter two off for most of your Winamp sessions, so that you only have two windows to CONTROL TAB through. Press CONTROL K: to select a plugin. Press CONTROL Z: To go to the start of the PlayList. Press SHIFT V: To stop a track and make it fade out as it stops. Note: There are a few other standard hot keys but most screenreaders which use the numpad for their navigation will render these unusable, e.g. pressing numpad 1 should jump back 10 tracks, numpad 3 should jump forward 10 songs. Your screenreader may also have some of its own specialist hot keys to achieve things in Winamp, for example, with JAWS 4.5: Press ALT CONTROL H: To pan 100 per cent to the left speaker. Press ALT CONTROL J: To pan 50 per cent to the left speaker. Press ALT CONTROL K: to centre the sound equally between the speakers. Press ALT CONTROL L: to pan 50 per cent to the right. Press ALT CONTROL ;: to pan 100 per cent to the right. Press LAT CONTROL M: to mute the sound. Press ALT CONTROL ,: To change the volume to 33 per cent. Press ALT CONTROL .: To set the volume to 66 per cent. Press ALT CONTROL /: .to maximise the volume. Press LAT CONTROL T: To get the track name announced. Press ALT SHIFT S: To announce shuffle and repeat mode settings. Press CONTROL A: To toggle always on top mode on and off in main window or equalizer but use ALT CONTROL A in the Playlist editor. However, always on top is not recommended for screenreader users. Press ALT SHIFT T: to announce the elapsed time of the track. Press CONTROL SHIFT T: to get the remaining track time announced. Press CONTROL INSERT T: To get the total length of the current rack announced. Press ALT M: To set a time marker. Press ALT SHIFT M: to jump to a time marker. Press CONTROL SHIFT M: To remove a time marker. ******** >SECTION 11 QUICK AND EASY METHOD OF PLAYING MP3S There is an easy way to play all of the MP3s -on a CD-ROM without first opening Winamp, RealPlayer, etc, as long as one of your MP3 players is associated with the .MP3 extension, which one will undoubtedly be (see MP3 File Context Menu" in Section 13 to make or change MP3 file playing associations). You can play them from the "Find" feature of the Start Menu, as follows: 1. Press Windows Logo key and F together. 2. In the editfield which comes up, type in "*.mp3" (no quotes). 3. TAB to "Look In" and observe the place where Find will try to look for MP3 files. This is likely to be on the C drive by default, so change this by ARROWING down to your CD drive, e.g. on the D or E drive. 4. Now press ALT I for "Find Now". 5. The whole list of tracks on the CD-ROM will be displayed, not the album folders, just each individual track number and name. You might see 150 tracks on the CD disk or more. 6. Now just press ENTER on the first of these tracks to commence playing. The playing will continue until all 150 or so tracks have finished. Of course, you could have also opened all of the MP3s in a folder on your hard disk or anywhere else for that matter in this same way. You can also play a media file by navigating to it with Windows Explorer and just pressing ENTER on the file when you have focus on it. The audio/video player that has been associated with that type of file extension will launch and play the file. Note 1: If you have more than one MP3 playing program on your computer, e.g. Winamp, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, etc, it is possible that either player will load and play the CD tracks. In fact, several audio players on your PC at once can affect one another. To avoid this, when you install audio players, ensure that you disable the option that they usually offer you to have that player made the default player for all sound files except for the player which you want as your regular MP3 player. Note 2: If your particular screenreader starts to try to speak whilst tracks are playing (some do), you will have to unload it to prevent this or create a special set or script file for use with Winamp. Alternatively, using your screenreader's "sleep" mode may do the trick, if it has one (see "Putting Your Screenreader to Sleep" above). ******** >SECTION 12 USING STAND-ALONE ENCODERS TO CREATE MP3 AND OTHER FILE FORMATS FROM STANDARD DIGITAL COMPACT DISKS 12.1. What is an Encoder? An encoder is a piece of software which takes an audio file or full disk of files, like a music CD, and converts the file contents to another format. Typically, you will be taking standard HI-FI cd tracks and converting them to other formats such as compressed MP3, MIDI and Windows WAV audio files. An encoder essentially does two jobs: extracts and encodes the original audio file and converts it to one of a number of alternative formats. Some encoders can only create two or three alternative formats, whilst others may have a dozen or more output choices. 12.2. Why use a Stand-Alone Encoder? Many sound and video players, such as Winamp, are good players but not so good from a screenreader point of view as file and disk encoders. They can do the job but it is difficult to achieve this without a monitor and intensive mouse simulation use. You may, therefore, find that some stand-alone CD encoders are more accessible. The one which I have chosen to demonstrate below certainly is. Encoders are also known as "rippers". 12.3. The FREERIP.MP3 Freeware Encoder As its name implies, FREERIP.MP3 is freeware. The price you pay is that the supplier will send you periodical advertising e-mails if you are on the Net. You need only delete these after receipt or just press the ESCAPE key when the program tries to take you online each time you launch it. FREERIP.MP3 has no shortcut or hot keys other than F1 to invoke the help system but, despite this, it is very user-friendly for screenreader users. 12.3.1. Downloading FREERIP.MP3 1. Load your browser and surf to: www.mgshareware.com 2. On the home page TAB well down to a "Download" heading which has "FREERIPP.MP3" listed underneath it. ARROW down again to a "Download Now Our Products" with a "Click Here" link underneath it. Press ENTER on this link. 3. On the next page, TAB or ARROW well down to "FREERIP.MP3 V1.01". Under this there are three sites listed where you can download from, so press ENTER on the "Site 1" link. 4. A "Start Download" button will appear, so hit ENTER again. 5. The download will commence and take less than 10 minutes with a 56K MODEM. The file is only about 870 Kb in size. 6. The file will save to your default directory or go to your Desktop with the filename "FREERIPMP3.EXE". 12.3.2. Installing FREERIP.MP3 1. Go to the FREERIPMP3.EXE file and press ENTER. 2. Press ENTER on the "Next" button on the Welcome splash screen, then TAB to "Yes" to accept the license agreement and continue pressing ENTER on the "Next" buttons as they appear. 3. You will eventually reach an "Install" button to press ENTER on. Whilst installing you will get a screen telling you about the program. 4. Press ENTER on "Next" again and then on "Finish" to complete the installation. 12.3.3. Launching and Configuring FREERIP.MP3 1. Start the program from the icon automatically placed on your Desktop during the installation. 2. The first time you launch FREERIP.MP3 you will have to make a few configuration choices. Remember, however, that you will not need to do this every time, unless you wish to change any of the configuration settings at any time. So, normally, you will be able to jump from 1 above to 3 below in this step by step section. The configuration involves: Press ALT C (for CD) and then O (for Options). A. You will come into a two property sheet pair of TABs and be in the "General" sheet. i. You will fall on the line where your CD drive is recognised and, if you have more than one CD drive, ARROWING down will display the others. You need to place the focus on the CD drive you wish to use for placing your music compact disks in to rip (copy( from. ii. TAB once to the next line. The default location for files to be copied to is your Desktop but you can change this if you wish. To change where the converted files will save to you will have to go into mouse mode, move to the very end of this output line, to where there is a short row of three dots, place your cursor on one of these dots and press your left cursor simulation key. This will open up a "Modify" dialogue with a browsing tree list in it. You can now navigate to the alternative folder where you want the files to be saved, e.g. c:\MP3files. Then TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. If you have problems in doing this, you can just let them go to your Desktop. You can always copy them elsewhere afterwards and then delete them from the Desktop. iii. TAB again to a listbox of options: OGG Vorbis, MP3 or wav. Put the focus on the type of files you wish to create, e.g. MP3 if you want compressed MP3 files to play on your computer or to download to a portable, walkman-type MP3 player. Most traditional HI-FI systems will not play this file format. iv. TAB to "Bit Rate Quality" and choose the quality of file you wish to create. The higher the sampling rate, the better the sound output will be but the larger the resulting file will be. You will require high rates for good music tracks but lower rates may be acceptable for speech files. Experiment to see what is good enough for output through your particular sound card. For example, 250 to 320 KBPS is generally regarded as equivalent to CD audio quality, although most people would not notice the quality difference if the bit rate was dropped as low as 128 KBPS for music and you can go much lower for speech. Speech would turn out OK at 32 KBPS. B. Now press CONTROL TAB to the "Network and CDDB" property sheet. i. The first listbox has eight possible choices for you to select CDDB servers from. The second choice "CDDB.CDDB.COM" is highlighted by default, so you may as well leave it there. You can always change to the others later to see which you like best. A CDDB (compact disk data base) is where you can be taken to have information for the current disk you are copying found and retrieved for you automatically from the Internet. ii. Tab once to "E-Mail Address" and BACKSPACE once to remove the sample name in there and then type your correct e-mail address in here, if you have one. iii. TAB again and you can check or uncheck the option to have a search of the CDDB for the current CD made automatically or not. If you do not want this to happen automatically or you are not on the Internet, you can always, with a CD in the drive, TAB to the "Query CDDB" button or go to this same option in the CD Menu. iv. TAB to "Use CD player.ini file" and leave this checked as a means of finding out information about your CDs. This is where it is logged. v. Now TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to complete the configuration. 3. You are now ready to rip your first CD tracks. Place the CD you wish to copy from in the CD drive and wait a few seconds, when the main window will be filled with CD tracks details. In fact, you can TAB through several fields of information at this point and complete editfields for Track name, type of music, etc. In the "Tracks" field you can ARROW up and down all of the tracks on the inserted CD. They will not have their correct names, as FREERIP.MP3 does not yet know what they are, nor has it yet been told what the album name is. The track names will be in the form "Track 01", "Track 02", etc. You will also be given details on the type of track, e.g. if an audio track, MP3, etc, and the playing length of each track will be shown. Note: If the tracks do not appear in the "tracks" list, leave the CD in the drive and close FREERIP.MP3 by pressing ALT F4 and then launch it again. The tracks should now show. If not, TAB to the "Refresh" button and press ENTER. I have found this to be a bit hit and miss but it does display the tracks eventually. 4. If you have an Internet connection the program will attempt to take you online to find what information it can from CDDB for this CD. You may be online for one or two minutes and you will have to be aware that your phone line will be left open, so close it yourself manually. 5. To change a track title (or to enter it for the first time if you have not had it automatically inserted by CDDB from the Net) you would put focus on the track in question, then go into navigation/mouse mode, move to the space directly after the track name and press the left mouse key, e.g. typically the key to the very right of the numlock key. An editfield will open up for you to type the actual track name in. You then press ENTER to save it. 6. Tab to the "Category" button and note what CDDB has selected. If you wish to change this, you can just ARROW up and down or press the initial letter of the type of music you wish to categorise the music under. There are 148 possible choices. 7. If you want to change the name of the Title, Year of release, put a comment in about the album ,etc, just TAB to that line and BACKSPACE once to remove the current entry and then type in your preference. 8. FREERIP.MP3 will remember the details of each CD you insert and set-up in it. So, when you next run FREERIP.MP3 and place a CD into the drive which has been examined by it before, the same track, CD name, comments, etc, will be displayed. 12.3.4. How to copy Tracks 1. TAB to the "Tracks" list and ARROW to the track you wish to have encoded to MP3, WAV or OGG Vorbis. 2. Press SPACEBAR to check and therefore select the track for ripping. Do the same for all tracks you wish to encode/copy. 3. TAB to the "Rip Tracks" button and press ENTER. You may then have to press ENTER again. 4. The process of encoding and copying each selected track will commence. You will hear your hard disk and CD drives working hard. 5. You can use your TAB key to move to an "Abort" button if you wish to stop the process. 6. The "Start Ripping Tracks" list, if you ARROW down it, will inform you of which track the encoder is working on currently, where it is saving it to, etc. AT the bottom of this list is where you are told when the encoding process is "Done". Your screenreader may or may not announce this when copying has finished, but don't be tempted to regularly use your screenreader, as this may corrupt the sound file. Just listen to the disk drive activity and try to get accustomed to the time factors involved in ripping certain sized files. 7. The encoding may take around eight to ten minutes for a five minute music track, with a CPU speed in the order of a P300 Celeron, AMD or Cyrix. With a Pentium or Athlon 700 or better it may take only around 30 seconds for the same track. These figures assume a CD drive of 40-speed or better. 8. You then TAB to "Close" and activate this with ENTER. 9. If you wish to clear the checked/highlighted tracks and start again, TAB to "refresh" and press ENTER. 12.3.5. The FREERIP.MP3 Menus There are only three simple menus in FREERIP.MP3. The functions in the CD Menu are the same as those which you can cycle through with the TAB key at any time, The Help Menu only has help contents (with a search feature) and the only menu which has features not available elsewhere is the Utilities Menu. The Utilities Menu is what you use to Convert WAV files to MP3 files, Convert WAV files to OGG files or to automatically install the OGG Vorbis plugin for Winamp. The latter is just an automated way to enable Winamp to also use the OGG Vorbis layer 4 encoding standard and is obviously only appropriate if you have Winamp installed on your PC. 12.3.6. How to Convert 16-Bit WAV Files to MP3 or OGG Vorbis Formats Firstly, whereas a WAV file is simply a regular uncompressed standard Windows sound file, OGG Vorbis is an advance type of compressed file, said to be equivalent to a MPEG Layer 4 format. OGG Vorbis is capable of compressing sound to smaller files than MP3 but still retaining a better overall sound quality than a similar sized or even slightly larger MP3 file can. 1. Press ALT U (for Utilities) and ARROW down to "Convert WAV to MP3" or "Convert WAV to OGG" and press ENTER. 2. In the editfield you land in, type the path to and name of the WAV file you wish to convert, e.g.: "c:\windows\albatross.wav" If you have a WAV file of this name in this particular folder. 3. TAB to the next editfield and type the path to where you would like the converted file to be copied, e.g.: c:\MP3files\albatross.mp3 (Assuming, of course, that you have already created or intend first to create a folder called MP3files.) 4. TAB to the "Bit Rate" list and ARROW up and down to the sampling quality of sound file you would like. 5. TAB to "ID3 Tag Title" and, if you wish, type a name to identify this CDs tag title, the name of the album, etc. 6. TAB to the "Start" button to start the encoding/converting and copying process. Note: Step 4 is not required if encoding a WAV file to an OGG Vorbis file. 12.3.7. The FREERIP.MP3 Help System This has a very simple and easy to use interface. You just press the F1 key to go straight into help Contents. You can then ARROW up and down the topics and press ENTER on any one of them to hear its content. To leave Help altogether or to leave it to come in again and look at another topic, press the ESCAPE key. Note: FREERIP.MP3 is a little sensitive about you pressing keys such as ENTER or ESCAPE when this is not necessary or not the correct key to press. It often just treats such a key press as being equivalent to an exit command and so shuts down. 12.4. Some other Stand Alone MP3 Players and Rippers Other rippers which you may wish to know about and experiment with yourself are: * Audio Grabber--From: www.whitestick.co.uk Its on the "Some useful Programs" link. Audio Grabber can also rip to MP3 via the line in jack on your sound card, e.g. from a tape recorder, mini disk, vinyl album turntable, etc, but you will have to buy the full version to be able to rip more than ten minutes of sound in this way. * Audio Catalyst--From: www.whitestick.co.uk Its on the "Some useful Programs" link. * Absolute MP3 Recorder--From: www.techlogic.ca * MP3 Pro Audio--From: www.thomson-multimedia.com This MP3 ripper is also an encoder and is said to be the next generation of MP3 rippers, being able to compress music to half the size of standard MP3 rippers and reproduce sound with better than average quality. Its only a 1.5 Mb download and you can also download a Winamp plugin for it from the same page as well. The download is a demo only. * LAME MP3 Encoder This is freeware and obtainable from: www.pdaudio.net/misc/lame.exe * CDEX Here is a free ripping and encoding package from: www.cdex.n3.net * Puls MP3 This is a blind-friendly MP3 player obtained from: www.blindsoftware.com It includes screenreader accessible buttons, an ID3 tag editor and reader, ability to convert MP3 files to wave files, you can create and open play lists, adjust volume and playback pitch and much more. You can also select which sound card is used to output music. You will need a multi-channel sound card and Direct X7 or higher installed. * total Recorder This can carry out many types of recording, including recording from Internet streams to MP3 and scheduling for recording at given times. Its for sale for about 12 dollars and you can also download a demo version for testing which will only record up to 30 seconds of audio from: www.download.com and www.highcriteria.com * MP3 Platinum Pro This can be bought from shops such as QVC for around œ25 and is able to record, convert and save in several audio formats, e.g. standard MP3, MP3 pro, OGG Vorbis, etc. You can access Internet CD databases with it and play music with it. The Makers are called Majex and they have a Website at: www.majex.com MDIrecorder With this player and recorder you can record sound generated or requested by other computer programs such as RealPlayer, Windows Media Player and Winamp, etc. The resulting files are saved in Wav or MP3 formats. You can record streaming audio files from the Internet or conversations if you use an Internet telephony program or music from games programs, etc. MDIrecorder automatically configures your sound card, you can set the sample rate, mono or stereo and the bit rate of recordings and you can make use of hot keys to operate it, e.g. F9 to start recording, F10 to pause and resume recording and F11 to stop recording. You can start MDIrecorder first and then run your other program with the sound source and at any time use these hot keys to get MDIrecorder to start and stop recording without switching to MDIrecorder. You can obtain a free demo download from: www.realrecorder.net/ ******** >SECTION 13 THE MP3 FILE CONTEXT MENU When you have focus on an MP3 file, such as in Windows Explorer or My Computer, you can press SHIFT F10 to bring up a Context Menu of quick commands to perform on that file. You may have to press the SPACEBAR first to select the file. This menu also permits you to look at the properties of the file and change its association. 13.1. Quick Commands ARROWING through the various options in the Context Menu shows that you can carry out many standard commands on an MP3 file, such as Cut, Copy, Delete, rename it, add it to the default associated MP3 player's book mark list, add it to Winzip, etc. Some of the more interesting options are listed below. 13.2. Changing the Associated Program for Playing MP3s You can change the default MP3 playing program, the one which automatically opens and plays an MP3 when you press the ENTER key on the filename from anywhere in Windows, by : 1. ARROW to "Open With" and press ENTER. 2. In the dialogue which opens up, you can immediately ARROW down or press the first letter of the player's name which you would like to always be loaded when you press ENTER on an MP3 filename to play it. When your chosen player has focus, e.g. Winamp, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, etc, press TAB to "Always Use This Program to Open this Type of File" and press SPACEBAR to check this. 3. TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. 13.3. Send To You can send a file to several places: 1. If you press ENTER on "Send To", you can ARROW down a long list of send to options. 2. ARROW to where you want the file to go and it will be sent, e.g. to your A:\ floppy disk (if it can hold it), anywhere else on your hard disk, to the Clipboard, to your CD-RW disk, to someone via e-mail, etc. 13.4. MP3 File Properties To observe the properties of an MP3 file, such as its length, the path to it, its MS DOS truncated filename, date created/modified, etc: 1. With focus on the file, press SHIFT f10 and ARROW up to "properties", then press ENTER. 2. You can now TAB through the above file properties details (or you may have to go into mouse mode). 3. Press ESCAPE once or twice to leave properties and the Context Menu. ******** >SECTION 14 ADAPTEC EASY CD COPIER 14.1. Installation Easy Cd Copier is one of the components of the main Easy CD Creator suite. The installation is straightforward and takes place as you simultaneously install the main Easy CD Creator software (see Installing Easy CD Creator in Section 15 below). This simple method of copying or cloning the whole contents of a CD to another CD is very quick and easy. You cannot elect to copy only certain tracks or files, however. The Copier only has two menus, File and Help. When it opens up there are also only two property sheets to work in. You have two basic choices of how to copy: directly from one Cd drive to another or to the hard disk first followed by copying from there to your Cd drive. 14.2. Types of Disks CD Copier can Clone These include: * Direct CD disks. * CD Extra disks. * Mix mode disks. * Photo CD disks. * Video CD disks. Note: Whether you will be able to copy all of the above types of disks can depend on the quality and age of your CD-ROM drive, e.g. some cannot deal with Direct CD disks. Provided that your CD-ROM is multi-read capable, you should have no problems. However, remember that some CDs are written with copy protection or in non-standard formats, so they may always result in bad copies. Another problem can arise if the source CD has less than two second gaps between the tracks, when a small snippet of audio might be lost. 14.3. Copying Directly from One Cd Drive to Another 1. With your source CD in your CD-ROM drive and the blank disk to be copied to in your destination CD-RW drive, launch Easy CD Copier from the Icon on your Desktop, if you have put one there, or by navigating to it via: Press Windows Logo key, then P (for Program Files), followed by A (for Adaptech Easy CD Creator, next press ENTER on "CD Copier". (The Cd Copier may, in some instances, be in a folder just below Easy CD Creator called "Features", so you should go into this to find "Cd Copier" in this case.) 2. When the program loads, you will be reminded that some forms of copying are against copyright and you just press ENTER on the "OK" button. 3. You will land in the "Source and Destination" sheet, which contains: A. The first line is the "Copy From" list, which is where your CD you wish to duplicate is inserted. If you have more than one Cd drive, you can ARROW up and down these and change the drive if you wish. So, if you have a CD-ROM on drive D and a CD-RW on drive E, this line should show "D". B. Then TAB to "Record To", which should show the E drive where your blank disk is inserted. Again, you can ARROW up and down this list if you have several drives. Note: you can only copy from a CD to a blank disk with this simple copier. You cannot add more tracks/files to the end of a still open half full disk or copy from your hard disk (see Section 15 below for how to do this). 4. If you know that all of your "Advanced" settings are what you want, you could just press CONTROL O at this stage to start the copying. If you need to change some of the settings, you would: 5. Press CONTROL TAB to the second property sheet, called "Advanced", which contains: A. TAB to "Cd Record Speed" and ARROW up and down to view the different speeds that your CD-RW can copy at, e.g. an 8X4X32 CD- RW can copy at a maximum speed of 8X onto write-only disks or 4X onto re-writable disks. However, the slower you copy disks, the less likely that a copying error will result. So, copying such as plain ASCII text files is probably OK at full speed but copying crucial program files will be best done at 1X or 2X speed. Warning 1: If you do not have a fast Pentium, it is possible that your CPU may not be fast enough to cope with copying at full speed, so you may have to select, say, 4X rather than 8X as your chosen rate of transfer. If you attempt to copy a disk at a faster rate than your CPU can cope with, it is likely that the program will freeze and a write-only disk will be damaged and become no longer usable. Do your initial testing with a re- writable disk as this can always be used again. It is also a good idea to run the system test facility described in "Testing that Your Computer is running Optimally for CD Copying" in Section 15. Warning 2: There are different quality and priced compact disks. You can pay anything from 20 to 99 pence a disk for boxes of ten disks and, no doubt, more at some shops. You have to be aware, though, that whilst middle quality and high quality CDs, such as Memorex, Maxell, TDK, Phillips, etc, should invariably result in good copies at fast copying speeds, the cheaper, no-name or unknown name CDs, may give a greater incidence of bad copies and it may be necessary to copy to them at slower speeds to obtain a good copy, e.g. 1X or 2X speed. Note: When copying audio tracks from CD-ROM to CD-RW in this way, some porer quality CD-ROMs are only able to copy at low speeds of 2X or 3X, even when they are said to be of a speed in the order of 40X or 50X. These latter speeds are only achievable with data file copying. B. TAB to "Copy" and note that you can ARROW up and down choices of "Copy", "Test" and "Test and then Copy". Testing checks if your two CD drives are compatible, i.e. that your source CD-ROM drive is not too slow to feed your destination CD- RW drive. If the CD-ROM drive is too slow, you will have to use the below copy to hard disk before CD-RW drive method of copying. If you choose to "Test and then Copy", this will take twice as long to achieve than using the "Copy" option. C. TAB to "Number of Copies" which is self-explanatory; just ARROW up and down to select how many copies of the original disk you want. D. Now TAB to "Disk-At-Once". You may wish to leave this checked if you are copying HI-FI audio disks to blank audio disks, as it preserves the natural gaps between music tracks, but it then closes the destination disk. This means that, even if only a quarter of the destination disk has been used, you cannot copy more to it later. If you press SPACEBAR to turn this off, for instance, to copy data or programs to the destination disk, the disk will not be closed and so you could copy more to it later with a program such as Easy CD Creator (not with CD Copier). E. TAB to "Copy Source CD to the Hard Drive First" and have this checked off for copying from one Cd drive to another. If you have two drives selected in the "Source and destination" sheet, it is likely that this option will not show. F. If you TAB to "Save as Default" and press ENTER all of your above choices will be retained and remembered for future copying sessions. 6. When finished, just press CONTROL O to start the copying process. 7. You will be told when the copying is complete. You may have to put your screenreader into report all screen changes mode, e.g. INSERT S with JFW, to hear this. 14.4. Copying via the Hard Disk If your source CD drive is too slow to keep up with your destination drive or you intend to make several copies of a disk or if you only have the one CD drive, you will need to use the "Copy Source CD to the Hard Drive First" method. 1. Follow all of the procedures shown above but ensure that both "copy From" and "Record To" both have focus on the same CD-RW drive letter. 2. In the "Advanced" sheet ensure that "Copy Source CD to the Hard Drive First" is checked on. 3. Press CONTROL O to commence the copying to your "Temp" directory on your hard disk, from where it will be copied next to your CD-RW drive. The copy which is first deposited on your hard disk is then automatically erased by CD Copier. 14.5. CD Copier Shortcut Keys Press F1: to enter the help topics list. ALT F4 closes this. Press ALT F4 to exit the CD copier. Press CONTROL D: to get information on the CD in your CD drive. Press CONTROL O: To start the CD copying process. Press CONTROL P: to get a list of your CD drive specification properties. ******** >SECTION 15 ADAPTEC EASY CD CREATOR 4 (STANDARD) Easy CD Creator is mainly menu-driven and so has few shortcut keystrokes. Nevertheless, it is usable with a screenreader and has a good array of features. 15.1. Installing Easy CD Creator Installation may vary, depending on which CD-RW drive you buy--it may be integrated with the CD drive's manufacturer's additional software. However, the standard installation is straightforward. You just install it via the autorun feature or by running the setup.exe file. Activate "Yes" to accept the licence agreement, type the tech support serial number (TSID) in the editfield, accept the "Typical" installation type and just continue to the "Finish" button by pressing ENTER on the "Next" buttons as you go. Be aware, the typical installation of Easy CD Creator takes up around 240 Mb of hard disk space. If you are short of disk space, you might like to use the "Compact" installation option. 15.2. Pen-Picture of the Easy CD Creator Screen To have a good look at the Easy CD Creator screen, maximise it first by pressing ALT SPACEBAR and then X. You will find the normal Title Bar at the top of the screen with "Untitled" as its heading, which will be replaced by a filename when you provide a Layout with a title, and underneath this is the Main Menu containing menu headings of File, Edit, View, etc. Easy CD Creator has four panes (or windows): top left and right (known as the "Explorer" view) and bottom left and right (known as the "Layout" view). The top left pane holds the unexpanded list of drives, e.g. C drive, D (CD-ROM) drive, a drive, etc; whereas the top right shows what is expanded (opened up) of those drives/folders with focus on the left. Similarly, the bottom left and right panes hold this type of information but this is where what you have selected in the top panes is reflected in the bottom ones as being what will copy to the CD--it will be blank at first because nothing has been chosen for copying until you start making selections in the top two panes. What you do is select (highlight) the files or folders you want to copy from the top right side of the Explorer pane . A sighted person would drag and drop files from the top Explorer panes to the bottom Layout Panes. After you have created a files or folders copying Layout in the bottom panes, you can then save this Layout template for future CD copying use or for later amendment. AT the very bottom of the screen you will find the "Status Bar" which holds status information such as amount of free space on your inserted CD, if a data or audio CD, etc. Note: By default, Easy CD Creator launches with an assistant-type window in the middle of the screen which obliterates parts of the other four panes. You will need to permanently close this so that your screenreader can "see" the main four panes without being obstructed. Do this by pressing ALT H (for Help) and then ARROWING down to "Show/Hide Cd Guide" and press ENTER to uncheck and thus turn this assistant off. 15.3. What Can I do with Easy CD Creator? You can: * Compile Audio CDs of your favourite music from other music CDs. * Make your own CDs from WAV files on your hard disk. * compile a CD with a mixture of both of the above. * Mix Audio and video files on the same CD. * Mix Audio and data files on the same CD. * Copy tracks from several audio CDs to a folder on your hard disk in order to make several Cd copies without having to continually insert CDs into the CD drive. * Create an audio file and then customise it with a third party sound editor, such as Sound forge, Windows Sound Recorder, Easy CD Creator Deluxe or Platinum Sound Editor, etc. You may do this to improve its quality by increasing the sampling rate or by increasing its output volume. * Create back-up data CDs of your hard disk or important folders on the hard disk. 15.4. Launching Easy CD Creator When you first start Cd Creator up, it may load in the background with a quick-play wizard in the foreground , known as the "AutoPlay Extender". With this AutoPlay Extender you can TAB through several buttons, such as "Explorer", "Open", etc, and play CD or hard disk tracks via this. I would, however, recommend that you simply press ALT F4 as soon as it loads to get rid of it and be able to work directly with the Cd Creator interface window, which will come to the fore automatically as soon as you close the AutoPlay Extender. Your copy of Easy CD Creator may not have this AutoPlay Extender, though, so if it doesn't, just carry on as below and ignore this paragraph. To launch CD Creator: 1.A. Go to your Easy Cd Creator icon on your Desktop and press ENTER, if you have one; or 1.B. Press Windows Logo key and ARROW to Easy CD Creator on your Start Menu, where it should also have been put during installation; or 1.C. If you have no shortcut icon, navigate to Cd Creator by pressing: Windows Logo key, P (for Program Files), A (for Adaptec Easy CD Creator) and ARROW to "Easy Cd Creator) and press ENTER. (In some installations there may be another sub-folder to open before you can get to "Easy Cd Creator" called "Features".) 2. The program loads and you can press ALT and ARROW left and right and up and down to observe the many menu headings and menu options. If the AutoPlay Extender loads in first, just press ALT F4 to close it or press CONTROL ALT TAB to move it from focus and bring Easy Cd Creator to the fore. 3. You are ready to go with any of the types of CD copying listed above and demonstrated below. 15.5. Creating an Audio Music CD from Your CD-ROM Drive You would do this from a digital source, e.g. from an existing music CD in your CD drive. Such copied disks can then be played on a computer, in a car or on your home HI-FI system. The disk you copy to must be an "audio" and not a "data" disk (although most blank CDs these days are of audio quality). If the music CD is to be played in a home HI-FI or car stereo system, it must be "closed" or "finalised" after burning, so you should completely fill the disk for maximum efficiency and then close it after it is filled. This is in contrast to data files which will still be accessible on your computer without the CD being closed. Once any type of write-only CD has been closed no more tracks or data files can be copied to it. Before copying/burning the disk, you must create a "Layout". A Layout is a kind of template of the tracks and their positions for copying onto the audio disk. When the Layout is complete, you start the copying. 1. Launch Easy Cd Creator, as outlined above. 2. Press ALT F (for File) and then press ENTER to go into the "New CD Layout" sub-menu. 3. ARROW to "Audio CD" and press ENTER. An audio Cd Layout will appear on screen. You can move from this layout pane to the Explorer pane by pressing the TAB key. 4. Insert a blank audio CD into your destination CD-RW drive. 5. Insert the source CD you wish to copy from into your CD-ROM drive, e.g. a music CD, a CD with Windows WAV files or MP3 files on it. 6. Press TAB once to go to the list of available drives in the left side of the Explorer pane, e.g. D, E, C, etc, and ARROW to and place focus on the CD-ROM drive in which you have placed your source CD, e.g. your D drive, if that is where your CD-ROM is. 7. Press TAB once to an editfield called "CD Title" and highlight it by pressing SHIFT END so that you can now over-type the default title in there with the actual CD title of your source CD in your CD-ROM drive. 8. Press TAB once more to "Artists Name", Press SHIFT END and type the source CDs artist's name in. Note: entering the CD title and artists names in the above two stages is not essential. It just means that next time you put this CD into the CD-ROM drive, the software will recognise it and tell you which CD you have inserted. You could jump stage 7 and 8 and go directly to step 9 below if all you are interested in is copying tracks and not labelling your CDs at the same time. 9. Press TAB again and you will fall in the list of tracks on the source CD. Unless you have already given them their correct titles (or allowed a Web-based CDDB database to do this for you) the tracks will have default titles such as "Track01", "Track02", etc. 10.A. To highlight all of the tracks on the source CD for copying to the blank Audio CD in your CD-RW drive, in the order that they appear on the source CD, just press CONTROL A, then press ALT E (for Edit) followed by S (for Add Selected). 10.B. to highlight only certain tracks for copying , ARROW to the first track you wish to copy, press the SPACEBAR to highlight only that track and then press ALT E (for Edit) followed by S (for Add Selected). Repeat this for each individual track you wish to have copied in the order you would like them copying. If you want to mix tracks from several source CDs, just put each CD into the source CD-ROM drive in turn and select in the same way. During copying you will be asked to insert each CD as the program wants them. 11. Pressing TAB again will show the Cd title and pressing it once more will display the artists name. You have now moved to the bottom (Layout) pane and this is why the Cd title and artists names are repeated. They are a reflection of what has been entered in the top Explorer panes. Pressing TAB again will just cycle you through the stages already mentioned above. 12. To commence the copying, press ALT F (for File) and then C (for Create CD), when you will enter a dialogue box with several options to TAB through and ARROW up and down in, similar to those in the "Advanced" property sheet in the CD Copier in section 14 above, e.g. To choose which CD-RW drive to copy to if you have more than one, to alter the write speed, to have the CD closed after copying, to say how many copies you would like, to immediately create or first test that the copying will be successful and to use Disk-AT-Once for music disks or check it off. After making your choices or accepting the defaults, TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to start the copying. 13. Whilst the copying is going on, your screenreader may start to read out two simultaneous percentage count ups of the state of progress of the copying. One count is for the stage of copying of an individual track; the other is an overall count of the state of copying of all of the selected tracks. Note 1: You can also highlight and copy and mix Windows WAV and MP3 files to an audio CD simultaneously with the copying of Audio tracks at steps 9 and 10 above. Note 2: Please study and become familiar with the above methods of using the Cd Creator's Explorer and Layout screens to select and add audio files and folders, as they are part of all the following types of CD creation and will not be repeated each time the Explorer and Layout panes have to be used. Note 3: You will only be able to record audio CDs from your CD- ROM directly to your CD-RW if the former supports digital audio extraction. Some older CD-ROMs may not. If yours does not, you will have to do your copying via your hard drive, i.e. copy an image from your CD-RW to the hard disk for it then to be passed back to your CD-RW drive where you will have inserted an audio CD, as described below. Warning: do not be tempted to touch the keys whilst the copying is going on, not even to get your screenreader to tell you the state of progress. This can affect the flow of data to the destination CD and damage the copying. Do tests on the free re- writable disk which should have come with your CD-RW drive to get an idea of how long so much data takes to copy and allow this much time plus a little extra before engaging in any further keyboard activity. You'll get use to the time factor to allow with your particular PC set up and CD drive configuration before long. Hopefully, also, at the end of copying, you're screenreader will echo that the copying has finished. For extra certainty, some people advocate unloading a screenreader before pressing ENTER on "OK" to start the copying at stage 12 above. 15.6. Obtaining CD Title and Track Titles from CDDB Online When copying CD audio Tracks to an audio CD, if you have already manually labelled the source Cd title, Artist name, individual track titles, etc, they will be shown in the Layout panes. If you have not done this and would like this information to be found and completed for you automatically, you can elect to go online to a CDDB database and have these details found. You would do this by: 1. With your source music CD in your CD drive, press ALT I (for Internet) and then C (for CDDB Website). 2. Your default Internet browser, e.g. Internet Explorer, Netscape Communicator, etc, will launch and you will be taken online to find these details. 3. You will now be able to observe track, album, artist name, etc, for the currently inserted CD and this information will be saved and be made available to you each time you insert this music CD into the CD drive again. 15.7. Creating an Audio CD When you Only Have One Cd Drive You can still make Audio CDs even if you only have one Cd drive-- a CD-RW drive. You have first to make an image of the CD you wish to copy on your hard disk, i.e. copy it there first, and then copy the image from the hard disk back to your CD-RW drive after replacing the source CD with a blank Audio music CD. You may wish to do this to speed copying up if you wish to make several CD copies of the same tracks or if your source CD-ROM drive is old and too slow to keep up with the required data flow to your CD-RW drive, e.g. you may have a 4 speed CD-ROM and a 12X8X32 speed CD- RW drive. 1. Insert your original music CD into your CD-RW drive. 2. Follow the steps outlined in steps 1 to 11 (excluding step 5) in "Creating an Audio Music CD from Your CD-ROM Drive" above. 3. Press ALT F (for file) and then I (for Create CD Image). 4. In the editfield, type in a filename for the image and accept the default saving folder of \Temp or select another folder to save in if you like. 5. TAB to Save" and press ENTER. This is the end of the first stage of the process. 6. To effect the second stage, you have to record the saved CD image to the blank audio CD. You press ALT F (for file) and then F (for Create CD from CD Image). 7. TAB to and then ARROW to the Cd image you wish to copy to the blank CD and then TAB to "Open" and press ENTER. 8. Make any changes you like in the dialogue which opens up and then TAB to "OK" and press ENTRE to start the copying. 15.8. Playing a Music CD with Easy CD Creator Playing an audio CD with Cd Creator is a little inflexible but can still be done from the keyboard: 1. With your CD in one of your CD drives (the one which is linked to your sound card with the audio cable, if only one is, unless you are intending to listen with headphones), use the CD Creator Explorer panes to TAB to the drives list and ARROW to the drive where your CD is inserted, e.g. the D or E drive. 2. Now TAB to the list of tracks on that CD and ARROW to the one you wish to hear. Highlight it by pressing the SPACEBAR. If you wish to play more than one track, highlight each one you want to hear. If you want to hear all of the tracks, press CONTROL A to highlight them all. 3. Start it/them playing by pressing ALT T (for Tracks) and then L (for Play). 4. The music will commence playing. 5. You cannot fast forward, jump back, change the volume of the play, etc. All you can do is press the SPACEBAR to pause and restart playing and use ALT F4 to stop the playing altogether. Note: Playing Cd music in such as Windows CD Player, Winamp, etc, is much more flexible. 15.9. Converting an Audio Music CD Track into a Windows WAV or MP3 File This can be done by: 1. Place your music CD in the source CD drive. 2. Press ALT F (for File), N (for New CD Layout) and then A (for Audio CD). 3. Select the track from the CD Creator's Explorer panes (see procedures already explained to do this in "Creating an Audio Music CD from Your CD-ROM Drive" above). Do not forget to add it by pressing ALT E, S. 4. Press ALT T (for Track) and then X (for Extract to File). 5. The extract dialogue opens up and the name of the track selected is inserted. You can press BACKSPACE to erase this and type a new track or filename in if you wish. 6. Press TAB to "Save as Type" and note that you can ARROW between "WAV" and "MP3" formats. Place focus on the type of file format you wish to create. 7. TAB through the rest of the options and note where the file will save to, which is: c:\Program Files\Adaptec\Easy CD Creator 4\ You can change this to somewhere easier to find if you wish. 8. Lastly, TAB to "Save" and press ENTER. The track will be extracted, converted to MP3 format and saved to your hard disk as an MP3 data sound file. 15.10. Creating a Data CD from Files on Your Hard Disk Drive You may wish to do this to back up all or part of your hard disk data or to place files on a data CD to transport elsewhere. You can also place MP3 music files on a data disk for playback on your PC but not on a car or home HI-FI, unless you have an up-to- date car stereo system capable of playing MP3s. Do this by: 1. Launch Easy CD Creator. 2. Press ALT F (for File) then N (for New CD Layout) and D (for Data CD). 3. A new data Cd Layout template will be opened. You can TAB through the various options. TAB once to the Explorer list of drives and folders. If you wish to copy three files from a folder called My Documents on your C drive, ARROW to the C drive and press ENTER or right ARROW to open it, Tab to the list of folders on the C drive and ARROW to My documents and open this with the right ARROW key, TAB once and then move to the first file you wish to have copied to the CD data disk. 4. With focus on the first file, press the SPACEBAR to select it, then press ALT E (for Edit) followed by S (for Add selected). Do this for each file in this folder you wish to add to the copying list in the Layout in the order you would like them copying. 5. Navigate to any other folders you may also wish to copy some files from and do the same as above. If you wish to select all of the files in a particular folder, just press CONTROL A when you have that folder open. Do not forget to press ALT E, S. 6. If you wish to copy a full folder of files and sub-folders, retaining its own folder name, you should place focus on the folder in question without opening it and press SPACEBAR to highlight it. Do not forget to then press ALT E, S. 7. When you have all the files or folders you want selected and added, press ALT F (for File) and then C (for Create CD). 8. You will enter the "CD Creation" dialogue box with several options to TAB through and ARROW up and down in, similar to those in the "Advanced" property sheet in the CD Copier in section 14 above, e.g. To choose which CD-RW drive to copy to if you have more than one, to alter the write speed, to say how many copies you would like, to immediately create or first test that the copying will be successful, to have a disk written and closed (no more data can be copied to it) or close this session and leave CD open (more data can be added later) and to use Disk-AT-Once for music disks or check it off. After making your choices or accepting the defaults, TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. 9. The copying will commence and you will be told when it has finished. 15.11. Creating a Data CD When you Only Have One Cd Drive The reasons for and method of copying an image of files on your hard disk for recording to a data CD are the same as with copying audio tracks to your hard disk in "Creating an Audio CD When you Only Have One Cd Drive" above. However, you can use a cheaper data CD instead of an audio CD or use a re-writable CD. 1. Insert your data CD into the CD-RW drive. 2. Press ALT F (for File), N (for New CD Layout" and then D (for Data CD). 3. Follow the procedures outlined from step 2 of in "Creating an Audio CD When you Only Have One Cd Drive" above. 15.12. Creating a Mixed-Mode Cd A "mixed-mode" CD is a single session CD which contains a mixture of data and audio tracks, which can only be played on a PC. The CD will have a layout with both a data and an audio section. You can make one of these by: 1. With an Audio CD in your CD-RW drive, press ALT F (for File), N (for New CD Layout) and then M (for Mixed-Mode). 2. Add the data files and folders to the "data Layout" section, which you will currently be on, with the CD Creator Explorer as described above. Do not forget to add the files or folders you select with ALT E, S. 3. Then TAB to the line above the Explorer line where you selected the drive letter to find the data files and ARROW down to the "audio CD Layout". Now add the MP3, WAV or tracks to the audio CD Layout section as normal, e.g. from a folder on your hard disk, from a music CD in your CD-ROM drive, etc. Do not forget to add the tracks with ALT E, S. If several figures are read to you when you first TAB to this stage by your screenreader, this is just the date of copying which will be attached to your files, e.g. 050201 for 5 February 2001. 4. Commence the copying of both types of files by pressing ALT F (for File) and then C (for Create CD). 5. The standard dialogue will open and you can make changes in here before TABBING to "OK" or just press ENTER on "OK" if you know that the defaults are acceptable to you. 15.13. Creating a Cd Extra Cd a "CD Extra" CD is a multi-session CD which contains audio files (e.g. MP3, WAV or audio tracks) and data files. The first session contains the audio files which can be played on a home HI-FI or car stereo and the second session contains the data to be accessed by your PCs Cd-ROM drive. 1. With an Audio CD in the CD-RW drive, press ALT F (for File), N (for New CD Layout) and then X (for CD Extra). 2. Add the Audio tracks to the "CD Layout" section, which you will currently be on, with the CD Creator Explorer as described above. Do not forget to add the files or folders you select with ALT E, S. 3. Then TAB to the line above the Explorer line where you selected the drive letter to find the audio tracks and ARROW down to the "CD Plus" Layout. Now add the data files or folders to the audio CD Layout section as normal, e.g. from a folder on your hard disk. Do not forget to add the tracks with ALT E, S. 4. Commence the copying of both types of files by pressing ALT F (for file) and then C (for Create CD). 5. The standard dialogue will open and you can make changes in here before TABBING to "OK" or just press ENTER on "OK" if the defaults are acceptable to you. 15.14. How to Add More Data to a Partly Used Data CD When you re-use a CD to add more data to it later, it is known as a multi-session CD. You do this with a standard right-only data CD as follows: 1. Follow the procedure outlined in "Creating a Data CD from Files on Your Hard Disk" to complete the first data copying session, but When you reach the step 8 stage, you should ensure that "Close Session and Leave CD Open" is selected (this is the standard setting for data copying). The other choice is "Close Cd", which will write to a CD and permanently close it so that no more data can be copied to it. 2. When you need to copy more data to this CD on another day, you can start session two of your copying by placing the CD back into the drive and again following the procedure outlined in step 8 above, ensuring that the disk is copied and left open in the "Cd Creation" dialogue box as before. 3. You can repeat this copying and later re-copying to the same data disk until it is completely full (normally 650 Mb of space). This can permit you to copy hundreds more megabytes of information to CD for archiving or sharing than you can get on a standard 1.44 floppy disk. 15.15. Deleting the Contents of a CD To erase the whole contents of a re-writable CD: 1. Press ALT C (for CD) and then R (for Erase). 2. You will come into a two choice erase mode: Fast erase or full erase. The Fast erase should work OK but if you later find that not everything was erased, you can use the full erase instead for a more thorough deletion but it takes longer. 3 TAB to "Start" and press ENTER. You will be warned that everything on the disk will be lost permanently and have to press ENTER again to confirm and commence the deleting. Note: Do not play with your screenreader whilst erasing is going on. 15.16. Saving A Layout Once you have created an audio or data layout template, you can save it for later retrieval to use it for further identical CD copying. You may also wish to open it to modify it and run a slightly different version of the copying session. 1. After creating the Layout as shown in several of the above sub-sections, you simply press CONTROL S, BACKSPACE to delete the default "Untitled" filename and type your own preferred filename in here. 2. TAB to "Save as Type" and it is usually recommended to leave this on the default of "Easy CD Creator 4" format, which has a ".CL4" extension. 3. TAB to "Save" and press ENTER. The layout will save in the usual folder of: c:\program Files\adaptech\Easy CD Creator 4\ 15.17. Opening a Saved Layout To retrieve a saved Layout for further identical or modified CD copying: 1. Press CONTROL O and the "Open" dialogue box will load in. Type in the editfield the name of the saved Layout you wish to open for CD copying or Layout modifying. If you cannot remember the layout's name, just SHIFT TAB back to the list of saved layout templates and ARROW to the one you require. 2. TAB to "Open" and press ENTER. 3. To make CD copies from this Layout press ALT F, C, ENTER on "OK" and ENTER again on the compatibility warning if it comes up. The CD will be recorded and copied. 15.18. Viewing CD Layout Properties To observe or Make Changes to the properties of a saved Layout, 1. With the Layout you wish to look at the properties of on screen, press ALT F (for File) and then L (for Layout Properties. 2. The first line of the information tells you the date and time the Layout was created. 3. TAB through the other details to view the current settings. 4. If you wish to make modifications, you can by ARROWING up and down in the listboxes or checking or unchecking some of the options, e.g. press SPACEBAR on "Automatically Verify File System" if you would like the integrity of the current Layout to be check prior to CD copying to see if any files or folders which the Layout needs to correctly copy have been deleted or moved. 5. In particular note the "Preserve Normal File Ordering option". If this is selected, the files will copy in the order you selected them; if you ARROW down this list you can choose instead to maximise CD copying speed or maximise use of space on the Compact disk but, of coarse, the original order you selected files in will be changed. 6. After viewing only, TAB to "Cancel" and press ENTER; otherwise, if you have made any changes, TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to save them. 7. To obtain more information and be able to type in such as who created the Layout, if it is copyrighted, to specify which types of files are and are not copied to CD, etc, you can press CONTROL TAB to two other Layout property sheets at this time. 15.19. Testing that Your Computer is running Optimally for CD Copying You can do this with the "System Test" feature. It is a good idea to do this before copying your first CD or after making any changes to your computer system, such as changing the whereabouts of your temporary files or making a hardware change to your CD drives, adding a new hard disk, etc. If you attempt to copy CDs at a speed faster than your CPU can support, it is likely that the copying will fail and your blank disk may be rendered unusable. There are three different tests, namely speed of data transfer test, speed of audio extraction test and speed of recording test. 1. Press ALT O (for Tools) and then T(for System Tests). 2. The first line of the dialogue which opens up shows your writable CD drives to do the test on. If you have more than one writable CD drive, do the test on both by ARROWING to both and running the test on each separately. 3. TAB forward several times to "Data Transfer Rate" and check this on by pressing the SPACEBAR if you want to test this. Do the same with the next two options if you want to test audio extraction and recording. Running all tests is recommended. 4. TAB to "Test" and press ENTER to start the testing. 5. The tests may take ten minutes or so, during which you will be asked to insert several types of disks into the CD-RW drive for testing, namely a data disk with at least one data file on it, an audio disk with tracks on it and a blank data disk. You should get a percentage count up as each test is carried out. 6. Just insert the disks and keep pressing ENTER on "OK". At the end of the tests you will be able to go into navigation or mouse mode to observe the results of all three tests. It is possible that, even if your CD-RW drive can copy at 8 speed, the test may show it only operating at 5 speed, because the rest of your computer system cannot work any faster than 5 speed, e.g. your CPU may not be fast enough to copy at 8 speed. 15.20. Other Main Menu Features of Interest Press ALT C, C: to obtain information on the current CD in your CD drive. Press ALT O, D: To view properties of your CD drives, such as writing speed. Press ALT O, O: to check on or off the options you would like to apply to all of your copying, e.g. check on "CDDB Internet Audio Information Download" to get CD Creator to go on line automatically when you copy/duplicate a music CD to find the album title, artists name, track titles, etc, for you. Press ALT O, F: To find a file or folder on your hard disk or Cd drive. There are three property sheets here and you can narrow searches down to certain file sizes, date created, etc. Press ALT I and ARROW down: To view and activate, if you wish, several methods of obtaining information about Easy CD Creator, upgrades, places to find Web music, an option to go online and register your copy of the software, and so forth. 15.21. Downloadable JFW Scripts for Easy Cd Creator 4 A JFW user has written and kindly made available to others some JFW scripts for Easy Cd Creator Version 4. Whilst these are not, strictly speaking, essential to being able to use Easy CD from the keyboard, some users may find them to be a convenient alternative to the standard methods of accessing particular parts of the program. These can be downloaded from: www.geocities.com/musicmaker365/easycdcreator.zip But, of course, you must use Winzip or PKzip to uncompress these. These scripts have the following hotkeys: Press ALT 1: To stop JAWS from speaking while recording a CD until you press ALT 1 again, when JAWS will then give you the recording stats. Press ALT 2: To get JAWS to read the image recording stats. Press ALT L: To put the cursor in the Layout window where you can paste in your data or audio files/tracks. Press CONTROL L: To toggle the 74 or 80 minute Cd option menu. Press INSERT H: To get JAWS to read the list of hotkeys. 15.22. Easy CD Creator Shortcut Keys Press F1: To be taken into the Contents and Index help system or to obtain context-sensitive help in certain situations. Press F5: To refresh the screen. Press TAB: To cycle between the upper and lower panes. Press ALT F4: to exit the program. Press ALT F6: To bring up the "Show Me" dialogue box. Press CONTROL O: to open a CD Layout template. Press CONTROL S: To save a file or layout. Press CONTROL Z, C, V, X: To achieve the standard Windows commands such as cut, copy, etc. 15.23. Upgrading to Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum If you wish to upgrade from the basic Easy CD Creator (standard) package which comes complimentary with many CD-RWs, you have to buy the Easy CD Creator deluxe or Platinum version from a UK supplier such as PC World or Dixon's at a cost of about œ50 but you may be able to find it cheaper at computer fairs, mail order software suppliers or from online suppliers. Ensure that you are getting the up-to-date, fully-featured platinum version, not a standard OEM version. Easy CD Creator used to be made by and supplied by a company with a UK branch called Adaptec (Tel 01276 854500) but it has now been taken over by a German company called Roxio, whose Website is at: www.roxio.com I may soon write a more comprehensive tutorial on how to use the only just released Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum for anyone who is interested in the much more feature-packed Platinum version. The extra features you get with the deluxe or Platinum versions on top of the CD copier and the basic Easy CD creator are: * CD SpinDoctor (improves your old tapes and vinyl records by removing hiss, clicks and crackle). * Liquid Music Player (Allows you to play or buy liquid audio music from the Internet). * Session Selector (Lets you select what session appears when accessing your CD-ROM drive) * Sound Editor (Enables you to modify a song's WAV file before recording it to a CD) . * Video CD Creator (Permits video CDs to be designed and created). ******** >SECTION 16 ADaPTEC DIRECT CD CD DISK FORMATTER VersionS 2X AND 3X 16.1. What Does the Direct CD Wizard Do? With some versions of Easy CD Creator you are supplied with a program called "Direct CD". Otherwise, you may be able to purchase it independently. This is a piece of software which permits you to format and use a re-writable disk as if it was a floppy disk. The big difference is that a formatted CD will have nearly 400 times as much storage capacity as a standard 1.44 Mb floppy disk. You typically get around 491 to 545 Mb of storage capacity on a formatted CD. You don't get the full 650 Mb of space which is available on a CD when copying to it with CD copier or Easy CD Creator because the formatting itself takes up some of the space on the disk. You also get a program called "CD Eraser" with your Direct CD package for deleting all of the files from a formatted data CD. 16.2. Uses for Formatted Direct CD Disks Large capacity formatted CDs can be used for: * Archiving large numbers of data files in many directories/folders, thus removing the need for hundreds of floppy disks. * Acting as a place to back-up your computer's hard disk. * Circulating large files around friends or work colleagues which would not fit on floppy disks. 16.3. Launching Direct CD and Formatting a CD To use a CD as a floppy-type data disk you first have to format it. 1. With a re-writable Cd in the CD drive, you can start Direct CD either by: a. Navigating to it in Windows Explorer and pressing ENTER on the DirectCd.exe file, or b. Pressing the Windows Logo key followed by r (for Run) and then typing the path in to the exe file, which is: "c:\Program Files\DirectCD\DirectCd.exe" In the case of Direct CD Verssion 2X; or "c:\Program Files\Adaptec\DirectCD\DirectCD.exe" In the case of Direct CD 3X. (include the double quotes) and press ENTEr, or c. Pressing ENTER on its icon on the Desktop, if one has been put there, or d. Press the Windows Logo key, then p (for Program Files), followed by A (for Adaptec Direct Cd), then press ENTER and now ARROW to "Adaptec Direct CD and press ENTER in Version 2X. The file to press ENTER on in Version 3X is called "Direct CD Wizard". 2. The DirectCD wizard will welcome you and tell you that it is ready to prepare (format) a new re-writable Cd for you. TAB to "Next" and press ENTER. 3. You are then asked to select a CD-R/CD-RW drive in case you have more than one. If you only have one, then this is all that will be listed. ARROW to the CD drive you have placed your re- writable disk in, if it is not already selected. 4. TAB to "Next" and press ENTER. 5. The Direct CD Wizard will tell you that it is now ready to format the disk, so TAB to "Next" and press ENTER. You will be warned if the disk is not blank and something on it will be over- written. 6.A. In Version 2X, you will be asked for a name to give to the disk, which should not be more than 11 characters long, so type one in for identification purposes, e.g. Backup disk1. 6.B. In Version 3X, you have to TAB to the "Type a Name for Your Disk" editfield before typing it in. You can then TAB to "Enable Compression on this Disk" and press SPACEBAR to check this on if you would like to maximise the amount of space Direct CD can squeeze out of a re-writable CD. 7. Then TAB to "Finish" and press ENTER. You will be advised that the formatting may take anything from 25 to 90 minutes, depending on your version of the software, and you will be on an "OK" button, so press ENTER to commence the formatting. You just leave it now until it finishes the formatting. In fact, with a fast PC and CD-RW drive it may take less than 30 minutes to format. 8. If you go into mouse mode, you can observe the "Time Elapsed" figure on the screen but it may not be advisable to do this often in case you interfere with the formatting. 9. When the formatting is complete, you will be presented with the "Ready" screen and an "OK" button to press ENTER on. 16.4. How to Copy to a Formatted Data Compact Disk You can read and write files directly to a formatted re-writable CD with any software which can read and write to a drive letter, e.g. Word, WordPerfect, Windows Explorer, from MS DOS with the copy command, with any Windows 95/98/ME program which as a "Send To" command on its File Menu, etc. The data CD will be usable in all CD-RW drives and in any multi- read CD-ROM drive that has the Adaptec CD reader software on that computer. 16.5. Deleting files from a DATA CD You can erase files from a data CD in the normal way, for instance, by: 1. Using the DOS DEL or DELTREE commands. 2. With Windows Explorer, select the file(s) to be deleted and press DEL. 3. With the "Adaptec CD Eraser", which will erase all of the data on a CD to completely clear it. This might take 30 or 40 minutes, depending on how full the CD is. The Cd Eraser is in the same folder as the DirectCD.exe file. ******** >SECTION 17 WINDOWS SOUND RECORDER WITH JFW 17.1. JFW SPECIAL SHORTCUT COMMANDS JFW has its own special shortcut keystrokes for use with Sound Recorder. I have listed these at the beginning of this section, rather than at the end, because you are unlikely to be able to reasonably use the Sound Recorder without these. Obviously, if you do not use JFW, it follows that Sound Recorder may not be reasonably accessible to you. With other screenreaders you will be able to use the SPACEBAR to start and stop the playing of sound files and you will be able to insert one sound into another, etc, but you will find that you are unlikely to obtain good feedback as to what is happening in many dialogue boxes and manoeuvring around sound files will not be easy without uncertainty and difficulty. These special JFW hot keys are: Press spacebar: To pause during recording or playback. Pressing SPACEBAR again recommences recording or playback. You should also pause recording with the SPACEBAR before making any effects or other changes to a file--these cannot be made whilst a file is playing. Press CONTROL B: To rewind. You will then fall on a "Seek to End" button which has as its default 0 per cent, meaning go all the way back to the beginning of the recording. If you only wish to rewind part way back you can TAB forward a few times to a slider and then use the Page up and down keys to change the percentage of distance you wish to go back in percentage chunks or do this per cent by per cent with the up and down ARROW keys. After this, press CONTROL P to play the file from that point. Press CONTROL F: To fast forward (see above for what to do from here but in reverse, of course). Press CONTROL L: To limit the amount of speech JAWS outputs from its software synthesiser so that this does not have an affect on your microphone recordings. Another press of CONTROL L will toggle full speech back on. Press control p: To play a recording. Press CONTROL R: To start recording. Press CONTROL S: to stop recording or playing. Press INSERT F8: To bring up a list of the main function buttons but the above CONTROL hot keys do all of these things faster. Please learn these shortcuts and how to use them, as they will not be repeated during the rest of this section. In particular, practise using the CONTROL B AND CONTROL F shortcuts together with the percentage movement slider, as this is the only way to move the cursor around a sound file without having to go to the beginning of it time and time again. 17.2. CAPABILITIES AND LIMITATIONS OF THE SOUND RECORDER Windows Sound Recorder is not very speech-friendly for screenreaders without special set or script files written for it. I have only found it to be acceptably usable with more up-to-date versions of JFW. If you do not use JFW, it is probably as well that you skip this section, unless you can obtain specially written set or script files from the manufacturer of your screenreader or from their Website which may have been written by other users and made generally available. For JFW users, Sound Recorder does work quite well and thus represents a good basic, few frills way to get accustomed to sound recording from a HI-FI turntable, tape recorder, microphone or other plugin sound source. You should be aware, though, that whilst you can play large sound files with Sound Recorder and make basic editing changes to them and resave them, from a recording point of view, you can only make short recordings with it (but see my note about extending the recording ability at the very end of this section). By default, Sound Recorder will only allow you to make an original recording of about one minute in length before cutting off. You can, therefore, get some practise with basic sound recording and use it to make short notes for yourself or perhaps create short messages to send to others over the Internet, e.g. as e-mail attachments. You could also use it to edit and resave any Windows WAV files provided in your Windows 9X operating system or supplied with any other installed software, e.g. to increase or reduce the sampling rate, change a sound file from stereo to mono, etc. You cannot highlight small sections of sound files in Sound Recorder in order to make effects changes to that selection only. You can only make a change to a whole file, or from the cursor point to the beginning of a file, or from the cursor point to the end of a file, or add something to the end of a file. This makes sound editing limited but perhaps no more so than you would experience with a cassette recorder. The useful exception to this is where you can insert one sound file into another sound file without over-writing any of it (see "Inserting One Sound File into Another" below). The Windows Sound Recorder is a basic program for recording music or speech to your hard disk. It creates and saves files, by default, as Windows WAV files. You can then effect a limited number of special effects on these files, such as adding echo and increasing the speed of the music or speech file. To make such changes, the file must be in its native .WAV format and not have been compressed to such as an MP3 file. 17.3. Audio Properties, Quality and Volume Changes Before you do any recording, check that the "Audio Properties" of the files you intend to record are set up as you require them for your sound card and final file output quality needs. Do this by: 1. Press ALT E (for Edit) and then U (for Audio Properties). 2. Adjust the playback volume with the PAGE up and down keys if necessary. 3. TAB to the "Recording Volume" option and adjust this with the PAGE or ARROW keys. 4. TAB forward to the "Preferred Quality" list--which has telephone, radio and Cd choices as defaults--and select CD quality for best results, unless you wish to customise the type of settings you prefer for a particular type of recording session (see 5 below). 5. If you wish to create your own customised settings, TAB to "Customise" and press ENTER. The new dialogue which opens up allows you to: A. observe the normal "PCM" "format" that files are saved in. This can be changed in the list, as there are 18 different formats including compressed MP3 file. B. TAB to the "attributes" list and note that the default sampling rate is 44,100 Hz, 16 bit and in stereo, when you have CD quality selected. You can ARROW up and down to change the sampling quality to as low as 8,000 Hz (not recommended) and as high as 48,000 Hz. Each sampling level has a 16 and 8 bit and a stereo and mono option. You may find that stereo gives best quality output, particularly for music with a good sound card. On the other hand, for speech recording with a lower quality sound card, 32,00 Hz mono in 16 bit may work better. Generally, the 8 bit option does not give good enough quality. Note: The higher the sampling rate, the more disk space your recording will take up. It is also the case that stereo recordings take up twice as much disk space as do mono recordings. If you intend to make lengthy audio files, you will require plenty of hard disk space--around 10 Mb for every one minute of high-quality stereo recording. After recording and effecting any editing, you can always then compress the file to such as an MP3 format, which is likely to take up only about 50 to 10 per cent of the disk space that the original file required, depending on the quality of the MP3 file you want to produce and the type of audio file which the original was, e.g. music files are likely to compress more than speech files. C. TAB to the "Save As" button and press ENTER to land in an editfield in which you can type in the name of your own bespoke format attributes file so that these will be saved to a sound quality file and appear in the above (step 4) Telephone, radio and Cd quality recording quality list. Then press ENTER to go back to the dialogue box you just left. D. Now TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to return to the first dialogue. 6. Lastly, TAB to "OK" again and press ENTER to complete the procedure. 17.4. Recording a Sound File 1. Plug your microphone, tape recorder or other sound source into the mini-jack plug of your sound card at the rear of your PC. 2. Press ALT F (for File), N (for New) and then press CONTROL R to commence the hard disk revolving and recording. 3. Start speaking or switch on the other sound source immediately. The recording will continue until you press CONTROL S to stop it. 4. At any time, if you wish to pause the recording, press the SPACEBAR. Recording stops. To recommence recording, press the SPACEBAR again. 5. When you have finished the recording, press ALT F (for File), A (for Save As) and type a filename into the editfield for the recorded sound file. Then press ENTER to have it saved as a .WAV file. You can choose other file formats in this dialogue if you wish, e.g. MP3 or Learnout and Horspie but you will not be able to edit files in these formats. 6. The file, by default, saves into the /Windows folder. 17.5. Opening and Playing a Saved Sound File 1. Press ALT F (for File) and then O (for Open). 2. In the editfield type in the name of the sound file you want. The program will assume an extension of .WAV but if the file was saved in any other format, TAB to "Files of Type" and ARROW down once to "All Files". So, if you have not already created and saved your own short sound file to now open, open one of the many installed Windows wave files in the C:\Windows\Media\ sub-folder for this example at: c:\Windows\Media\Jungle Windows Start 3. Then TAB to "Open" and press ENTER. 4. The file will load and you can press CONTROL P or SPACEBAR to start it playing. 5. To close the current sound file and prepare to start another recording, press ALT F (for File) and then N (for New). You may be asked if you want to save any so far unsaved changes to this file, so if this happens, TAB between "Yes" and "No" and make the appropriate choice. 17.6. Editing and Effects Whilst some sound editing programs, such as Sound Forge, can be quite successfully used as sound editors, Windows Sound Recorder is not so amenable. However, some basic editing and mixing can be achieved. It is probably as well, if recording from a microphone, to use the SPACEBAR to pause the recording when you need a break or to study your next sentence, then press SPACEBAR again to recommence recording. You can also, if you make a mistake, use the rewind facility to go back a percentage of the file to just before the mistake was made and then allow the file to run, stop it after the last correct word and then start recording again from there, in a similar way to using a tape recorder. This is in contrast to how you might choose to use a more sophisticated sound recorder such as Sound Forge, which has better keyboard editing features and better sound Effects. To erase part of a sound file from the cursor position to the beginning of the recording or from the cursor position to the end of a recording, press ALT E (for Edit) and either B (for Delete Before Current Position) or A (for Delete After Current Position) respectively. To record over the end of a recording, similarly to with a tape recorder, play the sound file to that position, press SPACEBAR to pause the playback and then just press CONTROL R to recommence recording and record over the original material to the right of where you are. to increase the speed of a recording to double the original speed, perhaps to then pass the recording to a cassette recorder which can play tapes at half speed, press ALT S (for Effects) and then N (for Increase Speed by 100 Per Cent). To decrease the speed of a recording by half, press ALT S (for Effects) and E (for Decrease Speed). To Increase the volume of a sound file, press ALT S (for Effects) followed by I (for Increase Volume by 25 Per Cent). You can keep on doing this to get volume increases of 25 per cent each time but eventually the recording will become over-recorded and blurred. To decrease the volume of a recording in 25 per cent steps, press ALT S (for Effects) and D (for Decrease Volume). To make a sound file play backwards, press ALT S (for Effects) and then R (for Reverse). To add echo to a file, press ALT S (for Effects) and A (for Add Echo). To undo any of the above changes, press ALT F (for File) R (for Revert) and ENTER to effect the undo. Note, however, that this is only possible if you have not re-saved the sound file since the change was made that you want to undo. 17.7. Changing the Quality of a Recording You can change things like the file format, sampling rate, mono or stereo format, etc, of a file. Do this by: 1. With a sound file on screen, press ALT F (for file) and then P (for Properties). 2. In the dialogue which opens up you can view all of the attributes of the current sound file, such as the length of the file, how many bytes it takes up on your hard disk, sampling rate, etc. 3. To make one or several changes, TAB to "Convert Now" and press ENTER. 4. the dialogue which comes up is the same as that described in "Audio Properties" above (step 5) and you can make changes as outlined there. 5. Then TAB to "OK" and press ENTER and TAB again to "OK" and press ENTER again. 6. Do not forget to re-save the file as normal with ALT F, S. 17.8. Joining Sound Files Together If you wish to append a second sound file to the end of the current one on screen or have it over-record the end of the current file, place the cursor at the point where you want the second recording to be inserted and: 1. Press ALT E (for Edit) and I (for Insert File). 2. Type the name of the second file to be inserted into the editfield. 3. TAB to the "Open" button and press ENTER. 4. The second file will be inserted from the cursor point and will over-write any recording from that point to the end of the file. 17.9. Merging Sound Files To mix one recording with another, e.g. place a quiet music recording in the background of a speech recording, you would: 1. Create the speech file and save it to disk. 2. Create the music file and save it to disk under a different filename. 3. If necessary, adjust the relative volumes of the music and speech files with the increase and decrease volume features of the Effects menu (see "Editing and Effects" above). 4. Open the music file and place the cursor at the beginning of it or at any point where you want the speech to start. 5. Press ALT E (for Edit) and then M (for Mix with file). 6. In the editfield you fall in, type the name of the speech file you created earlier with its extension. 7. TAB to "Open" and press ENTER. 8. The two files will now be mixed and merged as one to be played simultaneously. 9. Save the new file to its existing filename with ALT F, S or to another filename with ALT F, A. 17.10. Inserting One Sound file into Another You can insert music, an index tone, some words, etc, into the middle of an existing sound file by: 1. Open the file which holds the music, cue and review tone or words to be inserted. Otherwise create it if it does not already exist. The whole file is highlighted by default. 2. Press CONTROL C to copy it to the clipboard. 3. Open the sound file you wish to have this sound inserted into. 4. Place the cursor at the point where you want the insert to appear. 5. Press CONTROL V to paste the insert in at the cursor position. 6. The music or speech to the right of the insert will not be over-written. When you play the altered sound file, the beginning of the file will play, then the insert and then the end of the file. This can be a very useful way of adding accidentally missed out words or lines into an original speech recording or special effects into a specific place in a music file. 7. Save the new sound file with its insert. Note: Having said at the beginning of this section that you can only record up to one minute of sound with Sound Recorder, there is a way of fooling it into letting you record more than one minute. You can do this by allowing it to record to its limit of one minute, then as soon as it says "Record" again, press the "Seek to End" button, then the record button . Each time it gets to the end of its cycle, keep doing this for as many minutes as required to record the length of sound you want to record. It does not matter what you are recording while doing this, as you are simply just building up a longer wav file to the extent of your requirements. When you have finished, give the file a name. Then go to the Seek to Start button and start recording for the length of file you created, i.e. if you did this five times, you would then be able to record a sound file of up to five minutes. ******** >SECTION 18 SOUND FORGE XP 18.1. Introduction This section deals mainly with Sound Forge XP 4.5 from the point of view of a speech recorder and editor, not as a music creator and editor. There will, of course, be some coverage of music files, as introductions to speech recordings and as methods of mixing background music with speech files, for example. This tutorial covers the basics of Sound Forge XP 4.5, which is the slimmed down version. The full version, known as Sound forge 4.5, has a good number of extra features and some of the duplicated features have more options within them in the full version, in addition to being easier to use from a keyboard point of view. Nonetheless, the basic XP version offers much to work with for both speech and music recording, editing and mixing. Sound Forge 5.0 will soon be released in the UK but the main methods of highlighting/editing and the shortcut keystrokes will not change to any significant degree. This new version also has some restrictions not encountered in the 4.5 version, namely it will not work with any operating system before Windows 98. You can currently, for a limited period, purchase and download Sound Forge 5.0 at a special discounted price of 99 dollars from the American Website of: www.soundforege.com or, if it is no longer there, there should be a link to a sister site to download it from as long as it is still available at the special price. Whereas Sound Forge up to version 7 was written by and supplied by a company called Sonic Foundry, since then it has been bought out by Sony and so the newest version (as of June 2006) is now called Sony Sound Forge 8. However, most of the basic keyboard hot keys remain the same but there are a few additions and changes from earlier versions. Programs such as Windows Sound Recorder are fine for short passages of straightforward music or speech recording in a similar way to using a cassette recorder but they do not offer much in the way of editing the finished result. sound Forge offers more editing options and more flexible and easier to use keyboard sound editing hot keys. Whilst with Sound Forge you can pause recording at any time and then continue, it is more likely that you will wish to finish a recording, mark any mistakes as you go and then go back to any mistakes and edit them out or correct them later. 18.2. Versions of Sound Forge and Where to Buy Them Both versions of Sound Forge can be purchased from specialist shops, such as Sound Control. You may even get Sound Forge XP from PC World or from mail order firms. Sound Forge 4.5 costs about œ349, the XP version about œ49 and the sound reduction and vinyl crackle removing plugin about œ295. The UK distributor, who tell me that they only sell to retailers, are on Tel 0207 9231892. However, I have been advised by some people that copies of Sound Forge can be purchased directly from this UK company on CD, so it's probably best that you contact them at the time you wish to buy to confirm their policy at that time. Their Website is at www.scvlondon.co.uk but the Sonic Foundry maker's own Website is at www.sonicfoundry.com, as they are American. The company's pricing policy is a little uncertain at present as they will soon be releasing a new version of Sound Forge. However, a demo of the XP 4.5 version is said to be downloadable from the www.sonicfoundry.com site. You may also be able to get a CD version of a demo by phoning the above UK number. Both versions can be bought online from either supplier. If you have the XP version, you may be able to buy an upgrade version at only around œ175 but check with the suppliers for up-to-date details before buying any version. 18.3. Installing Sound Forge Sound Forge has a typical Windows-type installation procedure, although you may have to make your initial type of selection choice on the first screen by going into navigation/mouse mode to get things started. Just continue from here in standard mode by activating the "Next" buttons as they appear to the end of the installation. 18.4. The Sound Forge Data Window and Keyboard Movement Keys The data window is where you do your recording and editing. It holds the results of your sound files and, whilst in pause or stop mode, allows you to move around in the sound file in discrete jumps by use of the left and right ARROW keys for small movements, the CONTROL plus the right and left ARROW keys for slightly larger movements and with the CONTROL PAGE down and up keys for larger skips forward and backward through a sound file. You can also go to the beginning or end of a file respectively with the CONTROL HOME and CONTROL END keys. Ensure that you memorise these basic movement keys before you go any further as it is essential that you know about these. However, be aware that not all versions/revisions of Sound Forge support the CONTROL left and right ARROW shortcuts for moving around in discreet amounts and may, instead, use these two shortcuts for jumping to the previous or next marker in a sound file. If you find this to be the case with your copy, to move in larger jumps than the standard left and right ARROW presses would permit, you can increase the zoom (i.e. the distance a left or right ARROW press will take you) by pressing the ARROW up key several times until you find a level of left and right movement which suits you. The down ARROW will reduce the level of cursor movement you experience when left and right ARROWING. You may also find that you can move by medium-sized jumps by pressing the PAGE up and PAGE down keys, the former taking you backwards and the latter forwards. This applies when both moving around a file and when highlighting/selecting in a file or selected part of a file but, of course, as normal with highlighting, you would also hold down the SHIFT key whilst pressing the above shortcuts when selecting/highlighting. If you own a copy of JFW 3.7 or later and you are also running the full Sound Forge 4.5 program (not the cut-down XP version), you will also have access to around 20 JAWS-specific hot keys for use with Sound Forge 4.5. Many of these simply duplicate Sound Forge's own shortcut keys but others will do things for you more easily or more quickly than having to go into mouse mode to achieve these tasks or information retrieval operations, e.g. CONTROL SHIFT semi-colon (;) will tell you your zoom ratio, CONTROL SHIFT I provides basic file information whilst in an infomation dialogue, CONTROL 4 to fast forward whilst in the record dialogue, CONTROL SHIFT M to hear the time point you are at in the file with the Data Window maximised, etc. To hear a full list of these JFW hot keys, press INSERT H. 18.5. How to Start a Recording from Mic, Turntable, Cassette Recorder or Other Sound Source If you know that your recording settings are what you need for this session, you can simply press ALT W followed by ENTER to open a new sound editing window. However, if you wish to check or change any of the settings, you should open a new recording window by pressing CONTROL N (for New) and then select the settings you require. You do this by: 1. Press CONTROL n. 2. You will fall in an area where you can make three settings adjustments: A. The first is to the "Sample Rate": This is related to the quality of the sound you need to produce. It is, by default, set to 44,100 Hz and this is fine for many situations but you can reduce it as far as 8,000 Hz and make it as high as 96,000 Hz by ARROWING up and down the list. B. The second is to "Sample Size": This again affects the quality of your recording and I would recommend that you keep this at 16 bit. You change it by pressing the left and right ARROW keys. C. The third is to "Channels": Here you simply ARROW left or right to select whether you want a mono or stereo recording. D. After making your choices, you press ENTER on "OK" to save these. These settings will them be retained for all future recordings until you change them. Note: The higher the sampling rate, the more disk space your recording will take up. It is also the case that stereo recordings take up twice as much disk space as do mono recordings. If you intend to make lengthy audio files, you will require plenty of hard disk space--around 10 Mb for every one minute of high-quality stereo recording. After recording and effecting any editing, you can always then compress the file to such as an MP3 format, which is likely to take up only about 50 to 10 per cent of the disk space that the original file required, depending on the quality of the MP3 sound file you want to produce and the type of file you are compressing, e.g. music files are likely to compress more than speech files. (See "The FREERIP.MP3 Freeware Encoder" in Section 11). 3. Press CONTROL R to open the recording dialogue. 4. At this stage you can either start the hard disk spinning and recording by pressing ALT R or you can TAB down to "Prepare" in the dialogue box and then press the SPACEBAR to change "Prepare" to "Record" and then press SPACEBAR again to start the recording when you are ready. 5. Either immediately start speaking into your microphone or start the other sound source playing, e.g. a HI-FI turn table, tape recorder, mini Disk, etc, plugged into the Mic or line in jack plug of your sound card. 6. At any time you can pause the recording by pressing the ENTER key and start it again by pressing the SPACEBAR. 7. When finished, press the SPACEBAR to stop recording. 8. TAB forward in the recording dialogue to "Close" and press ENTER to finish. 9. To hear what you have recorded immediately, just press the SPACEBAR at your current position and playback will commence. 10. To pause playback, press the ENTER key at any time and press SPACEBAR to recommence playing. Note: If you hear nothing or the volume is too low, you may need to make adjustments in the Windows Volume Control (see "The Windows Volume Control" in Section 6. 18.6. Saving a sound File 1. After recording and editing your sound file (or you can record, save and edit later), you press ALT F (for File) and then A (for Save As). You can also press CONTROL S to save for the first time and at any time to resave during your editing. 2. Type the filename you want in to the editfield and press ENTER. 3. By default, the file will save as a standard Windows WAV file in the folder: C:\Program Files\Sound Forge XP\ but you can change this if you wish. Note: When you retrieve a file, it will be found automatically in this folder, so you only have to provide the filename to open it and not the full path to the file. 18.7. Opening a Sound File To open a file you have created or one supplied with the program installation: 1. Press CONTROL O (for Open). 2. Then type the filename into the editfield and press ENTER. 3. The file will be found and opened. You should press SPACEBAR to start it playing. Alternatively: 1. If, before you press ENTER in stage 2 above, you use your TAB key, you will note several other options at your disposal before opening the file. 2. If you SHIFT TAB back once, you will be in a list of saved WAV files, including any you have created and some which were provided for you during the program installation. Note that, if "AutoPlay" is checked, ARROWING up and down these does not only tell you their filenames, e.g. "Tutor1.wav", "Saxrif.wav, etc, but will also start to play the sound contents of each file to you. TABBING forward to "Filename" again will show that the filename you last put focus on has been placed there for you to open it. 3. In "Files of Type" you can choose different types of sound files if the one you wish to open is not a WAV file. 4. Activating the "More" button by pressing the accelerator combination of ALT M reveals more information about the file you have selected in the files list, such as the file size, the file attributes, last saved date, etc. Just right ARROW to hear these. 5. Go to "Open" and press ENTER and the file will be loaded into the data window and if you then press SPACEBAR it will play. 6. To close the file, press ALT F (for File) and then C (for Close". If you have made any changes to the file, you will be asked if you wish to save these, so press Y or N for yes or no respectively. Note: If you do not have a fast Pentium PC, it may take several minutes to open a large sound file in standard mode (but see "Sound Forge Direct Mode" below for how to open a file faster). 18.8. Checking Your Position in a Sound File At any time whilst recording or playing back a file you can press ENTER to pause the recording/playing and then go into navigation/mouse mode. Go to the bottom of the Sound Forge window. You will find at the very bottom of the window information about the sampling rate, whether the file was recorded in 8 or 16-bit and if it is in mono or stereo. Just above this is the line which tells you how far into the recording or playing of a file you are. It will be in a hours/minutes/seconds/milliseconds form. So, if you were at: 01:21:09.000 this means that you are one hour, 21 minutes and 9 seconds into a file. 18.9. Editing a Whole Sound File As mentioned previously, Sound Forge installs with a few speech and music files which you can use to practise on. One of these is called "Tutor1.wav" and we will use this for the current example. Note: Some screenreaders may interfere with the output of the sound file and may even cause your PC to hang or crash, e.g. HAL may do this. It may be necessary, therefore, for you to create a special HAL set file to use with Sound Forge (or get Dolphin to do this) or go into the HAL Control Panel and turn down the level of HAL's speech volume to a point where you can still hear it in the background but it does not cover the volume of the sound file you are trying to edit. You should not have this problem with JFW or Window-Eyes. To edit a whole file on screen in order to apply certain effects to the whole of it: 1. Open the "Tutor1.wav" file by pressing CONTROL O and typing into the editfield: tutor1.wav and then press ENTER to load it. Press SPACEbar to be sure that it is actually there. This speech file only contains the words: "Wow sound editing just gets easier and easier" 2. By default, the whole file is treated as highlighted. 3. Open the Effects Menu with ALT C to apply changes to the whole file, which can include: A. Chorus: Pressing Enter on this drops you in a listbox which you can ARROW up and down in to choose certain levels of choral effect, such as "Light", "Reverberant", etc. ARROW to "Heavy" and then TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. The old file will resave automatically to a restore/undo back-up file and may take a few seconds or minutes, depending on how large the file is and the speed of your computer. You should be able to hear the hard disk working during this resaving stage. Now, as usual, press the SPACEBAR to play and hear the result of your editing change. Note: In this and in many other dialogues there is a "Create Undo" option, which should be left checked so that you can undo any changes you have made to a file in case you made a mistake or decide you prefer the first file. You undo an editing change by pressing CONTROL Z. If you have made more than one change to a file (without saving it) you can continue pressing CONTROL Z to step backwards through each change until you reach the first file. Remember, though, that keeping the "Create Undo" option means that more disk space is taken up by the sound files you create to cater for the back-up files, so if you only have a small hard disk and not enough space for the back-up files, you may then decide to uncheck this option. B. Delay/Echo: This allows you to add echo to the file, multiple echo, and the like. The "Delay Time" list is where you can ARROW up and down to increase or decrease the amount of delay/echo. C. Dynamics: This has to do with compressing or expanding sounds, e.g. to obtain volume levels equal to the highest or lowest part of a sound file, to make a sound file sound smoother, etc. You can ARROW up and down in the "Attack Time" and "Release Time" to effect such changes. D. Noise Gate: This menu option is used to remove noise from silent breaks in a sound file. E. The rest of the Effects Menu works in much the same way as the above menu options, where you have listboxes in most of them to choose from five or so different types or degrees of sound effect. 18.10. Editing Part of a Sound File You may wish to edit only a portion of a sound file for numerous reasons, some of which are: * In order to remove any mistakes you made in recording it. * To insert missed out portions. * To insert background music. * To Cut or copy a portion of the file to the Windows Clipboard. * To carry out any of the actions listed in the Effects Menu, e.g. make it sound distorted, echoey, louder, etc. To effect editing on a portion only of a sound file, with the sound file opened in the Data Window, you must first highlight the section you wish to edit. You do this by either enclosing the portion of speech or music with square brackets (the two keys to the very right of the P key) or by using the standard Sound Forge movement keys together with the SHIFT key. Note that later versions of Sound Forge do not use the bracket keys for highlighting but rather use the I and O keys respectively. 18.11. Example of editing Using the Square Brackets 1. Play the file you wish to edit until you reach the point just before the place you wish to edit, then press the ENTER key to pause the playback. Use the "Tutor1.wav or "Tutmusic.wav files which come with the software or use one which you have created yourself. 2. Press the left square bracket (or I with later versions of SF) key to indicate the start of where the highlighting should take place. 3. Press the SPACEBAR to continue the playing of the file to the place just after the portion you wish to highlight and press the ENTER key to pause the play. Now press the right square bracket or O key with later versions of SF. 4. To ensure that you have enclosed the desired portion of the speech or music file correctly, press the SPACEBAR to have the highlight play to you. It is sometimes necessary to press the ENTER key prior to the SPACEBAR to obtain a true reading of the whole highlight. 5. Give the command to carry out whatever change you wish to have done on the highlighted section of the file, e.g. press DEL to delete it, Press CONTROL C to copy it to the Clipboard, press CONTROL X to cut it to the Clipboard, Press ALT C followed by any of the options in the Effects Menu as outlined in 3 A to E above. 6. If you have carried out a cut or copy command on the file, you can double-check that it is precisely what you want by listening to the contents of the Clipboard by pressing ALT V, C, and then P. Conversely, if you would like to hear what is left of your sound file in the Data Window, press CONTROL K or choose "Preview Cut/Cursor" in the Edit menu. When you have finished practising, remember to press CONTROL Z to undo your change and restore the "Tutor1.wav" or any other file to its original state for further experimental use. Note: If you wish to keep the highlighted portion of the sound file and have the rest of the file removed, you would invoke the "Trim/Crop" feature by pressing CONTROL T. 18.12. Example of Editing Using the Shift Key 1. Play the file you wish to edit until you reach the point just before the place you wish editing to commence, then press the ENTER key to pause the playback. 2. Use any of the Sound Forge movement shortcut keystrokes together with the SHIFT key depressed to highlight the portion of speech or music you wish to carry out an edit on (see Sound Forge Shortcut Keys" below). For example, stop the playing of the file by pressing ENTER just before the place you wish to start editing, then press SHIFT CONTROL right ARROW until you move past the words or sounds you wish to alter. Check if you have moved far enough by pressing the SPACEBAR at any time to hear the highlighted portion read back to you. If you wish to move in bigger chunks, move with the SHIFT CONTROL PAGE up or down keys; if you wish to move in finer steps, use only the SHIFT and left or right ARROW keys. Regularly press SPACEBAR to keep track of how much you have highlighted (but note that it is sometimes necessary to press ENTER before pressing the SPACEBAR to get the precise highlighted segment of text spoken). You can go to the beginning of a highlighted portion of sound by pressing the HOME key and to its end by pressing the END key. After doing this you can then make fine adjustments to the highlighting at either end with the SHIFT and left or right ARROW keys, if you need to move past part of a word or part of a syllable. You may also sometimes find that, if there is a slightly bigger gap at the end of a small edit you wish to make than at the front of it, you may wish to pause play at its end and then highlight backwards with the SHIFT and left ARROW keys until you have the precise segment to delete or make a change on, instead of doing this from its beginning to its end. 3. When you are happy that you have got the precise amount of sound highlighted, carry out whatever editing action you like on this highlighted snippet of music or speech (see 5 above for what you might do). 4. After making the editing change, Sound Forge will automatically save the old file as it was before you made the change so that you have a back-up/undo file in case you wish to bring it back, for instance, if you now think your edit was not good enough. 5. If you consider that you do need to retrieve the previous sound file, press CONTROL Z. Pressing CONTROL SHIFT Z will re-do the change back to where you were before you press control z. 6. When you are satisfied that your edits are correct, save the file and give it a filename in the usual ways, as outlined below. Note: You should be aware, however, that using such as SHIFT right and left ARROWS or CONTROL SHIFT with the ARROW keys will not always move you the precise same amount of distance in all files. This is because you are moving and highlighting in percentage jumps when you use them, e.g. a two per cent movement when you use the CONTROL SHIFT and ARROW keys, ten per cent when you use the CONTROL SHIFT and PAGE keys. So, if your sound file is 30 minutes long, a press of CONTROL SHIFT right ARROW will take you much further than if your file was only one minute long. This is where the ARROW up and down keys can come in handy. If you ARROW up you will change the zoom level, increasing the size of your movement jumps; ARROW down decreases this. 18.13. Resaving a File to Different Formats To save or resave a file after creating or editing it: 1. With the file in the Data Window, Press CONTROL s and type a filename into the editfield which opens up. 2.A. TAB twice to "Save" and press ENTER. The file will be saved in the default sub-folder of c:\Program Files\Sound Forge XP\ as a WAV file. 2.B. If you wish to save the file in a different format to WAV, e.g. RAW, SDS, Rm, RA, etc, you can TAB to "Save as Type" and ARROW to the other format you want before saving. 3. Each time you make an editing change to a saved WAV file, you can just press CONTROL S to resave the file, with the change, to the same filename you originally gave it. It is a good idea, after making an editing change that you are happy with, to press CONTROL S regularly, as the further into a file you get and the more times you have resaved a file in this way, the quicker your PC will be able to create and save the undo back-up file each time you edit a file, which is of particular time-saving importance when editing large sound files. In fact, especially if your computer is not a fast one, it may in some instances be beneficial to create long sound files in chunks and give them different filenames, such as Section1A, Section1B, etc, edit them separately and then join them together as one long file afterwards. 4. If you wish to resave your file to a different filename, thus preserving the first file and creating another, you should press ALT F, A and type the new filename into the editfield before pressing ENTER on "Save". However, note that before saving you can now elect to make format and attribute changes to this file, for example, TAB to and ARROW up or down: A. "Format" selections, where "PCM" will be the normal format for audio which is not compressed (pulse code modulation). B. "Attributes" choices and change the bit rate and/or stereo/mono type of recording. C. press ALT M to be able to observe/enter "Properties" for the file such as typing in copyright information, a summary of the file's purpose, comments about the file, etc. Note 1: After you first save a file, you will be asked if you wish to reopen it in Direct Mode. If you wish to work on the file straightaway, you should press ENTER on "Yes" to accept this offer, as Direct Mode permits faster file opening and resaving than standard mode. Note 2: If your PC crashes or there is a power failure, Sound Forge will be able to recover any sound file you were creating or working on at the time. When you re-launch Sound Forge, you will be told of the existence of the file and asked if you wish to "Delete" or "Recover" it. TAB to "recover" and press ENTER. 18.14. Sound Forge Direct Mode In using the above "Tutor1.wav" file as an example for opening, saving, editing, to create effects on, etc, we have been using Sound Forge's standard mode. This is fine for small files but, if you wish to work on large files, there is a quicker mode. This is known as "direct mode" and in this mode the loading of large files takes only a fraction of the time that it does in standard mode and the resaving which takes place after any editing plus the time taken to undo an edit all take less time. Nonetheless, with a slower Pentium CPU the automatic undo/redo back-up resaving might still take several minutes for a large file. You can open a file in direct mode by: 1. Open the file in the usual way by pressing CONTROL O. 2. Now SHIFT TAB back to the files list and ARROW down to the file you wish to open. 3. TAB forward to the "Filename" editfield and leave focus on this. 4. Next press ALT D and the direct mode check box will open up. It is likely to be unchecked, so press SPACEBAR to check it on. 5. Lastly, press ENTER to load the file in direct mode. 6. You can now work on editing the file as normal but loading, resaving, etc, will be much quicker. If you want to dispense with the above requirement to tell Sound Forge to use direct mode on each file you open, you can make opening of sound files in direct mode the default way of opening them by: 1. Press ALT O (for Options), then P (for preferences. 2. You should be in the "General" property sheet, in a list of options which you can ARROW down. 3. ARROW down to "Open Command Line Sound Files in Direct Mode" and leave focus on this. 4. TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. 5. Shut Sound Forge down and then re-launch it and fast opening, saving, etc, of files should now be automatic. 18.15. Inserting Place Markers for quick re-location in a Playing File To place markers in an existing sound file for ease of jumping to certain parts of it quickly: 1. Start the sound file playing. 2. Whilst listening to it playing, when you reach the place where you wish to insert the marker, press the letter M key. You can do this as many times as you need to. 3. A marker will have been placed in that position but it does not affect the sound of the playback. 4. To locate a marker, you just start the file playing, pause the file and then press CONTROL right ARROW to jump to a marker further on in the file. If the marker is behind your current position in the file, you press CONTROL left ARROW to find it. 5. Subsequent presses of CONTROL left or right ARROW will jump you to earlier or later markers, if there are any. 18.16. Inserting Place-Finding Markers in a File as You Record it To do this: 1. Start recording your file as usual. 2. Whilst the recording is running, if you wish to mark a place on the file, e.g. as a chapter or section finder, as a means of locating a recording mistake for later editing out, etc, hold down the ALT key and press the letter M. 3. To find the markers, use the same procedure as in 4 and 5 above. 18.17. The Markers List You can bring up a list of place markers in a loaded sound file to go straight to one of them and play the file from that point or to make changes to the marker, such as give it a name. Do this by: 1. With a file loaded that has already had markers placed in it, Press ALT 1 (not F1). 2. A list of markers will come up that you can ARROW up and down to observe each marker and its time slot in the sound file. 3. With the focus on the marker you wish to view or edit, press ENTER. 4. The markers dialogue will come up and you can TAB around here to see what is possible. for example: 5. You can, in the editfield you immediately fall in when you bring up the markers dialogue, type a name for the marker. This might be "Chapter1", "Section8", etc. You should not put spaces between any of the words in this editfield. 6. If you wish to hear a file from this particular marker point onwards, press ALT P (for Play). 7. To save any changes press ENTER on "OK". 8. When you have finished in the markers list, press ALT F4 to leave it. Note: When you are in the markers list above, with focus on one of your markers, you can invoke a Context Menu which provides a list of additional commands for even more methods of manipulation of that particular marker, e.g. "Add", "Delete", "Edit", and so on. You may be able to bring up this Context Menu by simply pressing the right mouse simulation key whilst focus is on a marker in standard mode or you may have to go into mouse mode to achieve this. 18.18. Normalising the Recording Level of a Sound File You can ensure that the general recording level of a sound file is even and also bring its volume up by: 1. With the sound file open in the data window, press ALT P (for Process). 2. Either press N (for Normalise) or ARROW down to "Normalise" and press ENTER. 3. TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. 4. The file will be normalised and you will have to save it by pressing CONTROL S and giving it a filename if you have not yet saved it or pressing CONTROL S will resave it to the filename it already had if you have already saved it. 18.19. Working in More than One Editing Window at a Time You can have several data editing windows open simultaneously and move between them by pressing CONTROL F6. You might do this if you had a speech file in window one and a music file in window two. you could then highlight a section of speech in window one, copy it to the Clipboard by pressing CONTROL C and then press CONTROL F6 to the second music window and CONTROL V to paste it into the second sound file at a specific point in the second file. Obviously, you would have already placed the focus in the second file at the very place you wish to have the speech inserted and have pressed ENTER to pause the second file there before pasting the speech in. The music to the left of the speech insert will stay where it is and the music to the right of the speech insert will move further to the right to make room for the speech. To close an open window, just press ALT F (for File) and then C (for Close). For example, conversely to the above, you might wish to use the above method to insert sound tones or musical excerpts into a speech file as place finders if the finish file is to be copied to cassette. 18.20. Mixing One Sound with Another If you would like a speech file to be mixed with a music file and therefore have a music track in the background you can do one of two things: 1. Simple method: A. Open a speech file, e.g. "Tutor1.wav". B. Press ALT W and ENTER to open a second data window and then open a music file, e.g. "Tutmusic.wav". C. Play the music file until you reach the place that you would like speech to commence and press ENTER to pause it. D. Press CONTROL F6 to move to the speech window and either Press CONTROL C to copy the whole speech file to the Clipboard or, if you only wish to mix part of the speech with the music file, highlight the part you want in the normal way and then copy it to the Clipboard. E. Press CONTROL F6 to return to the music file and just press CONTROL V to paste the speech into the music file where you paused it. F. Press the SPACEBAR to hear the mixed result. Note: You may have to use the "Volume" feature to either increase the original volume of your speech file or decrease the original volume of your music file (or both) before you mix two files in this way (see "Changing the Volume of a sound File" below). 2. More advance method: A. Make the sound you want in one window or load an existing sound file and move to where you want the second sound to start or, with the left and right brackets, highlight the portion of the file you want the second sound to mix into. Note that later versions of Sound Forge do not use the right and left BRACKETS for highlighting but rather use the I and O keys respectively. B. Now open the sound you want to paste and copy it or a highlighted section of it to the Clipboard (CONTROL C). C. Now move back to the first sound window (CONTROL F6). D. Press ALT E (for Edit) and then ARROW to "Paste Special" and press ENTER. E. Next down ARROW to "Mix" and press ENTER. G. Lastly, choose the settings you want, e.g. for volume, sampling rate, etc, and press ENTER. If you want both the source and destination sounds to be the same volume, ensure that their faders are set to zero; otherwise, to make one sound louder than the other, increase its volume. Note: You must make sure that both of these sound files are the same sampling rate, same bit rate, etc. 18.21. Changing the Volume of a Sound File If you wish to either increase or decrease the volume of a sound file you have created you can do this by: 1. With the sound file in the data window, press ALT P (for Process) and then V (for Volume). 2. The line you fall on when the volume dialogue opens up is where you make any volume changes, although your screenreader may not be able to "see" anything in here. All you have to do to achieve an increase in volume is to ARROW upwards to get small increases or PAGE up to attain large increases; ARROWING or PAGING down decreases volume. 3. By going into mouse mode before and after making any volume changes, you should be able to observe the before and after volume levels. 4. Then TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to apply the change. Note: ARROWING up and down at stage 2 will make only minuscule changes in sound volume. 18.22. Fading a File In or Out If you would like such as a music file to gradually fade in from its start or fade out at its end: 1. With the sound file open, press ALT P (for Process) and then F (for Fade). 2. ARROW down to "In" and press ENTER. 3. The file will now play from the beginning and fade in from no volume to its full volume over a few seconds. Alternatively, to fade out: 1. play the file to the point where you want the fade out to begin (or jump to it with the movement shortcut keys) and press ENTER to pause play. 2. Press ALT P followed by F. 3. ARROW up to "Out" and press ENTER. 4. The file will be gradually faded out from the point where you paused it. Note: After pressing ALT P and then F, you also have a "Graphic" option. This is where you can alter the speed of the fade from its usual 50 per cent to 25 per cent or 75 per cent but this dialogue is not easy to manipulate from the keyboard. 18.23. Cross-Fading One Sound with Another To make one sound fade out whilst simultaneously fading another sound in: 1. Open a sound file such as a speech file and copy it to the Clipboard with CONTROL C. 2. Close the above file with ALT F (for File) and C (for Close). 3. Open a second file such as a music file and play it to the point where you want it to fade out and press ENTER to pause it. 4. To have the speech file fade in at the same time as the music file is fading out, press CONTROL F. 18.24. Inserting a Segment of Silence into a File You may wish to do this to improve the delivery or understandability of a speech file or to leave enough space to later add cue and review indexing tones to a file transferred onto tape. 1. With a file paused where you wish the silence to be inserted, press ALT P (for Process) then I (for Insert Silence) 2. You will be in a figures editfield to indicate the length of the silence gap required. Press DEL 12 times to erase the current figures and then type your preferred length of silence into the editfield in the following hours/minutes/seconds/milliseconds format: 00:00:05.000 would give a five second silence gap. 00:02:00.000 would give a 2 minutes silence gap. 01:05:13.010 would give a one hour, five minutes, thirteen seconds and one hundredth of a second silence gap. 3. TAB once to a list of places to insert the silence. The default is to insert the silence at the cursor point but you can ARROW to "Start of File" or "End of file" if that is where you want it. 4. You then TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. Note: This type of 00:00:00.000 time format for determining lengths of delay, silence, fade in and out, etc, is frequently found in Sound Forge's dialogue boxes. 18.25. Increasing or Decreasing the Length of a File Without Changing its Pitch You may wish to do this if such as a speech file has been read too slowly or too quickly to make it sound more naturally or more understandable or to make a small reduction in a file's length to ensure that a file, if transferred to a cassette, will fit onto it. You could also obtain some interesting sound effects from changing the speed of music files. 1. With your sound file loaded, press ALT P (for Process) and then T (for Time Compress/Expand). 2. TAB once and then ARROW up and down the list you fall in to until you reach the correct type of sound file you are working on, e.g. "Music", "Speech", etc. 3. TAB to the editfield which shows the current length of your file and press SHIFT END and thenchange it to your requirements (see step 2 of "Inserting a Segment of Silence into a File" above). 4. TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. 18.26. Sound Synthesis You can synthesise a number of preset sounds at the beginning, end or in the middle of a file. Some of these sounds, e.g. the "Square" and "Saw" sounds, would make good cue and review sounds for a file to be placed on tape. 1. With your file open, press ALT T (for Tools) and then Y (for Synthesis). 2. Then TAB to the "Wave form Shape" list and choose what type of sound you would like with the ARROW keys. 3. TAB again to "Length" and DEL out the current figure. You can create a synthesised sound from one second in length to 60 seconds, e.g. type in 05.00 for a five second sound insert. 4. TAB to "Frequency" and change this to make it higher or lower, if the default does not suit you. 5. TAB to the list of options as to where to insert the sound: the cursor point, the beginning or end of the file. 6. TAB to "OK" and press ENTRE. 18.27. The GoTo Feature The GoTo feature can be very useful to jump to a particular time spot in a file to listen to it from there if you have not set a marker at that spot. You can also use it to locate a place in a long speech file which is to be put onto tape so that you know where to insert a message to turn a cassette over, e.g. at a position of around 44 minutes and 30 seconds for a C90 cassette. You can jump to any place in a sound file you like by: 1. With the file on screen, press CONTROL G (for GoTo). 2. DEL out the figures in the editfield you land in and type the hour/minute/second/millisecond point you wish to go to (see step 2 of "Inserting a Segment of Silence into a File" above). 3. TAB once to the "Input Format" list and observe that "Time" is the usual default. However, if you are dealing with music files, you may wish to change this to something more appropriate, such as "Measures and Beats" but this is not essential. 4. TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to be taken to your desired position. 18.28. Observing Sound File Properties To view the properties of an open sound file: 1. Press ALT ENTER. 2. In "General Properties" you will be able to ARROW down a long list of the current file's attributes, such as length of file, whether in stereo or mono, the format, and many more. 18.29. Sound Forge Property Options You can open a large, multi-page list of Sound Forge's property options by pressing ALT O (for Options) and then P (for Properties). In here you can observe and make personal preference changes to numerous options, such as checking on or off the "Show a Tip of the Day at Start UP" feature, if you do not want this to appear every time you launch the program. There are 29 choices in this same "General" list which you can ARROW up and down to check on or off in addition to tool tips. In this list, if you press F1, you will be able to page down a useful help page which explains what each of the 29 options is for. If you CONTROL TAB from the "General" sheet, you will find that there are 13 property sheets in here altogether to experiment with. For example, you can reduce the number of undo buffers if you have not much hard disk space, change the level of "Zoom", Change sound file associations, Have the position of the playback cursor shown or not, Have any preview looped continuously or not, change the number of beats per second/minute, select your preferred Toolbar display, change your total buffer size, and much, much more. If you experiment and change anything, make sure that you note the original setting/calibration so that you can return it to its first setting if your change is not for the better. 18.30. Saving Only One Channel of a Stereo Sound File If, for whatever reason, you wish to separate the channels of a stereo recording and save one or both of them in different files, you can do this by: 1. Load your stereo sound file as normal. 2. Press the TAB key to circle between the middle point (both channels), the right channel and the left channel. 3. When you are on the channel you require, say, the left channel, highlight the track you want with CONTROL HOME and END (or select the portion of the left channel you want to separate from the right channel in the usual way. 4. Copy your track or selection to the Clipboard with CONTROL C. 5. Open a new window with ALT W and paste your track/selection in with CONTROL V. 6. Lastly, save the new file as normal. 18.31. Examples of Some of Sound Forge's Other Features The features of Sound Forge are numerous. Have a good look in the dozens of Main Menu options which are available when a file is loaded by pressing the ALT key and ARROWING right and left and up and down. Some brief keystrokes to activate a few more features of note are: Press ALT V, C and then P to play/preview the contents of the Clipboard. Press ALT P then A to enter the "Resample" dialogue where you can change the sampling rate (quality of output) of a sound file, e.g. Increase or decrease the sampling rate. Press ALT P then R to get a sound file or highlighted portion to play backwards. Press ALT P then W to swap the contents of the left speaker channel with that of the right with a stereo file. Press ALT T then S to view statistics about the file on screen, e.g. cursor position in hours/minutes/seconds, sample rate of the file, volume in DBs, etc. Press ALT O and then F to enter the "Status Format" list. "Time" is the default and probably the best for most situations, in particular for speech recording. However, if you are working with music or video files, you may wish to change this, e.g. to "Measures and Beats" or "Samples". Press ALT O and then V and in hear you can press ENTER on any option to change such as the background colour of the screen, if this is of advantage to you. You may also wish to turn off "Animate Video Strip" if you have no use for animated pictures. Press ALT H to enter the Help Menu, where you can make several choices, e.g. go into "Contents" for help, "Search For" to find a topic, "Keyboard Shortcuts" to get a list of hot keys, etc. Press ALT S and then A followed by L to go into "Loop Mode", so that a file, such as a music clip, will play over and over until you stop it. ALT A, a and O will return you to "Normal Mode". 18.32. Combining Sound Forge XP with other Sound Recorders You may wish to combine the superior editing features of Sound Forge XP with the noise reduction, dehiss, decrackle and declick features of more economical programs. This is because the Sound forge Plugin for this purpose is not usable with the XP version and is very expensive to buy on top of the full version. You might choose to use either Windows sound Recorder or Sound Forge XP to do your sound recording and editing and then run the result through the equivalent noise reduction and dehiss/descratch/decrackle features of software such as Easy CD Creator Deluxe and Platinum (known as the "Spin Doctor") or in Nero-Burning ROM Pro (known as "descratch" and "Dehiss"). The latter programs cost around œ50 from PC World, Dixon's, etc, and may be found even cheaper by mail order or by purchase from the Internet, e.g. from www.jungle.com. 18.33. Main Sound Forge XP and 4.5 Shortcut Keys (Some of these shortcuts work in both Sound Forge 4.5 XP and the full 4.5 version, whilst others will work only in the full version.) Pressing F1: Invokes Sound Forge help. Pressing left ARROW: Moves a syllable or part of a syllable to the left in a speech file or a small portion of a music file, whilst you are in pause mode. Pressing right ARROW: Does the opposite of the above. Pressing up ARROW: Increases the "Zoom" level, which is the amount of movement you will experience when using the left and right ARROW key highlighting movement keys. Pressing down ARROW: Does the opposite of the above. Pressing M: Inserts a marker at the current position in a playing sound file. Pressing END: Moves to the end of a file or to the end of a highlighted portion of a file. Pressing HOME: Does the opposite of the above. Pressing ESCAPE: Stops the current action. Pressing ENTER: Pauses play of a file at the current cursor position so that play will start again from here if play (SPACEBAR) is pressed, whereas pressing stop (SPACEBAR) stops play and positions the cursor back to where it was prior to selecting play. Pressing SPACEBAR: Plays a file from the beginning or from where it was last stopped (but not last paused). It also plays the contents of a selection, so that you can hear if you have selected exactly the right syllable, word, block of words, musical clip, musical phrase,etc, that you wish to manipulate, e.g. delete, have made louder, have played in reverse, etc. Pressing TAB: toggles between the left channel, the middle point (both channels) and the right channel. Pressing ALT 0: Brings focus to the Data Window. Pressing ALT 1: Brings the focus to the Play Meter Window (you may have to press this twice). Pressing ALT 2: Brings the focus to the Regions List (if your file has been created with regions). Pressing ALT 3: Brings the focus to the Play List/Cut List. Pressing ALT 4: Brings the focus to the Time Display Window. Pressing ALT 5: Brings the focus to the Video Preview Window. Pressing ALT 6: Brings the focus to the Play Meters Window. Pressing ALT 7: Brings focus to the Undo/Redo History Window. Pressing ALT F10: Maximises the Sound Forge application window. Pressing ALT ENTER: Brings up the properties dialogue for the active Data Window. Pressing ALT M: Inserts a place-finding marker at the present position in a sound file which you are currently recording. Pressing CONTROL LEFT ARROW: Is the jump to previous marker key in a paused file. Pressing CONTROL RIGHT ARROW: Is the jump to next marker key. Pressing CONTROL down ARROW: Returns you to the default zoom ratio. Pressing CONTROL HOME: Takes you to the beginning of a file. Pressing CONTROL END: Does the opposite of the above. Pressing CONTROL A: Highlights all of the data in the active window. Pressing CONTROL D: Brings up the selection dialogue. Pressing CONTROL F: Cross fades the contents of the clipboard with the current data in a window starting at the cursor position. Pressing CONTROL F5: Restores the active Data Window. Pressing CONTROL F6: Takes you to the next Data Window. Pressing CONTROL G: Brings up the goto dialogue. Pressing CONTROL L: Brings up the loop tuner for the active Data Window. Pressing CONTROL M: Mixes the contents of the clipboard with the current data in a window from the cursor position or at the start of highlighting. Pressing CONTROL R: Brings up the record new data dialogue box. Pressing CONTROL SPACEBAR: Creates a loop of a whole sound file or of any highlighted portion of it, so that it continually repeats. Pressing CONTROL SPACEBAR again will return the file to its original form. Pressing CONTROL T: Trims/crops (deletes) all of the data in a window other than what you have selected. Pressing CONTROL U: Disables the "undo/redo" feature, which means that you can no longer undo a change/edit, but this does save disk space with large files as no back-up copy is made and it will speed up the rate at which you can make edits to a file. Pressing CONTROL V: Pastes the contents of the Clipboard into the current Data window. Pressing CONTROL W: Closes the active Data Window. Pressing CONTROL X: Moves data to the Clipboard. Pressing CONTROL Y: Repeats the last command, e.g. the last process you did, the last effect, etc. Press CONTROL Z: To undo your last action. Pressing `: Cycles through the regions list. Pressing SHIFT PAGE UP: Selects 10 per cent of the current view past the current cursor position. Pressing SHIFT PAGE DOWN: Does the opposite of the above. Pressing CONTROL SHIFT RIGHT ARROW: Moves and selects 2 per cent of the view past the cursor position. Pressing CONTROL SHIFT LEFT ARROW: Does the opposite of the above. Pressing SHIFT NUMPAD +: Selects to the next sample. Pressing SHIFT NUMPAD -: Does the opposite of the above. Pressing CONTROL SHIFT NUMPAD +: Highlights to 10 samples past the current position. Pressing CONTROL SHIFT NUMPAD -: Does the opposite of the above. Pressing CONTROL SHIFT Z: reinstates the last undone action. Pressing CONTROL SHIFT f6: Takes you to the previous Data Window. Pressing SHIFT SPACEBAR: Plays the whole of a file. ******** >APPENDIX 1 LIST OF SHORTCUT KEYS FOR ALL SOFTWARE COVERED 1. Windows CD Player Press the letter A: To jump to the "Artist" field in order to be able to ARROW up and down your several CD drives, if you have more than one, to change from playing one CD to another in a different drive. Press ALT F4: To exit the CD Player. Press ALT K: To jump to a past or future track with the ARROW keys. Press TAB: To cycle through buttons displaying information such as CD title, artists name, title of current playing track, and so on. Press CONTROL P: To start a CD playing from track one. Pressing CONTROL P again will pause play. Another Press of CONTROL P will re-start play. Press CONTROL S: To stop play. 2. Windows Media Player 6.4 Press F1: To bring up the Help Contents sheet or to obtain context help whilst in a menu. Press ALT F4: to exit the player. Press up ARROW: to increase playback volume. Press down ARROW: to decrease volume. Press left ARROW: To rewind until you release the key. Press right ARROW: To fast forward until you release the key. Press SPACEBAR: To play or pause a media file. Press . (full stop): To stop playing a file. Press ESCAPE: To return to full screen mode and stop the player. Press PAGE up: to skip back and restart the current clip or play the previous clip. Press PAGE down: To skip forward a clip. Press ALT left ARROW: To go back. Press ALT right ARROW: To go forward to the next media file in the list of files played in this session. Press ALT 1: to resize the video to 50 per cent. Press ALT 2: To resize the video to 100 per cent. Press ALT 3: To resize the video to 200 per cent. Press CONTROL left ARROW: to continuously rewind. To stop this press another key. Press CONTROL right ARROW: To continuously fast forward. To stop this press another key. Press CONTROL F: To be taken online to radio stations. Press CONTROL G: To open the Go To dialogue and find a marker to play from. Press CONTROL HOME: to be taken on line to the Media Guide. Press CONTROL M: To mute the playing of a file. Press CONTROL O: To open a media file. Press CONTROL S: To save a file. Press CONTROL u: to be taken online to music Websites. Press CONTROL V: To obtain a preview of each section in the Play List. Press CONTROL 1: To obtain the standard screen view of the player. Press CONTROL 2: To obtain the compact screen view of the player. Press CONTROL 3: To obtain the minimal screen view of the player. Press ALT ENTER: To make the player full screen. Press it again to return it to its previous size. Press CONTROL T: To have the player always appear on top of any other windows. Press SHIFT F10: To open the context menu. 3. RealPlayer 8 Basic Press F1: To load the help contents sheet if it is available. Press F5: To refresh the HTML. Press ALT F4: to exit the RealPlayer. Press CONTROL P: To start and pause play. Press CONTROL S: To stop play and take it back to the start. Press CONTROL left ARROW: To rewind play. Press CONTROL SHIFT left ARROW: To super rewind play. Press CONTROL right ARROW: To fast forward play. Press CONTROL SHIFT right ARROW: To super fast forward play. Press CONTROL up ARROW: to increase the volume. Press CONTROL down ARROW: To reduce the volume. Press PAGE UP: To go back to the previous clip in a multiclip file or the next location when scanning. Press PAGE DOWN: To go to the next clip. Press CONTROL H: To initiate a search. Press CONTROL L: To open location and let you play real media files on the Net without using your Web browser. You then enter the URL of any streamed content, such as .rm, .ra or .ram file. Press CONTROL O: To open a local file on your hard disk and play it, after selecting a media file, such as a .ra, .rm or .ram file. Press CONTROL N: To obtain normal view which displays all RealPlayer buttons and controls. Press CONTROL M: To switch to compact view, where only the image area is displayed, together with a subset of the buttons and a reduced Status Bar and menu selection. 4. Winamp Version 2.72 Press F1: To get context sensitive help but this is hit and miss and very brief in parts. Press ARROw up: Increases the volume. Press ARROW down: Decreases the volume. Press Left ARROW: Jumps back 5 seconds in the current playing track each time you press it. Press Right ARROW: Jumps forward 5 seconds in the playing track. Press z: To jump to the Previous track. Press X: To play/restart/unpause a track. Press C: To pause and unpause a track. Press V: to stop playing a track. Press B: To jump to the next track. Press R: To have a track or album repeated. Pressing R again turns this off. Press S: To have files played in shuffled (random) order. Pressing S again turns this off. Press J: To jump to a specific file in the PlayList Editor. Press ALT E: To toggle the PlayList Editor window on and off. Press ALT G: To toggle the Graphic Equalizer window on and off. Press ALT T: To toggle the Mini-Browser window on and off. Press ALT W: To toggle the Main window on and off. Press CONTROL V: to stop playing when the present track finishes. Press CONTROL J: To jump to a specific time point in the track but ensure that you have paused the playing first. You have to BACKSPACE the current time position out and then type in the one you want, in the following format: 0:50 to go to 50 seconds into a track. TAB to "Jump" and press ENTER. Press CONTROL P: To enter the preferences property sheet. Press CONTROL D: To double the size of the Winamp window. Press CONTROL TAB: To cycle through the four possible Winamp windows which can be open at once, if more than one is already open. These can contain the Main Player window, the Graphic Equalizer window, the PlayList Editor window and the Mini- Browser window. You will find the Main player and Graphic Equalizer windows easier to use than the PlayList Editor or Mini- Browser windows. You may even wish to turn the latter two off for most of your Winamp sessions. Press CONTROL K: to select a plugin. Press CONTROL Z: To go to the start of the PlayList. Press SHIFT V: To stop a track and make it fade out as it stops. 5. Adaptec Easy CD Copier Press F1: to enter the help topics list. ALT F4 closes this. Press ALT F4 to exit the CD copier. Press CONTROL D: to get information on the CD in your CD drive. Press CONTROL O: To start the CD copying process. Press CONTROL P: to get a list of your CD drive specification properties. 6. Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4 (Standard) Press F1: To be taken into the Contents and Index help system or to obtain context-sensitive help in certain situations. Press F5: To refresh the screen. Press TAB: To cycle between the upper and lower panes. Press ALT F4: to exit the program. Press ALT F6: To bring up the "Show Me" dialogue box. Press CONTROL O: to open a sound file or Layout template. Press CONTROL S: To save a file or layout. Press CONTROL Z, C, V, X: To achieve the standard Windows commands such as undo, cut, copy, paste, etc. 7. Windows Sound Recorder JFW has special shortcut keystrokes for use with Sound Recorder shown below. However, these will not work with other screenreaders. Press spacebar: To pause during recording or playback. Pressing SPACEBAR again recommences recording or playback. You should also pause recording with the SPACEBAR before making any effects or other changes to a file--these cannot be made whilst a file is playing. Press CONTROL B: To rewind. You will then fall on a "Seek to End" button which has as its default 0 per cent, meaning go all the way back to the beginning of the recording. If you only wish to rewind part way back you can TAB forward a few times to a slider and then use the Page up and down keys to change the percentage of distance you wish to go back in percentage chunks or do this per cent by per cent with the up and down ARROW keys. After this, press CONTROL P to play the file from that point. Press CONTROL F: To fast forward (see above for what to do from here but in reverse, of course). Press CONTROL L: To limit the amount of speech JAWS outputs from its software synthesiser so that this does not have an affect on your microphone recordings. Another press of CONTROL L will toggle full speech back on. Press control p: To play a recording. Press CONTROL R: To start recording. Press CONTROL S: to stop recording or playing. Press INSERT F8: To bring up a list of the main function buttons but the above CONTROL hot keys do all of these things faster. 8. Sound Forge Xp (Some of these shortcuts work in both Sound Forge XP and the full version, whilst others will work only in the full version.) Pressing F1: Invokes Sound Forge help. Pressing left ARROW: Moves a syllable or part of a syllable to the left in a speech file or a small portion of a music file, whilst you are in pause mode. Pressing right ARROW: Does the opposite of the above. Pressing up ARROW: Increases the "Zoom" level, which is the amount of movement you will experience when using the left and right ARROW key highlighting movement keys. Pressing down ARROW: Does the opposite of the above. Pressing M: Inserts a marker at the current position in a playing sound file. Pressing END: Moves to the end of a file or to the end of a highlighted portion of a file. Pressing HOME: Does the opposite of the above. Pressing ESCAPE: Stops the current action. Pressing ENTER: Pauses play of a file at the current cursor position so that play will start again from here if play (SPACEBAR) is pressed, whereas pressing stop (SPACEBAR) stops play and positions the cursor back to where it was prior to selecting play. Pressing SPACEBAR: Plays a file from the beginning or from where it was last stopped (but not last paused). It also plays the contents of a selection, so that you can hear if you have selected exactly the right syllable, word, block of words, etc, that you wish to manipulate, e.g. delete, have made louder, have played in reverse, etc. Pressing TAB: toggles between the left channel, the middle point and the right channel. Pressing ALT 0: Brings focus to the Data Window. Pressing ALT 1: Brings the focus to the Play Meter Window (you may have to press this twice). Pressing ALT 2: Brings the focus to the Regions List (if your file has been created with regions). Pressing ALT 3: Brings the focus to the Play List/Cut List. Pressing ALT 4: Brings the focus to the Time Display Window. Pressing ALT 5: Brings the focus to the Video Preview Window. Pressing ALT 6: Brings the focus to the Play Meters Window. Pressing ALT 7: Brings focus to the Undo/Redo History Window. Pressing ALT F10: Maximises the Sound Forge application window. Pressing ALT ENTER: Brings up the properties dialogue for the active Data Window. Pressing ALT M: Inserts a place-finding marker at the present position in a sound file which you are currently recording. Pressing ALT W: Opens a new recording window with the current recording settings. Pressing CONTROL LEFT ARROW: Is the jump to previous marker key in a paused file. Pressing CONTROL RIGHT ARROW: Is the jump to next marker key. Pressing CONTROL down ARROW: Returns you to the default zoom ratio. Pressing CONTROL HOME: Takes you to the beginning of a file. Pressing CONTROL END: Does the opposite of the above. Pressing CONTROL A: Highlights all of the data in the active window. Pressing CONTROL D: Brings up the selection dialogue. Pressing CONTROL F: Cross fades the contents of the clipboard with the current data in a window starting at the cursor position. Pressing CONTROL F5: Restores the active Data Window. Pressing CONTROL F6: Takes you to the next Data Window. Pressing CONTROL G: Brings up the goto dialogue. Pressing CONTROL L: Brings up the loop tuner for the active Data Window. Pressing CONTROL M: Mixes the contents of the clipboard with the current data in a window from the cursor position or at the start of highlighting. Pressing CONTROL N: Opens a new recording window and offers you the opportunity of changing the recording settings. Pressing CONTROL R: Brings up the record new data dialogue box. Pressing CONTROL SPACEBAR: Creates a loop of a whole sound file or of any highlighted portion of it, so that it continually repeats. Pressing CONTROL SPACEBAR again will return the file to its original form. Pressing CONTROL T: Trims/crops (deletes) all of the data in a window other than what you have selected. Pressing CONTROL U: Disables the "undo/redo" feature, which means that you can no longer undo a change/edit, but this does save disk space with large files as no back-up copy is made and it will speed up the rate at which you can make edits to a file. Pressing CONTROL V: Pastes the contents of the Clipboard into the current Data window. Pressing CONTROL W: Closes the active Data Window. Pressing CONTROL X: Moves data to the Clipboard. Pressing CONTROL Y: Repeats the last command, e.g. the last process you did, the last effect, etc. Press CONTROL Z: To undo your last action. Pressing `: Cycles through the regions list. Pressing SHIFT PAGE UP: Selects 10 per cent of the current view past the current cursor position. Pressing SHIFT PAGE DOWN: Does the opposite of the above. Pressing CONTROL SHIFT RIGHT ARROW: Moves and selects 2 per cent of the view past the cursor position. Pressing CONTROL SHIFT LEFT ARROW: Does the opposite of the above. Pressing SHIFT NUMPAD +: Selects to the next sample. Pressing SHIFT NUMPAD -: Does the opposite of the above. Pressing CONTROL SHIFT NUMPAD +: Highlights to 10 samples past the current position. Pressing CONTROL SHIFT NUMPAD -: Does the opposite of the above. Pressing CONTROL SHIFT Z: reinstates the last undone action. Pressing CONTROL SHIFT f6: Takes you to the previous Data Window. Pressing SHIFT SPACEBAR: Plays the whole of a file. ******** >APPENDIX 2 GLOSSARY OF AUDIO AND GENERAL COMPUTER TERMS Active-X: An object-based Microsoft standard for computer program building blocks. ACM (Audio compression Manager): Allows you to set the priority of a CODEC and effect any permitted configuration. ALT: An alternative system of Usenet newsgroups. Altavista: A World Wide Web search engine. Anonymous FTP: A way of getting onto an FTP Website by typing "Anonymous" as your username and your e-mail address as your password. Archive: A storage file(s) in a compressed format. ASCII (American standard code for information interchange): The most common way of representing characters in a computer (as plain text). Attachment: A file, such as from a word-processor, attached to the body of an e-mail and sent with it. Baud: The quantity of electronic symbols that a MODEM can send down a phone line per second. BBS (bulletin board system): An electronic bulletin board you dial up to read messages from and copy messages to. BCC (blind carbon copy): A site where a copy of your e-mail goes without other recipients knowing about it. Binary file: A file that contains more than just text. BIOS (Basic input-output system): This interfaces PC hardware to the operating system. BIT: the smallest portion of computer data. Bitmap: A picture constructed from small dots. BPS (bits per second): The speed at which data is transmitted, e.g. through a MODEM. Browser: A program which lets you navigate around and read information on the Web. Byte: A block of eight bits. CC (carbon copy): A list of other people who also receive a copy of an e-mail. Client: A PC which logs onto and uses the services of a second computer, known as a server. CODEC (Coder/Decoder): Method of audio compression and playback, e.g. audio offerings such as Microsoft's WMA, Fraunhofer's MP3 CODEC and Sony's and Panasonic's AAC files. CMOS (Complementary metal oxide semiconductor): The memory that stores a PCs hardware configuration. Communications Program: A software program which permits your computer to talk to another computer. Cookie: A piece of data placed on your computer by a website you have visited that lets that same site recognise you next time you visit it. Dial-Up Network: The TCP/IP provided with Windows 95 to get you connected to your PPP account. DLL (Dynamic link library): A shared subroutine library, used mainly by Windows programs. Domain: Part of the official name of a computer on the Net, e.g. cwcom.net or freeserve.co.uk. Download: to copy a file from a computer on the Internet to your computer. Duplex: Full duplex is able to send data in both directions, e.g. copying to and from the Internet. Embedded link: A link situated within the text of a Web page and forming an integral part of the text (see "Link" below). EMS (Expanded memory specification): Additional memory above the conventional 640 K DOS limit. Eudora: An e-mailing program. FAQ (frequently asked questions): Answers to frequently asked computer questions. Fidonet: A network of BBSs throughout the world which have e- mail addresses. Firewall: A security system restricting the kinds of in and outgoing messages on the Internet via a specially programmed network computer. Focus: The part of the screen which currently has the attention of the program. FTP (File Transfer Protocol): An Internet-based method of transferring files from one PC to another. Gateway: A method of connecting two networks which use different protocols via a computer. GIF (graphics interchange format): Graphics files and pictures. Gigabyte: One billion bytes or characters of information. Handle: A user's nickname. Header: The to, from and subject part of an e-mail message. Highlighting: Highlighting (also known as "selecting") is the process in Windows of singling out or focusing attention on a particular word, line, paragraph, chunk of text, whole document, etc, to carry out a specific operation on, e.g. to delete, move, copy, change the case of, etc. Highlighting/selecting is done by holding down the SHIFT key whilst moving over the text you want to highlight with standard Windows keystrokes such as ARROWING up and down, holding CONTROL down and ARROWING left or right a word at a time, pressing the CONTROL key followed by the END key to highlight everything to the end of the document, etc, e.g. hold down the CONTROL and SHIFT keys and press the right ARROW key three times to highlight the three words to the right of the cursor and then press the DEL key to delete these three highlighted/selected words. Home page: The introductory Web page about a person or company. HTML (Hypertext Markup Language): The computer language that Web pages are written in. HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol): The method by which Web pages are transferred over the Internet. IDE (Integrated drive electronics): Used with many hard disk drives which have most of the controller electronics inside the drive package. Internet: A network of interconnected networks of computers which can communicate with each other. IRC (Internet Relay Chat): Provides the ability to speak to on another over the Internet in real-time. Inter-NIC: The Internet Networking Information Centre. Intranet: An internal microcosm of the Internet which uses browsers, etc, e.g. within a company. ISDN (integrated services digital network): A digital phone system that works as fast as 128 kilobytes per second. JAVA: A modern computer programming language. Browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer can access sites written in JAVA but some specialist browsers for visually impaired people cannot, e.g. PWWebspeak and IBM Home Page Reader prior to Version 3.0. JPEG: A kind of image file frequently found on the Internet. Link: A hypertext place on a Web page where a mouse can be clicked or the ENTER key pressed to obtain more information from the current site or be taken to other sites on the Web. Links are underlined and normally highlighted in blue. Linux: A publicly-owned version of the Unix operating system with open source code. Listproc: A program which handles mailing lists. Listserv: A program which automatically handles and manages mailing lists. Lynx: A text-based Web browser. Mac-TCP: The Mackintosh's version of a TCP/IP. Mail server: An Internet computer providing e-mailing facilities. Mailing list: A method of mailing all incoming mail to a list of subscribers to the list. Majordomo: See Listserv. MAPI (Mail application programming interface): Microsoft's E- Mail standard. Megabyte: One million bytes or characters of data. MIDI: A method of transmitting music. MIME (multipurpose Internet mail extension): A method of e- mailing non-textual files. MODEM: Short for modulator/demodulator, it permits your PC to talk over the phone. Moderator: Someone who vets messages before sending them to an e-mail list or newsgroup. Mosaic: An old Web browser. MPEG (Motion Picture Experts Group): This is a video file. MSN (Microsoft Network): A commercial means of accessing e- mail, the Usenet and the Web. Netscape Navigator: A Web browser. Network: Interconnected computers, known as a LAn (local area network) if they are in the same building or a WAN (wide area network) if the computers are further afield. Newsgroups: Subject areas on the Usenet. Newsreader: A method of reading and posting messages on Usenet newsgroups. Node: A host computer on the Internet. OGG Vorbis: OGG Vorbis is an advance type of compressed MP3 file, said to be equivalent to a MPEG Layer 4 format. OLE (Object linking and embedding): A file or program which is embedded as an object in another file. PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card International Association): Credit card sized computer accessories, such as a MODEM or network card. PDF file (portable document format): A text format for distributing files, which requires an Acrobat Reader program to access it. To convert a PDF file to a text file, attach the PDF file to an e-mail message and send it to: pdf2txt@adobe.com After which it will be returned to you by e-mail converted. Pine: An e-mailing program used with Unix. PKZIP: A DOS or Windows-based file compression program. POP (Post Office Protocol): A method of collecting your e-mail and downloading it to your PC from a mail server. PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol): A method of connecting your PC to the Internet via the phone line. Protocol: The accepted rules by which one computer communicates with another. Realaudio: A facility for listening to audio programs over the Net, obtained from www.real.com. SCSI (Small computer systems interface): An interface standard for connecting peripherals, including hard drives. Server: A computer that provides services to other computers, called clients, on a network. Shareware: A program provided on the understanding that if you keep it you pay the requested sum. SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol): See PPP. SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol): A system by which Internet mail is passed from one PC to another. Spam: The process of posting unwanted commercial material to a large number of Usenet newsgroups and mailing lists. Streaming audio: A downloaded sound file from the Net which starts playing before the download is complete, e.g. Realaudio. Tag: A tag is an instruction on a Web page which tells your browser how to display the text which follows it, e.g. the tag will make the following text bold. TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol): The method networks use to communicate with each other on the Net. Telnet: A program that lets you communicate with and log into other computers on the Internet as if you were actually sitting at that remote computer. Terminal: A method of connecting a screen and keyboard to a computer, as in terminal emulation, e.g. Windows 95 Hyperterminal. Text file: a file that contains text only and no graphics or pictures. Thread: A chain of related articles posted to a newsgroup. Trumpet: A Windows-based newsreader program. TSR (Terminate and stay resident): DOS programs that reside in memory so you can run them within other applications. TWAIN (technology without an interesting name): If a scanner complies with this standard you can run it from many windows, graphics and desktop publishing applications. Unicode: An advanced form of ASCII. Unix: A computer operating system. Upload: To copy files from your PC to someone else's computer on the Net. URL (Uniform Resource Locator): The addresses which link pages together on the World Wide Web. Usenet: A system of myriads of newsgroups. Virtual reality: A realistic 3-D representation of something. WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative): A Website creation standard outlined by the W3C group to ensure that Websites are accessible to people with disabilities such as the visually impaired. WAV files: Windows sound files ending in .wav. Webmaster: A person who creates, designs and updates Websites with HTML. Web Page: Part of a Website which can be displayed on screen. Website: A collection of Web pages covering a particular topic. Windows Explorer: An Internet browser from Microsoft. Winsock: A way that Windows programs work with TCP/IP, e.g. connecting to the Internet via PPP. World Wide Web: An information system of millions of interlinked pages of information on the Internet which you can jump back and forward amongst, known as "surfing". XML (Extensible Markup Language): This is an up-and-coming, more advanced type of HTML which permits the exchange of information between computers in a way that preserves the structure of the information , e.g. between databases or exchanging data across the Internet. XML describes the data on a Web page, rather than just describing the look of the page. You could, therefore, copy a whole Web page into a spreadsheet, for instance, and immediately work with it. XMS (Extended memory system): The additional memory commonly used in memory in 80386 and 80486 PCs above the conventional 1 mb DOS limit. Yahoo!: A program with Web information and search facilities. ZIP: A file compressed with PKZIP or WINZIP which has a .zip extension. ******** >APPENDIX 3 OTHER TUTORIALS BY THIS AUTHOR All of the below titles are available as plain text files as downloads from my Website at: http://web.onetel.com/~fromthekeyboard Tutorial titles and brief descriptions 1. "Accessing the Internet from the Keyboard", Volume 1, covering Web and e-mail protocols, Web Search engines, navigating the Internet with Internet Explorer 5.0/5.5/6.0, e-mailing with Outlook Express 5.0/5.5/6.0, Downloading files and programs from the Net, using a range of Internet search engines, Joining Internet newsgroups with Free Agent 1.92, configuration and hints and tips for screenreader users, and much more. 2. "Accessing the Internet from the Keyboard", Volume 2, covering hints and customisation, Download Managers, Online Auctions, Internet Chat Rooms, RealAudio, Internet Shopping and Internet Banking. 3. A selection of separate and individual manuals instructing visually impaired people how to use off-the-shelf print scanning/reading programs via screenreaders and the keyboard, including TextBridge Pro 98, TextBridge Pro 9 and Millennium, Omnipage Pro 10, 11 and 12, ReadIRIS Pro 6, TypeReader Pro 6 and Abby FineReader Pro 5, 6 and 7. Each scanner tutorial is an independent manual in its own right. For example, the titles of the principal two of these scanner tutorials are entitled: "Using OmniPage Pro 10, 11 and 12 from the Keyboard to Scan Print" and "Using FineReader Pro 5, 6 and 7 from the Keyboard to Scan Print". 4. "Audio Playing, Copying and Sound Editing From the Keyboard", Edition 1. This covers Easy CD Creator 4, Sound forge 4.5, Windows Media Player 6, Windows Recorder, Winamp 2.72, Freerip.mp3, RealPlayer 8 Basic, and much more. 5. "Audio Playing, Copying and Sound Editing From the Keyboard", Edition 2. This covers Winamp 5.0X, GoldWave audio editor 5.06, CDEX ripper 1.51, Basics of burning with Nero 5.5 and much more introductory and general sound-related information. 6. "Nero Burning-ROM Versions 4,5 and 5.5 from the Keyboard" (includes Nero INCD 3.3 and Nero Media Player). This covers burning of data and audio CDs and DVDs withe Nero Burning-ROM and the Nero Wizard, Saving and reopening compilation templates, Using Nero online help, burning/cloning whole hard disks and partitions to CD or DVD, converting MP3 files to other formats, a good deal of specific configuration and general information on CD and DVD burning drives and CD and DVD disks, using Windows Volume Control, and much more. 7. "Nero Burning-ROM 6 Ultra and Enterprise Editions from the Keyboard" (includes Nero INCD 4). This covers burning of data and audio CDs and DVDs withe Nero Burning-ROM and the Nero StartSmart interfaces, Saving and reopening compilation templates, Using Nero online help, burning/cloning whole hard disks and partitions or folders to CD or DVD, converting MP3 files to other formats, ripping sound files to MP3 or MP3 Pro files, a good deal of specific configuration and general information on CD and DVD burning drives and CD and DVD disks, using Windows Volume Control, and much more. 8. "Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002 and 2003 from the Keyboard". This takes spreadsheet users from the beginner stages of Excel through much intermediate material and also covers a few more advanced features. It will give you the skills to use Excel for home accounting purposes, for keeping self-employed small business records and for use in the employment workplace. 9. "Microsoft Outlook 2000 and 2002/XP from the Keyboard". This is a tutorial instructing on how to use the richly-featured suite of programs which is a must for anyone seeking employment or wanting to do advanced e-mailing or calendar and other related tasks at home or at work. It covers all of the main features of MS Outlook and many other more technical topics. Covered is: E-mailing, Calendar, Journal, Tasks, Notes, Contacts, arranging appointments and meetings, searching, plus customising Outlook for visually impaired and blind users and appendices of Outlook general shortcuts and HAL, JAWS AND Window-Eyes hot keys and much more. 10. "Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002 and 2003 from the Keyboard". Available as a plain text file and instructs on how to use over 45 separate skills in these powerful leading word-processors for use at home or in the workplace to make you highly productive and efficient. ******** The End.