AMW.DOC - Documentation for "A Multimedia Workstation / Voice" Version 1.0 AMW Version 1.0, "A Multimedia Workstation / Voice" Copyright (C) 1993, by Joseph Duer, All Rights Reserved. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 What is "A Multimedia Workstation / Voice" ?. . . . . . . . . . . . 3 What is a Sound Blaster ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 How is voice recorded and processed ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 What can this program be used for?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 What's with the "/Voice" ?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Installing AMW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Running AMW. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The AMW screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The Status Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The Buffer Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 The top level menu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 The File Menu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Load. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Save. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 New . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Change Dir. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Change Device . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Quit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 The Edit Menu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Zoom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 UnZoom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 The Play Menu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Full Voice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Zoomed Section. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 The Record Menu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Set Sampling Rate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Record Voice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 The Voice Processing Menu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Set Sampling Rate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Raise Volume. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Lower Volume. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Reverse Voice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Introduction What is "A Multimedia Workstation / Voice" ? This program is a utility that allows a user to manipulate Sound Blaster voice files. You can make them faster, slower, louder, and quieter. You can also ZOOM in on a particular part of the voice data and save that part only, thus serving as a true voice editor. What is a Sound Blaster ? The Sound Blaster is a voice / music card, manufactured by Creative Labs. The basic Sound Blaster contains a FM chip for music generation and a 8 bit DSP, which is what does the voice input/output. The Sound Blaster also is offered with a 16 bit DSP, 2 voice channels and many other options and combinations. This program will utilize the basic SB options, so that it will work with all Sound Blasters. How is voice recorded and processed ? This is actually a fairly simple thing to explain. When you set the blaster to start recording, it "listens" a certain number of times per second and assigns an integer value based on how loud the incoming sound is. How many times per second? That is defined by what is called the "sampling rate". The default sampling rate is usually 8000, or 8000 samples per second. This sample data is stored in memory and can be saved to disk. You can then load the voice file and "play" it out of the blaster to a speaker whenever you want. What can this program be used for? AMW is a voice recorder / player / editor. You can record your own voice with a microphone, record music by connecting your stereo to the blaster, or even connect your audio VCR output and record the soundtrack of a movie. Once you have recorded it, you can then change the sampling rate, raise of lower the volume, or even flip the voice over so that it plays in reverse! You then have the option of saving your changes to disk. For editing, the ZOOM feature allows you to select a certain part of the voice data, this would allow you to remove unwanted "noise" at the beginning or end of a file. What's with the "/Voice" ? AMW will be a full Multimedia application including Voice, Music, and Images. This is only the Voice module. Not too far into the future, all the modules will be available. Registration information AMW is shareware. That means that you can distribute this program to whomever you like. It also means that you can use it yourself for a 30 day evaluation period. After 30 days, if you still want to use it, you must register your copy or else you will be in violation of the copyright. Registration is easy, and cheap. A single user license is $20. A unlimited user site license is $100. Use the form in the file REGISTER.FRM and mail to the address below: Joseph Duer P.O. Box 414 Trumbull, CT 06611 Please note: People ordering from outside the USA must enclose a check in US funds, drawn from a US bank, and add $5 to help with the additional shipping costs. With registration, you will receive a printed copy of the documentation as well as the ability to get help with any problems that you may have running the software. You can reach me by mail at the above address, my CompuServe my id is [73750,2263], you can send me a message in the sound card area in the MIDI forum on CompuServe. Installing AMW AMW will work from any location on a disk drive. To install the program, create a directory for the software and change directory over to the new directory: Example: C:\> MKDIR AMW C:\> CD AMW C:\AMW> Then, copy all the files from your distribution diskette into the new directory: Example: C:\AMW> COPY A:*.* This command will copy all the AMW files into the AMW directory. When that is done, you are ready to run AMW. Running AMW To start AMW, simple type AMW at the DOS prompt: Example: AMW At that point, the screen will clear and the AMW screen will be displayed. The AMW screen The Scope The Scope is the large aqua rectangle in the center of the screen. It is where the voice data is displayed. The center line is 0, and the top and bottom lines are 127 and -127 respectively. If you don't know what that means don't worry, Just remember that the further away from the center line you go the louder the voice will be. The Status Line The status line looks like this: 00:00.00-Time Index Data/Graph ratio 1 to 1 Time Index-00:00.00 The "Time Index" is what point in time the displayed voice data is at. For example, if you have just loaded a voice file that was 5 seconds long, the left time index would be 00:00.00 (the start of the data) and the right index would be 00:05.00 ( the end of the data). If you then ZOOMed in on the center of the data, your time indexes might look like this Left: 00:03.25 - Start of zoomed data is 3.25 seconds into the voice. Right: 00:04.75 - End of zoomed data is 1/4 second from the end of the voice data. You can also deduce from this that the zoomed data is 1 1/2 seconds long. The Data/Graph ratio is the number of bytes that were averaged together to plot a specific point. Since there are only 640 pixels across a VGA screen, and some voice files are 500,000 bytes or more, you cannot plot every voice data on the screen. So, the data is averaged with the data around it and one point is plotted representing a group of voice data. The first number in the ratio tells you how many numbers were averaged together to plot each point. The Buffer Information In the lower left hand corner of the screen, you will see the information pertaining to the voice currently loaded: Buffer name: The name of the file read in or NONAME if recording. Voice size: The total size of the voice data (in bytes) Sampling rate: The current setting of the sampling rate. Playing time: How long the voice would take to "play" out of the external speaker. Free memory: How much free far memory is available. The top level menu When your first start AMW, you will see the following options on the top line of the screen: File Edit Play Record Voice Processing The File menu is used for loading, saving, and clearing voice data. The Edit menu is used for moving through and selecting specific voice data. The Play menu is used to send the voice data out to an external speaker. The Record menu is used to record voice from and external source into memory. The Voice Processing menu is used for manipulation of the voice data. All menu selection are explained below. The File Menu Load The first selection on this menu is "Load". When this option is selected, a box will appear in the center of the screen with a list of all available .VOC files in the current directory. You can choose one of the files by clicking on the filename with the mouse twice. The first click will highlight the selection, the second click will select it and begin the process of loading it. To cancel, click on the cancel option at the bottom of the box. Save This option allows you to save a file to disk. It will save the current voice data and settings. When you select this option, you will see a box appear in the center of the screen. This box will contain the prompt "Enter Filename:". You then enter the name you want the file to be called and press the Enter key. The file will then be saved to disk. To cancel this command, press the Escape key. New This option clears out the voice buffer of any data and resets all parameters to their original values. You would use this if you wanted to clear out data you were working on so you could record something. Be sure to save your work before you clear it out. Change Dir Change Dir is the equivalent of the DOS CD command. When you select this option, you will see a box appear in the center of the screen with the following prompt: Enter name of directory to move to: At this point, enter the name of the directory you want to change to, for example: C:\VOC. If you enter a directory that does not exist, you will see the error message "Invalid directory" and you will be prompted again. Press Escape at any time to exit this command. Change Device This option is used if you want to work with voice files that are on another disk drive. When you select this option you will see a box in the center of the screen and the following prompt: Enter letter of the device to move to: At this point, enter the name of the disk drive you want to access, for example: A. You only have to type in one letter and press the return key. Quit The quit option allows you to exit the program normally. Once again, be sure to save your work before you exit. The Edit Menu Zoom The Zoom selection allows you to close in on a specific area of the voice data. After you select Zoom, you will see a message near the top of the screen that says: Click mouse on the first point of the ZOOM area Now, click the mouse on the spot where you want the zoom area to start. A yellow line will appear. That is one boundary. The program will then display another prompt: Click mouse on the second point of the ZOOM area At this point, click the mouse at the point where you want to define the other boundary. You will then see a yellow line where you clicked the mouse. The program will then automatically ZOOM in the area between the two yellow lines, and will display the zoomed area on the scope. You may zoom in on the data as many times as you like. UnZoom This command undoes all the zooming you have done and redisplays the entire voice data on the scope. The Play Menu Full Voice You would use this option when you want to listen to the entire voice file. When you select this option, the program will start "playing" the voice data immediately. You will also see a red line travelling from left to right across the screen. This line shows the voice data being played at that instant. This is helpful if you want to zoom in on a certain sentence. Just watch the screen as the voice is played and then zoom in on the points where the sentence began and ended. While the voice is being played, the message "Playing voice, press Escape to pause..." will appear near the top of the screen. You can pause or stop the voice playing by pressing the Escape key. If you press once, the voice pauses. Press it again, and it cancels the request to play and waits for your next command. Zoomed Section This option is for playing the data you have zoomed in on, and not the entire voice data. See Full Voice for details on playing voice. The Record Menu Set Sampling Rate This command allows you to set the sampling rate for the voice you are about to record. The "sampling rate" is the number of times per second the sound blaster "listens" to incoming voice. Generally, the higher the rate, the better quality the recording. A good rule of thumb is to use 8000 for recording male voices and 11000 for female voices. The female voice is more complex and requires a higher sampling rate to achieve the same quality. Record Voice When this option is selected, the program immediately begins to record the voice coming into the sound blaster. The message "RECORDING... Press escape to terminate" appears near the top of the screen. The program will continue to record the voice coming in until you press the Escape key, or you run out of free memory. When recording is done, the new voice data is displayed on the scope. The Voice Processing Menu Set Sampling Rate This option sets the sampling rate the program will use when playing out the voice data. Some very interesting effects can be created by using this option. For example, you could load a voice file that has a sampling rate of 8000, and you use this option to set the sampling rate to 12000. When you play the voice, it will sound much faster and people speaking will sound much like the cartoon "Chipmunks". If you had changed the sampling rate to be lower, the voice would sound much slower and deeper, like a record playing at the wrong speed (For those of you old enough to remember the record players!). Raise Volume This option is used to make the voice data "Louder". When Raise Volume is selected, you will see a box appear in the center of the screen with the prompt: Enter percentage to raise volume: You can enter a number between 1 and 999. Remember that raising the volume 100% will make it twice as loud, so be careful that you don't make the voice data unlistenable. Lower Volume This option is used to lower the loudness of the voice data. When you select "Lower Volume", you will see a box appear in the center of the screen with this prompt: Enter percentage to lower volume: You can enter a number between 1 and 999. Remember that lowering the volume by 100% cuts the volume in half, so be careful not to lower the volume so much that you can't hear it. As a footnote to the Record, Raise and Lower Volume commands, it is better to Record the voice at a low level and then raise it with the Raise volume command. You will find when recording loud voices, your voice data will sound metallic, tinny, or just plain awful. When the voice sounds like this it means that you are exceeding the sound blaster's capabilities and the high volume sounds are being lost. That is why it is better to record low, and then raise the volume. Reverse Voice This option is a very simple one, yet interesting. Reverse Voice takes the voice data and flips it over. This puts the end of the data at the beginning and the beginning data at the end. A far simpler analogy woulcd be for you to look at your computer screen through a mirror. Everything backwards, right? Since this option literally flips the data you can use it again to flip the voice data back to the way it originally was. This is the best option to use when trying to show this program to your friends.