Many
people want to listen to mp3 audio books on their computer but sometimes the
reader is depressingly slow. If you press control shift and G in Windows Media
Player you can speed things up a bit. It can still be quite slow. To really get
things going you need the Pacemaker plug in for the WinAmp media player. This
will allow you to vary the speed, tempo and pitch of the accelerated sound you
want. The control on pitch is useful as this can stop everybody sounding like a
speedy, high pitch little girl when talking!
You need to have a reasonably recent version of winAmp install. The
general consensus is that the 5.35 version is the one which is most accessible
and stable. You then have to install the Pacemaker Plug In. Once installed you
will need to press control P for preferences and cursor down to plugins to
enable Pacemaker.
To
get an older version of WinAmp you need to download from a site specialising in
older versions.
Click
here to go to older version WinAmp page
Click
here to download Pacemaker from the jaws User Programs Page
As
the pacemaker high speed playing is remembered
as a setting in WinAmp I find it convenient to play spoken word audio
with Winamp and my music files with another Mp3 player called Media Player
Classic. If I try to open music in winamp it is of course played at high speed
until I disable Pacemaker which is a bit of bind. Using Media Player for music is an easier
option. Media Player Classic is an
extremely accessible and light media player which does the job admirably. It is
installed when you install the Real Alternative program.
Click
here to download Real Alternative from the Jaws User Programs Page
AMIS
is the only freeware Daisy Book Reader that I know of. Designed to be
accessible for visually impaired users it is very useful for identifying those
RNIB Daisy Books which have their chapter mp3 files jumbled up in an attempt to
have some kind of copy protection.
More
important if you are attempting to access a type 2 Daisy Book with the
electronic text as well as the audio files included AMIS will display the text
on screen.
I
have not tested this but I believe that you can select and copy portions of the
text. Potentially a very useful study tool.
Click
here to download AMIS from the Jaws User Programs Page
This
excellent program is primarily used to extract audio from DVDs and save them as
Mp3 files suitable for playing in an mp3 player. Great for listening to movies
on the go. However an almost unnoticed by product of this program is that it
is, as far as I am aware the only completely accessible DVD Playing Software as
well. If you want to play DVDs with sighted family and friends then you can
press a check box to show the video content on screen. DVD Audio extractor
enables you to bypass all those inaccessible start up menus in DVDS. It does
this by listing the actual physical tracks on the DVD and enabling you to play
all or any of them. Very good program. You can download a trial version and I
did not hesitate to buy the full product. I do not remember exactly how much it
cost but it was not expensive.
Click
Here to go to the DVD Audio Extractor Page
A
couple of years ago Jaws included a virtualises window feature. This is an
incredibly useful feature which has loads of uses. The feature enables Jaws to
pick up the text off any Windows screen. Below I will describe how to use this
feature to create a playlist which can be played for example in Windows Media
classic. First of all move to or create
the folder in which you want to create a playlist. Assemble your music files
and if necessary rename them by pressing the F2 key. You may want to rename
files to alter the order in which a file is played for example.
Once
you are happy with the order of the files take the following steps.
Actually
this is much faster than you would think. Once you get used to the key strokes
you can complete this task of making a playlist in less than a minute.