Production Tip

August 2008

Back to the Basics

We thought it would be a good time to review some of the basics about the software we use to record our books. In specific, we wanted to talk about what a “mark” is and why we “mark” for page numbers and headings during our recording sessions.

Correct marking is essential to a quality recording, but we don’t often talk about why that is.

First some background:

Giving our borrowers the ability to navigate directly to a certain page or to a certain section of the book is one of the great advantages of going digital. Back when we were using reel-to-reel tapes, we would put an audible “beep” on the recording when we announced a new page and an audible “double beep” when we announced a new chapter/section etc. Students would have to listen and count the beeps in order to find a specific page.

Now, because we have navigational marks that are encoded during the recording sessions, borrowers who receive our audio books can use a “go to” function on their players or software to navigate instantly to a page number or a section heading.

When you select/click the “mark” button you are actually setting a particular “time stamp” – meaning the computer recognizes that for a unique moment in the recording, a particular navigation post has been placed by you the volunteer.

If the time stamp is placed too late (in other words, after the reader has announced the page or the heading) the student navigating to that mark will not hear the page announcement or the heading they were expecting to hear. If you mark too early, again the person listening will not hear the announcement they were expecting. So, always remember to double-check your marks.