It would be handy for teaching phonemic awareness if an image with no text could have audio attached.
Bethann
This feature would also be helpful for building stories for non-readers.
Two ideas on this…
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Now that we have the “Sign Language Tool”, in Bloom 4.4, you could have a video which is just a single picture, with audio. You would have to record the video in some other program. Should then play with the current BR and the best epub readers.
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Now that we have the “Image Description Tool” in Bloom 4.4, we have a way of typing in text that goes with an image, and recording that. So what we need is a way to tell Bloom Reader (and possibly EPUB) to play that audio.
NICE!
However, I’m looking checking for the new version of Bloom in Beta, and not seeing 4.4 yet. I only have 4.3.110. Is 4.4 out yet?
Right, 4.4 isn’t actually beta just yet. Soon! Those features are available in 4.3 beta, but you have to turn on settings:advanced:experimental features. Note that the sign language video feature is getting a lot of improvement in 4.5 (which we’re more than half way done with… it’s a long pipeline).
I just did a little testing in 4.4. Yes, BR will play the audio that is part of a video. So making a video of a single image with the audio recorded with it would work.
Easier yet, I just used the Image Description tool to type a description of a full-page image, then recorded the image description. When published to BR, BR will play the audio of the image description, even if the words don’t show on the page.
Hi John, I have Bloom 4.3.4 and I also have my Bloom set to automatically update. I am wondering why it has not automatically updated to Bloom 4.4 if Bloom 4.4 is already released.
@Craig_S
Sorry for the confusion. Bloom 4.4 is in beta. You can get it from bloomlibrary.org/installers.
I have version 4.4.105 but I am still not getting any audio when I record videos.
supposedly BR will play the audio that is part of a video. but this doesn’t seem to work for me.
I am still not getting any audio when I record videos.
How are you recording the video? Bloom’s Sign Language recording does not record audio.
Hello John and Paul, Paul Frank said, “I just did a little testing in 4.4. Yes, BR will play the audio that is part of a video. So making a video of a single image with the audio recorded with it would work.
Easier yet, I just used the Image Description tool to type a description of a full-page image, then recorded the image description. When published to BR, BR will play the audio of the image description, even if the words don’t show on the page.
*I (Craig) can’t seem to get the audio recording feature to work.
@Craig_S, I think there’s some confusion about how the videos/audio is recorded.
If you record a video using the Sign Language Tool in Bloom, the audio is not included in the video. (When I say "record a video using the Sign Language Tool, I’m referring to actually creating it within Bloom). The Sign Language Tool was created for sign-language recording - and as the recording is for the deaf or those with hearing difficulties, audio is not part of the recording.
If you open the Sign Language Tool in Bloom and click on Import, you can import a .mp4 video from your computer into Bloom, and the audio is included. If you would like to have videos with sound within your Bloom books, you will need to create the videos using alternate video software.
If anyone interested in this feature is willing, you could help us. Starting with Bloom 4.4, images can have audio “Image Descriptions” for use by the visually impaired. This feature, though designed for a different purpose, is probably pretty close to satisfying this request. Please give it a try and let us know what more you’d like to see.
CC @LitBeth