Music selected in Music Tool does not play in Bloom Reader app

Using the Music Tool in Bloom 4.4.4, I chose an audio track on the cover page and selected on all the following pages to “continue music from previous page”. However, when I send it to my phone in Bloom Reader, the audio track does not play. Is there something I’m missing?

@kklcclkk
The Music feature is intended for “Motion Books”. To create a motion book, you need to check the “Motion Book” box when publishing to Bloom Reader. Then, on your device, turn it sideways to landscape mode to experience the book more as a video than a book.

If you’re still having problems, please use the Help menu in Bloom to “Report a Problem” and submit the book.

Ah, okay, that is very helpful to understand the purpose and use of this tool. Thank you. This is not clear to me in the Help files that the music from the Music Tool can only be heard in Landscape mode, so this is clarifying.

What I really want to do is to take a pre-recorded audio file of someone reading the book (which is an excellent recording done in a studio) and use that audio in the Talking Book tool. However, it seems the Talking Book tool can only accept audio that is recorded directly into Bloom.

We want people to be able to see the text and the pictures at the same time, so the Landscape view does not fulfill our purpose.
Any ideas for how to do this?

The bad news is you cannot do this today in Bloom.

The good news is that we are steadily moving in that direction. With 4.5 (and much improved in 4.6), audio can be attached at the text box level, not just the sentence level. Aeneas can then be used to determine sentence boundaries for proper highlighting purposes. Reference I would like to have Aeneas built into Bloom.

You’re not the first to request the ability to import audio. Feel free to vote for Ability to add pre-recorded audio files.

A while back we also wrote up this very technical how-to about accomplishing what you want. Unfortunately, it is probably a little out of date. Though it would probably still work just fine, it does not reflect the strides we have already made in 4.5 and 4.6 by integrating aeneas. I don’t have time to update this presently, but if you are up for a very technical solution like this, let us know so we can find try to find time to update it… which may eliminate a step or two for you.

Thank you for the info. I think I will just wait if it’s not going to be too much longer before this capability is there. That would probably be faster for me than trying to do the very technical method.

I now have Bloom Beta 4.5.116 and I see that there is a way to record directly into Bloom at the text box level, but still don’t see anything that will allow me to take an outside/pre-recorded audio file and connect it to the book or text box.

but still don’t see anything that will allow me to take an outside/pre-recorded audio file

Correct. We don’t have the ability to import audio yet. And we don’t yet have a timeline when that will make it in, unfortunately.

If you have the technical ability to split your existing recording into page-size files, that would probably be the main barrier. Then it wouldn’t be terribly difficult to help you connect those into Bloom’s current system.

I can easily cut my audio file into chunks in Audacity…I wouldn’t want to spend all my time doing that though, since there are over 50 books in this particular project. (And I already have timing files for the whole files made with Reading App Builder for many of them.)
I would do it for one or two though just to get the idea so I could show local people who want to do it for other projects and are asking me how to do it.
If there is no timeline and it wouldn’t be too hard to connect them into Bloom’s current system, I’d like to try.

Sorry for the delay. I haven’t forgotten about you! We’ve been hard at work trying to get Bloom 4.6 to beta, and 4.6 will greatly help with this process. I’ll write again in the next few days with the steps you need to take.

Great, thanks! Looking forward to it.

@kklcclkk So I can help tailor the instructions slightly, may I ask what language and orthography you are using?
Also, do you have more than one text box on each page?

@kklcclkk
If your work is sensitive, I mostly need to know if you’re using a Roman-based orthography.
(as well as if you have more than one text box per page)

@kklcclkk
I’ve taken a first stab at this by adding a follow-up post here:

Let me know how it goes, and if I need to clarify anything.

Yes, Roman-based. Only one text box per page for most of the books I am looking to do this with.