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Record and Split Audio

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For basic information about Talking Books and microphone setup, see Record Audio.

By default, the Talking Book Tool lets you record one sentence at a time. It is often more natural to record an entire text box at once, however.

Recording a whole text box​

To record an entire text box at once:

  1. Click on the Advanced button in the Talking Book tool.

  2. Select the By Whole Text Box radio button control in the Recording Mode section.

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    When you change the recording mode to By Whole Text Box, Bloom highlights the entire text box for recording.

  1. Record the text using the Speak button.

Splitting a text box recording​

When you play a Talking Book, Bloom highlights each recorded sentence. If you have more than one sentence in a text box, you may want to split your recording so that each sentence is highlighted in turn.

When you set the recording mode to Whole Text Box, Bloom adds a Split button to the Talking Book Tool, between the Check and Next buttons.

To split a recording for an entire text box:

  • Click the Split button.

Bloom will divide your recording into sentence-sized chunks.

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Bloom relies on an extra software program called Aeneas to split your recording into sentences.

Adding audio splits with segment markers​

Bloom splits a text box recording into sentences by looking for sentence-ending punctuation ( . ? ! ). You can add extra breaks:

  1. Record or import the audio recording for the text box.

  2. Place the cursor where you want a break.

  3. Click the Insert Segment Marker.

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    You can also insert a segment by typing a vertical bar character ( | ).

  1. Click the Split button to (re)segment the audio recording.

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Click the Check button to make sure that Bloom has properly divided the audio.

Fine-tuning audio splits: Editing a timing file​

Sometimes Bloom does not split the text box audio exactly how you would like it. You can manually edit the timings that control the audio highlighting, to fine-tune how the text is highlighted as the audio is played back. If you need to do this, see Edit Aeneas Timings .