This topic may have been covered before, so sorry if I'm beating a dead horse.

I am using the Genki text books for my Japanese class at my college. Instead of using the CDs, my college has the sound files on a website in mp3 format. What I'd like to do is take the Vocab list sound file, and cut it up into individual words, so I can input them in with my flashcards in Anki. Anyone know an efficient way of doing this? All I can think of now is importing the mp3 into Audacity, cutting out and saving each sound bite, one by one --which would probably take a ridiculously long time.

Any suggestions?

BTW, I'm using Windows XP.

You DO know that you should enter sentences into Anki, not single words... right?

Anyway, the best program IMO for splitting audio is Audacity. There's really no other way to cut audio (unless you want some magical program which can understand by itself where a word starts and ends... unfortunately, there is no such thing.)

Yeah, i prefer sentences, but Genki doesn't have nice examples for it vocab list. I'm still expected to know all the words on the list for class though.

If Audacity is in fact the best way to go, I'll probably just forget about the idea, as I can't stand doing menial repetitive tasks for long periods at a time.

I don't know the Genki Vocab list, but I'm assuming its just a list of words or phrases, spoken one after the other, with a gap in between each item? If so, I would think you could use something like TotalRecorder to automatically split the file into chunks, based on where the gaps are. http://www.totalrecorder.com/splitting&t...les.htm#AS

TR has an option to split "if the sound level does not exceed x% for y seconds". I've used this successfully myself to automatically split a downloaded radio program into discrete tracks. Depending on how long the gaps between words are, it might take a bit of fiddling with the settings to get it right, but I should think it would give you a good start at least.

Tourne Wrote:I don't know the Genki Vocab list, but I'm assuming its just a list of words or phrases, spoken one after the other, with a gap in between each item? If so, I would think you could use something like TotalRecorder to automatically split the file into chunks, based on where the gaps are. http://www.totalrecorder.com/splitting&t...les.htm#AS

TR has an option to split "if the sound level does not exceed x% for y seconds". I've used this successfully myself to automatically splitting a downloaded radio program into discrete tracks. Depending on how long the gaps between words are, it might take a bit of fiddling with the settings to get it right, but I should think it would give you a good start at least.

This may be more what I'm looking for. Thanks a lot!

This would actually be even easier if there were an online dictionary with pronunciation like dictionary.com, but I've been unsuccessful in finding any. Maybe it's because I'd have to search in Japanese?

That's the main reason why I often wish I was studying Mandarin instead.

http://www.nciku.com

Not only do they have write recognition for characters etc, they have TONS of example sentences with recorded audio!

why not create an iknow list? the sentences are already made.... actually there are precreated lists on iknow for genki but i'm not sure if people added sentences to them...

Hashiriya Wrote:why not create an iknow list? the sentences are already made.... actually there are precreated lists on iknow for genki but i'm not sure if people added sentences to them...

Will check that out too. Thanks!

iknow should have audio for vocabulary items as well as its sentences.

Another source I use is http://www.saiga-jp.com/kanji_dictionary.html, which occasionally has some audio.

If you do decide to use audacity, use labels / export multiple to do the sentences in one shot. You can see the audio gaps and put the labels in fairly quickly. For individual words, iKnow is probably the way to go.

I don't know much about audio stuff but my favorite audio manipulation program is called 'goldwave'. Gives you quite a bit of control and ability to manipulate audio.