Making an Audio Bible

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georgeholtjr

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Hi, I'm not very good at all this, but if i was going to record the Bible in my voice, how would I go about it so that Sword searcher recognizes the verse divisions, as it does with Alexander Scourby and Max McLean's MP3's? Thank you
 
You would have to record 1189 chapter audio files and give them SS recognizable names like Ge 1.mp3 ... Rev 22.mp3 etc. Put them in a folder.

In the SS File menu/Configure Audio Files/ you could link them. The timing would not be precise as it is with Scourby, but it would play them and move the highlighter fairly accurately.

Brandon would have to create a timing file for precise timing which I doubt he would want to do.
 
Thanks,

That's a lot easier than I thought.
If you or Brandon could give me a crash course on making a timing file, I could develop all the necessary ones.

Appreciate the help.
 
georgeholtjr said:
Thanks,

That's a lot easier than I thought.
If you or Brandon could give me a crash course on making a timing file, I could develop all the necessary ones.

Appreciate the help.
Click to expand...
I asked Brandon about that once since I wanted to do one for a foreign-language Bible, but, IIRC, it was not something Brandon was willing to pursue. I.e., it's hard-coded and not something he could easily make available for user extensibility.

Brandon, I still wish it was possible for us users to code the timing of "home made" audio files. Now there is a way to use voice synthesis to create the foreign-language audio, and I could process the files for each chapter and then give them to native speakers and the scrolling would work with SS. That would be wonderful for them! Also, I could listen in SS in the other language with the verses scrolling. That would be such a blessing! So, next time you're bored and don't know what else could possibly be done to extend SwordSearcher's capabilties, I hope this idea will come to mind. 😀
 
If you can create one audio file per chapter you could easily bring that into SwordSearcher like any of the "supported" audio Bibles. However, you have to use file names that contain properly named book and chapters so that SwordSearcher knows which chapters they are. Also, SwordSearcher isn't meant to be used to handle audio Bibles that are works-in-progress and will fail to link the audio files if there are not exactly the right number of files (every chapter must exist). You could get around that by creating duplicate content for those files while you work on them, I guess.

See Setting up Bible Audio Support: https://www.swordsearcher.com/helpfiles/current/bible_audio_support.html

You can add your own audio Bible this way and SwordSearcher will play them with estimated verse timing in the Bible panel for you. Also, once you link up your audio file set, you can make changes to the individual files and it will not be a problem for SwordSearcher (so you won't have to re-run this process just because you re-record one of the files).

What you can't do as an end-user is create the timing tables SwordSearcher uses internally to manage the verse-by-verse timing. I don't actually have an "import format" that can be used to do this, and the timing tables are all hard-coded in SwordSearcher's executable file (they are not external databases). I have developed internal dev tools that handle all of this in a mostly automated way that really couldn't easily be duplicated "in the wild" without my specific setup.

I appreciate the request to open this up as a user-level system so people can do their own audio Bibles with verse timing. Doing that would take several steps I can think of that are pretty time intensive on my end and I am not sure there are more than a few people who would be able to use the end result, but I will keep this in mind and continue to consider it.
 
Brandon Staggs said:
[…]

I appreciate the request to open this up as a user-level system so people can do their own audio Bibles with verse timing. Doing that would take several steps I can think of that are pretty time intensive on my end and I am not sure there are more than a few people who would be able to use the end result, but I will keep this in mind and continue to consider it.
Click to expand...
Thank you, Brandon. I understand the limits of time and resources you face (to some degree).

I would say that to increase the vote weight of the few who would use the feature, that those few might help others to read/hear the Word of God in their own language and thereby have a huge impact for truth and God's glory. Probably there would not be any significant sales increase, though. We all know you have to / get to make those decisions under the authority of God, and we're glad that's your job, not ours – we've got our own responsibilities before Him :)

So, may the Lord give you wisdom and grace as you make those decisions. So far with SwordSearcher, you've done a great job with those decisions, I'd say.
 
If it were me I wouldn't make anything from scratch. I would download an existing audio bible that's known to work.
Then all that would be needed is to swap out the audio from the existing files, and renaming the master folder to your own custom name.
Everything else is already designed to work as is. You can record your own audio files then when 'saving-as', right click on the existing name so it applies it to the filename box, then overwrite it. So you don't even have to match the names, it does it for you.

As in, if the filename of the audio clip you are overwriting is 01Gen004 (Genesis chapter 4), just right click on the existing name and 01Gen004 will be applied to the save filename, then overwrite it when saving. That way you know for sure Sword Searcher can read it, and you didn't have any typos.
 
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