Audio Advice Requested
We mentioned Monday that we’re planning to make Max McLean’s reading of the complete ESV Bible available for streaming through the ESV Online Edition.
We’d like your advice: in what format should we make the audio available?
Currently you can only hear Marquis Laughlin read the New Testament. We piggyback off Bible Gateway’s RealAudio files and have learned that many people dislike RealPlayer. They thus miss the opportunity to hear the ESV read aloud.
We want as many people as possible to listen to the audio, so we’ve been considering making it available in Flash format—a button would appear at the top of each passage, and you press it to play the audio.
We have specific requirements for any Flash audio player we use:
- Be easy to use. Ideally, we just want a play button that turns into a pause button when something’s playing.
- Accept a playlist. People can listen to any combination of verses they want; we need a way to specify which files to play.
- Be as free as possible (“AFAP” is one of our favorite acronyms). We like open-source projects.
- Can play different mp3s without pausing between files. This requirement probably means that it loads the next mp3 while it’s still playing the current one.
- Or, can precisely access times in mp3s. A verse might start at 117.32 seconds into the mp3 and end 21.86 seconds later. The player has to be able to start and end right at those times.
A note about the last two requirements: the player only needs to meet one of them, not both. We can take two approaches to posting mp3s. Either we can split our chapter-length mp3s into individual verse files and just play them in sequence; or we can upload complete mp3s and let the Flash player start and end where it needs to. We imagine that writing a player to read mp3s sequentially presents an easier programming challenge.
We’ve found one free Flash player (XSPF Web Music Player—the Music Player Button) that does almost everything we need. However, it has two limitations:
- It only loads one mp3 at a time, so you hear a definite pause between mp3s. We want the transition between mp3s to be seamless. We think it would work fine if the player loaded the next mp3 in the playlist while it plays an mp3.
- It doesn’t start over at the beginning when you reach the end of the playlist; instead, pressing play again takes you back to the beginning of the last verse you heard. We expect it to return to the beginning of the playlist when we reach the end of the playlist.
Where You Come In
We’re leaning heavily toward a Flash solution, but we thought we’d ask your advice. Leave a comment or email us (blog@esv.org) if you have strong feelings on the matter. (Yes, moderated comments will be open for a while.)
We’d especially like to hear from you if you’re a Flash developer and would care to volunteer your time to help us out. (We’ll find a way to thank you.) We suggest starting with the XSPF player we mention above and tweaking it. (Here’s an XSPF file you can use.)
Update Dec 7, 2005: Links in the XSPF file are fixed. Thanks to Larry for pointing out the problem.
December 6th, 2005 at 8:54 pm
I like Quicktime better than flash. and realplayer as sucky as it is, I still like it better than flash, Maybe you can have options to pick your favorite player.
December 6th, 2005 at 9:56 pm
Well, don’t throw things at me, but this one was recommended for use in another app i’ve contributed to. - Link
I do believe that is French they are typing.
The upside, Google can do the heavy-lifting:
Link
December 7th, 2005 at 12:26 am
What about iTunes??? It will do all of those things and is very popular. Plus iTunes is free - if you were to work through Apple you could distribute the ESV through their music store as well (or make it a download from Crossway). iTunes is probably the best application for what you are talking about.
December 7th, 2005 at 9:01 am
Well, what I really would like, for now, is just a simple way to download the MP3s into my harddrive. This will be easy for many of us who are already used to using our software music players… or our portable MP3 music players.
December 7th, 2005 at 11:48 am
The links in your xspf playlist file appear to link to nothing, so it is hard to test.
The links in the playlist are…
http://media.gospelcom.net/goodnews/media/esv/daily/ml/1.corinthians.10.13.mp3
http://media.gospelcom.net/goodnews/media/esv/daily/ml/1.corinthians.11.32.mp3
December 7th, 2005 at 5:05 pm
iTunes would be great in my own personal opinion. More and more people are getting ipods and this would allow you to sell to a wide variety of people. Just a thought.
December 7th, 2005 at 5:17 pm
This might be a little help…
http://lbray.prohosting.com/test/test2.html
I just text for the “play button”, but it would work the same
way with a button image.
There still seems to be a slight pause between the 2 mp3
files, but pressing play starts from the beginning.
December 8th, 2005 at 3:07 am
I dont know why my comment was erased but o well… Quicktime would be best which by the way it is the engine in itunes.
December 8th, 2005 at 11:11 am
If the purpose of this particular application is strictly for selecting and streaming the audio and NOT for selling the individual mp3 clips, then in my opinion Flash will give you the greatest flexibility and programmability. Flash files can be nicely integrated into the web page itself, and won’t require people to open a separate application to hear the files (which also makes it difficult for people to download and save all the mp3 files for free.) The Flash player/plug-in has proliferated extensively on the web. It’s used widely for these types of apps, and provides a full range of interactive programmable options for a very easy user experience. Flash will only continue to grow more and more popular, especially now that Adobe has purchased Macromedia. Flash is the forseeable future for this type of content delivery. iTunes may be fine if people are trying to purchase mp3’s, but that doesn’t sound like what you are trying to accomplish here.
December 9th, 2005 at 12:10 am
I am not sure why you just don’t put the .mp3 link up(or a playlist or whatever). Let people stream it with whatever default player they have on their machine. Almost everything can play mp3 files these days.
AMDG
December 9th, 2005 at 1:48 am
Quicktime can run right on the same window and does not require you to open a new browser window or the quicktime application itself. Plus Quicktime also allows you to stream your audio. the most popular player out there right now is itunes, if you have itunes installed in your computer you also would have quicktime because without quicktime itunes will not run.
I would agree with Brian about giving everyone the option to pick their favorite player.
December 9th, 2005 at 6:11 am
Hi
Have you considered using vorbis technology see:
http://www.vorbis.com/
Ogg Vorbis is a completely open, patent-free, professional audio encoding and streaming technology with all the benefits of Open Source.
A problem is that Windows Media player (WMP) does not support it by default. A plugin (CODEC) is available at http://www.illiminable.com/ogg/
MP3’s are not free see http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/
December 9th, 2005 at 10:35 am
The current link does not work for audio on javascript, so I am not using it presently. As far as the use of Mclean’s audio, I don’t like it, I prefer Mclaughlin’s because it is read with power and passion, Mclean’s goes very fast, very little power.
December 10th, 2005 at 12:44 pm
I, like Brian, prefer Laughlin’s readings. Is there ever a chance you can finish the set by having him record the Old Testament? I love the NT readings of his.
December 11th, 2005 at 10:39 pm
Windows Media Audio has the best quality of the compressible file formats, and is thus what I prefer. The ITunes idea would be good for selling it, but remember a lot of people have MP3 player that are not IPods and do not support Itunes.
December 12th, 2005 at 1:35 pm
I also Agree with Brian, Please leave Laughlin’s readings. Everyone I know prefers it.
December 13th, 2005 at 10:15 am
I’m going to have to disagree with Juan, Scott and Brian on the Laughlin readings. I think Mclean has an excellent reading style, and doesn’t overdramatize the text as he reads. I find that when Laughlin reads, I become more focused on his speaking style than on the text itself. Just felt the need to cast my vote for Mclean.
December 14th, 2005 at 9:56 am
Please do not use flash or a java/ecma(javascript) player. Because of the increasing use of advertising using flash and ecma many people are opting to block both flash and javascript completely from their browsers. If you will stay with standards that are cross platform you will allow the most people to use-any pages you create. Please do not use anything proprietary like windows media player either as it is not available for a growing market share of web users (not available for linux and BSD systems as well as having slow or non existent updates for Macs its a couple of years behind on non windows platforms at best) Quicktime (what iTunes is based on) is available on every platform I can think of and will allow you to regulate playback so that the files can be played but not saved. This will allow you to sell MP3s elsewhere. Should you so desire I can set up a small demo with all of the methods mentioned gratis just contact me via the email address provided.
December 14th, 2005 at 2:28 pm
Kelly, thanks for clarifying for myself (and the rest of the readers here at this blog) why flash or java and Windows Media Player are bad ideas when seen in light of Quicktime. If Crossway puts out a proprietary, or junky web-based player, it is just going to hurt their credibility. Quicktime is the absolute best bar none!
December 14th, 2005 at 5:54 pm
Flash IS fully cross-platform, cross-browser compatible, and I don’t know of anyone who blocks Flash content. It has become a standard delivery tool for rich media web content. It’s much more flexible and progammable than Quicktime as well, and can stream mp3’s quite handily.
December 14th, 2005 at 7:11 pm
Steve,
Quicktime can play flash files but virtually everyone I know of that uses browsers like safari and firefox kill flash immediately. That way we are not forced to see the annoying bandwidth clogging shoot the monkey ads that have been proliferating of late.
December 14th, 2005 at 11:54 pm
I would like to see QuickTime and iTunes be the method of choice. It gives us the options of taking it with us on our mp3 player and you would have a distribution method that most people are using.
December 15th, 2005 at 10:28 am
I think that an mp3 based solution giving options of either Shoutcast or Flash to stream it would probably be the best solution.
This would give the option for having it embeded in the webpage for those who want it to play whilst reading the verses and also would allow it to be played in their preferred MP3 player for those who want to play it out of their browser or don’t like Flash, both using the same back end files.
Quicktime and iTunes are not officially available on Linux although there is ‘Quicktime 4 Linux’(http://heroinewarrior.com/quicktime.php3) which is able to play uncompressed Quicktime files, which would be much larger in size. Because of this I would avoid using these as an option - besides Quicktime and iTunes are both proprietary as far as I am aware - owned by Apple who as far as I can see charge for the encoding software.
December 15th, 2005 at 12:07 pm
I have flash blocked and I use Quicktime on my Mac and on my pc, and if you use linux then that means you are savy enouph to use other players such as mplayer that play quicktime streaming.
Quicktime is the way to go.
realplayer is spyware and windows media player is not Mac friendly and it does not work properly on both windows and others.
December 18th, 2005 at 3:05 am
Flash would definitely be the way to go — it’s truly cross-platform and works in any browser (and anyone who blocks all Flash apps might as well turn off pictures and java applets). Not to mention you’ll give the programmers a far easier time with the sheer popularity and knowledge base that exists for flash programming today.
December 30th, 2005 at 9:54 pm
i’ve been using ogg vorbis lately and i found icecast (http://icecast.org/) which is basically a open source version of shoutcast. don’t know if that helps.
January 18th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
You can now hear Max McLean read passages from the entire ESV at the ESV Online Edition. (The current audio, read by Marquis Laughlin, only covers the New Testament.) Here’s how to hear it:. Go to the Options page at the ESV Online
January 18th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
iTunes playlist compatibility. stranahan.com — Playlist Compatability : (edited for brevity). The December issue of Cargo magazine has list of 1000 songs that they call the Ultimate Playlist or something.
March 1st, 2007 at 7:33 am
Clipping is the ability to index into timed media, for example to set start and end times within a larger file. In this list of requirements for a browser-based audio player — ESV Bible Blog — Audio Advice Requested — there’s a beautifully simple use case…