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Monday, May 5, 2008

Once More - With Feeling!

This Post Has Been Edited!

May 8, 2008 - Well, this is a first for me on this blog. I’ve had to radically edit this post due to some technology snafus! Here’s the explanation.

Sue stopped by this morning and was unable to listen to my audio clip. Because this has been the case for many of you - including both of my sisters - I decided to try a different hosting service.

I hope this allows you to easily listen to my poem: “Two Days In August”!

Still no little audio bar visible to you? If all you see is a big blue Quicktime “Q”, try reloading the page. Or here’s the direct link. It should bring up a new screen and the audio clip will load and then begin playing.

Let me know in the comments section which one of these worked. Thanks!


UPDATE 5/7/2008: Inspired by a suggestion from Jeff, I’m trying another change to this audio clip. Fingers crossed...


I can't put in a direct link to this version. When I do it automatically downloads the file to the computer!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

:o(

Gail

Jeff Barnard said...

I get a portrait oriented white oblong box that shows the blue QuickTime logo for about a second, then it disappears and is replaced by a thick, black horizontal line.

I'm just stabbing in the dark, here, but the filename extension ".m4a" might be posing a problem in some cases. You might try copying the audio file and re-naming the copy with a ".mp4" filename extenstion, and see how linking that to an embedded player might work.

Pink Granite said...

Sorry Gail!
:o(
- Lee


Thanks Jeff for the information and the suggestion.

I tried copying and changing the extension from ".m4a" to ".mp4". I then uploaded it and tried to play it. I got an error message saying the file couldn't be opened because it wasn't a QuickTime Movie.

All of the audio files that live in our iTunes have ".m4a" extensions. With the exception of a spoken word file which has ".m4b". Based on that, I copied the file, changed the extension, uploaded it and then embedded it using this new file's address.

I had hoped that by opening the MediaMax account I would be able to use the instructions you gave me last week (http://www.macloo.com/examples/audio_player/) and use a completely different method of creating the embedded player. But I never could get anything to appear on the blog within the post.

Unfortunately, using this new ".m4b" extension means that I can't provide the direct link to where the file is stored. When I do, it automatically downloads the clip! Likewise, I uploaded this new ".m4b" version to the the original archive site and it won't give me a linkable address. It too automatically downloads the file!

What I find most interesting is that you were able to listen to the audio clip in the original post, but not in this one. In both cases the file name and extension were the same. Only the location where the file was stored and played from were changed.

Man I wish I knew and understood just a little bit more about all this stuff!!!

Let me know if this latest ".m4b" version works.
Thanks again!
- Lee

Jeff Barnard said...

The direct link works for me, but the players don't.

I tested the audio player I referenced earlier here...
http://ka1ogm.blogspot.com/2008/02/another-audio-test.html

serving the audio clip off my ISP's tiny web page space that comes with the account. I had to put two support files there, also, for the player to work.

Another alternative you might be interested in is archiving and serving off of the Internet Archive, which I've been experimenting with...
http://www.archive.org/details/Danelectros5-2-08

Jeff Barnard said...

It looks like the audio test link I just put in my last comment got truncated... just add the letters "st" to it so the last word in the link is "test".

Pink Granite said...

Hi Jeff -
Thanks again for the tech support!

I was able to get the flash player installed following the instructions found at (http://www.macloo.com/examples/audio_player/). I had to rearrange the files over at MediaMax, but then I was able to post and see the flash player bar. I never got it beyond buffering. As I was beginning to troubleshoot the problem, I discovered MediaMax is closing up shop tomorrow and becoming another company - a fee based storage company!

The audio bar in my first post back on April 25th, links to Archive.org. So I'll be keeping those links up, but removing all of the ones which connected to MediaMax.

I don't know if we "control server space" through our ISP, but I want to look into it. If we do, then I'll try the flash player again, because that seemed quite promising.

Thanks again!
- Lee

Sue said...

IT WORKS!!! What a beautiful poem and how lovely to hear your voice reading it out for us. Thank you so much for sharing it with us.

Sue x

PS. Sorry it's taken me so long to get here to check again, just haven't had time...

Pink Granite said...

Hi Sue -
Yay!!!
This has been a very frustrating tech challenge for me. But being able to have my readers become listeners - even for just a moment or two - is all I wanted to achieve!

I'm so happy you were able to listen to the poem and that you enjoyed it!
Thank you!
;o)
- Lee