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APH Product Forum
Read, Navigate and Create Digital Talking Books!
Book Wizard™ software is available from APH in two versions: Reader & Producer. Book Wizard Reader lets you read a wide variety of types of digital talking books using your PC's sound card and speakers. Book Wizard Producer has all the features of Reader, but adds the ability to create professional digital talking books on your PC.
Book Wizard allows you to read and create digital talking books as outlined in the specifications designed by the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and the Digital Audio Information System (DAISY) consortium. The program adheres to the DAISY Digital Talking Book 2002 definitions and provides users with enhanced ability to control and navigate through both structured and unstructured audio files.
In addition to its abilities to provide structured navigation through a book, the DAISY 3.0 specifications provide for the book to be rendered in a format that best meets a reader's needs. Book Wizard supports all the media types covered by the DAISY specifications.
The program refers to the way a user wants to read as the "View" on the book. When Book Wizard opens a book, it opens all the views the book offers, which depends on how the book was constructed. For a book that contains only audio, the only view available is the audio view with playback control and navigation. If, on the other hand, a book contains text and no audio, Book Wizard shows the text view and lets the user control the appearance and navigate through the text.
If you open a book with both text and audio support, Book Wizard opens both views and prioritizes the preferred view. By default, this is the audio view. If the book was prepared with synchronization support, Book Wizard scrolls the text as it plays the audio version of that text.
Book Wizard provides a wide variety of commands to control the reading environment, with the exact commands dependant on the particular view. For example, the text view uses the "Up Arrow" and "Down Arrow" keys to move from line to line on the screen and scroll the text into view if needed. The audio view, on the other hand, uses the Up Arrow and Down Arrow to move by spoken phrases.
Most digital talking books contain an item referred to in the DAISY specifications as the Navigation Control XML (NCX) file. Book Wizard represents the NCX as a tree navigated and controlled with the arrow keys.
There are several ways to move through the contents of a book depending on how well the book was prepared and the user's reading preferences, including:
In addition to its use as a tool to read digital talking books, the Book Wizard Producer version is also used to create them, providing a robust set of tools to quickly and easily record, edit, and master a digital talking book. There are several ways to create a new digital talking book, depending on need and the kind of audio source material available. Book Wizard Producer is compatible with source input of either a narrator who reads directly into the program or an imported audio file created from another source.
Book Wizard provides limited support for DAISY 2.02 talking books by providing full reading, control, and navigation capabilities, but the program does not support creating DAISY 2.02 books. When you create a digital talking book with Book Wizard, the program uses the DAISY 2002 format.
Book Wizard requires the following system as a minimum:
APH offers two convenient ways to order Book Wizard:
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