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Smart iTunes playlists help with language lessons Apps
I use my iPod to listen to language lessons during my morning commute. Since I could never remember whether I was on Lesson 16 or 17, I was constantly having to listen to the first couple of minutes of the lesson to be sure I wasn't doing a repeat, or even worse, skipping a lesson. iTunes Smart Playlists came to the rescue:
  1. Create a Smart Playlist called "_Lessons"
  2. Set the first criterion to "Album equal to Name of the appropriate album"
  3. Set the second criteron to "Play Count is 0". (You can also use the Last Played date if you're working through them a second time.)
Now, when I drive to work, I just push the center button on my iPod four times and like magic, I am listening to the correct lesson. This works for two reasons:
  1. Putting the underscore at the front of the playlist name ensures that it's always at the front of the list.
  2. The criteria for the playlist ensure that the first item on the playlist is always the next lesson that I haven't listened to.
Two caveats: First, make sure that you connect the iPod to your computer every night. Otherwise, the playlist won't get updated to remove the old lesson. Second, make sure that you don't forget to stop the player after the lesson. Otherwise, the iPod will continue to play more lessons, removing them from the Smart Playlist, and this is a mess to clean up. (I've found using the Sleep Timer to be helpful for this purpose.)
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Smart iTunes playliss help with language lessons
Authored by: monickels on Dec 16, '05 08:01:45AM

This post seems like an obvious tip to me, but let me add to it. Language lessons annoy me because they are filled with long pauses where I'm supposed to repeat the words being said. Problem is, I commute via subway in New York City. I do not intend to start muttering nonsense in Thai or Bengali on the train--there are enough wackos already without me adding to the mix. Plus, in some cases I already know how to pronounce the language. I'm just adding to or reinforcing my existing vocabularly. So the pauses are just time-wasters.

What I've done is use Audio Hijack to record all of the lessons for a language in order to a single bookmarkable AAC file (which resolves the "where was I?" problem). But I also use AJ's "silence monitor" feature to remove most of the pauses. AJ listens for pause of a given length (the default is 2 seconds) and a given low decibel level and when it finds them, it deletes them. If you set the pause length to one second or greater, this can cut the length of a language lesson by one-third to a half.

It works pretty well, but you'll have to play with it to find settings that work for you, since different language lessons have different background levels for the "silent" parts. Try AJ's analog and digital settings both. You might use the VST Effect MDA SpecMeter plugin (which is free) to measure the decibel level of "silent" parts of a lesson in order to know where to set it. ("Silent" is in quotes because there's almost always sound there, just no talking or music.)

The only thing about this shortening of lessons that I've had problems with is that in some cases words beginning with an S sound are clipped minutely at the very beginning. It wasn't a problem for languages I already knew pretty well, but it would be for ones that were brand-new to me. I think this problem might be resolved by tweaking the S-range of the audio spectrum upwards to be more pronounced (using one of the equalizer plugins), but I did not try that.

I don't know how this compares to the newer iPod's ability to play audiobooks at an accelerated pace.

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Double-Tongued Word Wrester: a growing dictionary of old and new words from the fringes of English.



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Smart iTunes playliss help with language lessons
Authored by: genericuser on Dec 16, '05 08:39:22AM

Instead of using the sleep timer or stopping manually, couldn't you limit the smart playlist to just one track? (sorry, I don't know the exact english phrasing as my iTunes is in Italian...)



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Smart iTunes playliss help with language lessons
Authored by: lokon1979 on Dec 16, '05 08:53:43PM

just select a track, press cmd+i, go to the "options" tag, and check the box "skip when shuffling". then iPod will stop and go back to main menu after finished a track



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Smart iTunes playlists help with language lessons
Authored by: gshaviv on Dec 18, '05 09:48:54AM

I use this technique a lot. As an added feature, in iTunes, click get info on the tracks of the audio, and in the options tab there is a remember playback position checkmark. This will resume the last track from the point it was stopped, so no need to hear anything twice.

Also in the same tab there is an exclude from shuffle checkmark which is handy for not hearing an audiobook when you are just listening to music.

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Guy



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Smart iTunes playlists help with language lessons
Authored by: gshaviv on Dec 18, '05 09:10:10PM

btw, not sure if this is a new feature for the ipod Video or all ipods have it, but when I set a smart playlist in itunes to be live it updates on my ipod each time I press on it, so there is no need to sync to update a smart playlist.

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Guy



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