Thursday, June 9, 2011

Apple adds Read Aloud capability to iBooks 1.3

One of the very interesting new features that Apple has added to iBooks 1.3 is support for Media Overlays as specified in the EPUB3 spec. According to Lawrence Furnival, it works with Fixed Layout EPUBs using SMIL files that link the audio to the text, using a timeline and CSS to highlight particular words as they are spoken. It's pretty exciting.

I haven't figure out how to do it yet, but as soon as I do, you'll be the first to know.

Meanwhile, here's a sample. (I've been hearing that some people are having trouble getting it to work. I didn't.)


Sample Read Aloud book “Splat the Cat” from Liz Castro on Vimeo.

It looks like there are 42 titles available immediately. I found a link to “Read and Listen” on the Featured page of the iBookstore:

Read and Listen iBooks
Posted by Liz Castro at 4:42 AM
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21 comments:

  1. InklingJune 9, 2011 at 5:07 PM

    It's a fine idea if parents don't forget that kids are less interested in having a story read to them than in having an adult take the time to read that story to them. A little shuffling of the little one off to a gadget is fine, such as on a long trip. But using this at bedtime not a good idea. You only have them around for a few years, so make the most of it.

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  2. AnonymousJune 10, 2011 at 3:07 AM

    My enhanced ebooks have already had this Media Overlays feature. You may download a free copy (until 30-Jun-2011) from happyreads.net. Not limited to Fixed Layout EPUBs.

    Kevin

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  3. Christopher L. JorgensenJune 20, 2011 at 2:10 PM

    I think this will rock as an option for poetry books. I plan to do this for mine if I can figure out how to make it work.

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  4. flowneyJune 26, 2011 at 5:49 PM

    If you have access to the 2011 WWDC videos, take a look a session 507 on eBooks. There's a good, illustrated explanation and demo of how this is done. The karaoke effect is especially interesting as a learning-to-read assist.

    Thanks, Anon, for the happyreads example which is a very different approach to the same or similar objectives,

    @Christopher L. Jorgensen, interesting thought about poetry. I've been working on such a book myself using video with a soft subtitle track. Perhaps I should rethink my approach now that this is possible.

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  5. jeyaJuly 5, 2011 at 4:03 PM

    Nice! could you please post the sample read-aloud epub (Splat the Cat). i couldn't find and sample read-aloud books on web.

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  6. Liz CastroJuly 5, 2011 at 7:08 PM

    Hey Jeya:
    You can download the Splat the Cat epub from the Apple iBookstore. It's not mine to share.

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  7. Brendan GJuly 19, 2011 at 1:33 PM

    Other than the WWDC vid (that I am about to watch), has anyone located any documentation on how to add 'Read Aloud' to a fixed Layout EPUB for the iBookstore? I checked version 4.7 of the Asset guide and it only discusses how to embed a an audio player on the page. The voodoo continues. :)

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  8. Brendan GJuly 19, 2011 at 6:52 PM

    Update... the WWDC 2011 vid (session 507) was awesome, really good. The Read Aloud thing, will be tedious as heck to implement, but pretty darn straight forward.

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  9. AnonymousJuly 21, 2011 at 11:36 AM

    If I hear correctly, Apple hasn't released docs on Read Aloud yet...WWDC is the only place to get it from...

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  10. Brendan GAugust 6, 2011 at 6:35 PM

    So I've been implementing Read Aloud, and all was going well... till I actually tested it. The audio played fine, but the highlight words functionality was skipping words.

    I've done all the obvious stuff, for testing - decreased the size of my images, re did the timings on the words on a few pages, and actually cut up the single full narration file into shorter ones, and still some words just get skipped. Has anyone else experienced this? Very frustrating.

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  11. JeffAugust 10, 2011 at 7:12 PM

    The read aloud feature requires, as I understand it, a fixed layout. I'm interested in producing books for adults with several lines of text (25-30) per page, like a regular book, but with the read aloud (at the sentence level). (These are language learning books.) Fixed layout is fine for the iPad, but I don't think it would work on an iPhone, at least with the same fixed layout - the text would be too small and/or require constant zooming and moving. So: Can one produce two separate epubs for the iBookstore -one for iPhone, one for iPad, with different fixed layouts, or is it only possible to have one layout? That is, does such a thing as an iPhone-formatted fixed layout epub exist? Sorry if this is such a basic question - I'm new to the epub world, but would appreciate any insight on this. I am buying your guides but am not sure if this issue is addressed, given the newness of this feature.

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  12. Liz CastroAugust 11, 2011 at 9:03 AM

    @Jeff: Interesting question... I need to do some research and testing and get back to you.

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  13. ChuckAugust 11, 2011 at 11:16 PM

    Thanks for your great blog! I was wondering if anyone knew if it's possible to change narrators? What if you want to have 2 different voices?

    Thanks in advance.

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  14. Liz CastroAugust 12, 2011 at 12:05 AM

    @Chuck. Yes, as many narrators as you want. The audio file is completely up to you.

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  15. ChuckAugust 12, 2011 at 1:07 AM

    Thanks for the quick reply Liz!

    I asked because on the iPad the Read Aloud menu didn't seem to offer a choice- I need to have 2 or 3 different narration tracks. Do you cover that in either of your mini-guides? (I got the EPUB one already)

    Thanks!

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  16. Liz CastroAugust 12, 2011 at 8:22 AM

    I'll cover it in my new miniguide about Read Aloud... available shortly!

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  17. AnonymousSeptember 27, 2011 at 7:12 AM

    I am not able to download a sample epub file with read aloud and fixed layout. Can you please help to analyse the sample epub

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  18. AnonymousOctober 4, 2011 at 4:32 PM

    Hi. I was curious if you could tell me a little bit more about the highlighting feature. Is it word for word? Can we make it word for word? Thanks.

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  19. SunnyDecember 21, 2011 at 1:19 AM

    Does the read aloud work on re-flowable epub as well?

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  20. Liz CastroDecember 22, 2011 at 10:00 PM

    @Sunny. No, so far Read Aloud is available only for Fixed Layout.

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  21. AnonymousJanuary 6, 2012 at 10:48 AM

    Hello, I bought many of your books, but none explains how to put the audio on each page. (no-highlight text)

    The project that I realize is a fixed layout.
    Thank you for answering me with maybe an example luckyzoo1@yahoo.ca

    Thank-you
    merci

    ReplyDelete

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