Can I annotate a sound file using OneNote 2007?

[mreddington]

I know I can write notes while recording a file and then click on the note to
find the appropriate section in the audio file. I already have some
recordings of lectures in mp3 or WMA format and would like to do the reverse:
play the sound files and write notes as I go along, being able to link those
notes to the relevant point in the sound files. Is this possible and, if so,
how?

Thanks
Martin

 

[Erik Sojka (MVP)]

Not natively.

I've not tried it myself, but some people here have reported success in
somehow looping the system's sound output as an input device which ON can
access, thereby using the recording as the "microphone" from which you can
annotate. Hopefully that gets you started.

 

[mreddington]

Thanks, I was afraid that might be the case but the workaround makes sense.
Martin

 

[Rainald Taesler]

I know I can write notes while recording a file and then click on
the note to find the appropriate section in the audio file. I
already have some recordings of lectures in mp3 or WMA format and
would like to do the reverse: play the sound files and write notes
as I go along, being able to link those notes to the relevant point
in the sound files. Is this possible

Yes!!
That's possible and it is one of really superb features in ON.
And there's not need at all for a workaround like Erik assumed to be
needed ;-) ;-)

I have two demos for showing how great ON works (when trying to make
proselytes <gbg>).
One is a recording of a lecture I held at a congress (recorded with my
iPAQ) and the other is the song "Love and Happiness" from the album "All
the roadrunning" from Mark Knopfler and Emmilou Harris ;-)

For the first one I added a TOC and clicking on the item causes jump to
the proper place in the sound file.
For the song I imported a scanned page from the CD's leaflet and added
marks for each verse. Everyone to whom I show this is just perplex.

and, if so, how?

Easy enough:
Just import the sound-file (be it WAV or MP3) into ON and let it run.
Then type a line of text and hit Enter.
This will create a "jump mark" which later can be clicked for jumping to
the respective point in the recording.

As said: A superb feature. Did not yet find anything which might
compare.
Someway it reminds me of the old days when we used music tape-cassettes
and with a good recorder could set magnetic jump-points on the tape.

Rainald

 

[mreddington]

Thanks Rainald. I don't understand what I did at first as it didn't weem to
work. I have tried again with a variety of files and it works beautifully. I
am now annotating various lectures in preparation for writing a conference
report.

Thanks again!
Martin

 

[Rainald Taesler]

Thanks for the follow-up.
Glad to hear that you got it working.

Have fun with your commented audio-files.

Rainald