Hi Mantis,
I'm using a pretty high quality dual dubbing tape deck (it'll record the tapes backwards on one setting). I clean up the sound a bit and break it into tracks using Polderbits software. Then, I zip the files into one zip file using Ace Zip. (Some of these tapes sound like they were recorded inside a metal trash can instead of in a recording booth.)
The scanning is so much slower. I have a USB scanner and "dog slow" doesn't even begin to describe it. It's painful. I'm considering pulling a few favors from work and finding a sheet-fed scanner (someone here suggested it), cutting the spines off of the paper-bound course books, and scanning them that way. Of course, that won't work with the hardbound library books.
Most scanning software lets you scan multiple pages into one pdf file. Once the pdf file is saved off, you can bundle several pdf files into one pdf file using Adobe Acrobat. I haven't gotten to that part yet. I'm thinking that this is so painful that to make it pass quicker I may start saving off the lessons as individual pdf files instead of trying to recreate the books of 8 lessons together. It takes so long to get one up, and I've got people waiting.
And Demipuppet, who just finished the Yoruba text, has gone one step further yet. He is scanning from library copies of the FSI courses also, and many of those are hardbound. That means that text close to the edge of the spine on the page may or may not be cut off when you scan the page using a flatbed scanner. He actually used GIMP to cut text letters from other parts of the book and paste into those areas to make them right. I may end up having to do that with Luganda myself.
--Poetry
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