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Jul. 22nd, 2004 01:55 pmTechnology empowers the individual. This is a Good Thing. Efforts to prevent the individual from being empowered by technology are doomed to failure. This is particularly true once the individual has had a taste of empowerment. Empowerment is tasty and about as addictive as heroin.
This morning I decided that I needed new Japanese drama CDs for in my car. [These are for listening-to-Japanese practice.] I already own quantities of Japanese-language dialogue, much of it legitimately purchased and everything. If I could recycle that, which I already own, it'd work almost as well as "real" drama CDs and they'd be a heck of a lot cheaper to produce. Okay, most of my Japanese-language dialogue is bundled with an accompanying video drama track, but still...
So. At approximately 9 AM this morning, I decided that there had to exist a tool to rip the audio track out of pre-existing .avi files. (Why .avi files? My current fascination is Hikaru no Go, available fansubbed in .avi format.) Google provided me with links to several such tools. I selected a free one, downloaded it, and installed it on my computer. I aimed it at one of my .avi files and ran it. It ripped me a .wav file before I could fix a cup of coffee. I tested the .wav file, which played beautifully.
Right.
Since I still had time left in my morning and since that part of the project had gone so smoothly, I decided that I needed to be able to *edit* the new .wav file to take out the "on last week's episode" summary dialogue and the "Go, Go, Igo" shorts at the end of each episode. Again with the internet, I located a free .wav editor, downloaded it, installed it, and pointed it at the .wav that I'd ripped minutes previously. The graphical point and click goodness was simple enough that an adult could do it -- inside of minutes, I was editing and I didn't have to read any instructions. I saved the resulting file as an .mp3 (for those keeping track, we're on format #3, here) and proceeded to do two more episodes -- the amount that I figured would fit on one CD.
When I got three episodes done, I cranked up my pre-existing CD-burner program and burned myself a CD of "audio dramas" for my drive to work today... it wasn't yet 11 AM, and I had gone from "Wouldn't it be cool if I could..." to "I've done it."
How anyone (the entertainment industry, the government) can reasonably expect that I would prefer a world where I COULD NOT do stuff like this to a world where it's simple and easy to remake my media in ways that are more appealing and/or more useful to me... smokin' crack, they've got to be.
This morning I decided that I needed new Japanese drama CDs for in my car. [These are for listening-to-Japanese practice.] I already own quantities of Japanese-language dialogue, much of it legitimately purchased and everything. If I could recycle that, which I already own, it'd work almost as well as "real" drama CDs and they'd be a heck of a lot cheaper to produce. Okay, most of my Japanese-language dialogue is bundled with an accompanying video drama track, but still...
So. At approximately 9 AM this morning, I decided that there had to exist a tool to rip the audio track out of pre-existing .avi files. (Why .avi files? My current fascination is Hikaru no Go, available fansubbed in .avi format.) Google provided me with links to several such tools. I selected a free one, downloaded it, and installed it on my computer. I aimed it at one of my .avi files and ran it. It ripped me a .wav file before I could fix a cup of coffee. I tested the .wav file, which played beautifully.
Right.
Since I still had time left in my morning and since that part of the project had gone so smoothly, I decided that I needed to be able to *edit* the new .wav file to take out the "on last week's episode" summary dialogue and the "Go, Go, Igo" shorts at the end of each episode. Again with the internet, I located a free .wav editor, downloaded it, installed it, and pointed it at the .wav that I'd ripped minutes previously. The graphical point and click goodness was simple enough that an adult could do it -- inside of minutes, I was editing and I didn't have to read any instructions. I saved the resulting file as an .mp3 (for those keeping track, we're on format #3, here) and proceeded to do two more episodes -- the amount that I figured would fit on one CD.
When I got three episodes done, I cranked up my pre-existing CD-burner program and burned myself a CD of "audio dramas" for my drive to work today... it wasn't yet 11 AM, and I had gone from "Wouldn't it be cool if I could..." to "I've done it."
How anyone (the entertainment industry, the government) can reasonably expect that I would prefer a world where I COULD NOT do stuff like this to a world where it's simple and easy to remake my media in ways that are more appealing and/or more useful to me... smokin' crack, they've got to be.
