If you read the last post, you understand the problem that I am trying to solve.  I need a way to automate the creation of a script for HabloHindu.com.  It should keep track of the word of the day in Spanish/English/Hindi.  Allow for people to know what they need to do, e.g. review a script, answer a question, translate something, record something, etc.  It needs to mix together the various recordings, and post the final results to WordPress. 

In this post, I hope to outline my current approach.  I plan to keep a running journal of my progress, which will be helpful to me later on to review, and will hopefully be helpful for you as well.

Selection of tools:  I am going to write this targeting a LAMP stack (linux, apache, MySql, Php).  My development environment is a windows vista laptop, but my server is a linux server running at DreamHost.  Other than that, my development and production environments are the same.

Let me give you an idea of the flow:

1) Log in to the application

2) See list of scripts with status (Just started; Need review; Need recording; Ready; Published)  Each script will have a notes section displayed on the status screen that will allow for Sara and I to communicate with each other.

3) On the list of scripts page, there will be a “new script” button.  This will allow for you to create a new script.  Let us walk through the new script process

4) Clicking on the “new script” button will take you to the “script edit” page with some fields filled in with defaults, and others that will have to be filled in.

Publish Date: <default to the next day after the last script in the system>

Word of the Day in English:

word of the day in Spanish:

Word of the day in Hindi (devanagari):

Word of the day in Hindi (English Transliteration):

Word of the day in Hindi (Spanish Transliteration):

Notes:

Status: <default to “Just started”>

Then there will be a button to “save”

5) After clicking “save”, you will see the script “header” information in read only mode.  And there will be a button to “add a line”.  When you click this, you will be taken to a page that looks exactly like this one, but will have a new “script line” at the bottom, with the following fields:

Speaker (drop down with a list of speakers) (currently: Sara, Meena, Nariandas)

Spanish:

English:

Notes:

6) After clicking the “save” button, you will be taken to the read-only mode.  And you will have some basic functions like, move line up, move line down, insert line here, delete line, go to script list page, edit script header and the like.

7) The above takes care of the script editing.  Now, to the recording.  to each script line in the recording, I will add  a little Java Applet (Like Java Sonics ListenUp voice recording Applet) or a flash based record like Evoca)

8) Then a good next step will be to have a page by speaker with all the lines.  That way I can sit with Meena or Nariandas and just record all the lines at one time.

9) Mix the audio together here is a discussion about this: ask.metafilter.com/21381/Merge-mp3s-with-PHP

10) post the information to HabloHindi wordpress using the webservices interface or directly into the database…

so, it is a very basic design..  I’ll keep you posted on my progress…