Audio Controls in ePub3

josephmwheeler · 06-27-2012, 01:53 AM

Is there a way to hide the audio controls in ePub3? That is to say, I would like to click on the word and hear the audio rather than the control button. I have looked high and low and tested more times than I want to remember.

Thanks in advance.

Joe

mrmikel · 06-27-2012, 07:45 AM

You might ask in the Apple section, if you haven't already.

AlPe · 10-02-2012, 09:38 AM

I am wondering about the same issue, as I am working on a pet project involving an audio eBook.

Specifically, I would like to customize the audio player control bar (not necessarily on iBooks --- for example Readium or Calibre ebook-viewer now support the audio element as per EPUB 3 specs). The EPUB 3 specs do not seem to provide much meat, nor the "official" samples do.

The support is --- surprise, surprise --- spotty. When I change chapter in ebook-viewer, the audio track that has started playing stops. On iBooks, on the other hand, this does not happen. So, if I need to listen to a different track (from, say, Chapter 2), I need to go back and stop the track associated with the previous chapter (say, Chapter 1).

Does anyone have good pointers to solve/document these issues? Thanks in advance.

mzmm · 10-03-2012, 02:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by josephmwheeler

I would like to click on the word and hear the audio rather than the control button.

seems like you're able to override the default controls using the epub:trigger element in epub3, and bind controls to whatever html you'd want, although i haven't had a chance to test it out yet. the sample html provided on idpf looks like this:

Spoiler:

and you can read more here about :trigger :

http://idpf.org/epub/30/spec/epub30-...l-epub-trigger

mzmm · 10-03-2012, 03:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlPe

I am wondering about the same issue, as I am working on a pet project involving an audio eBook.

Specifically, I would like to customize the audio player control bar (not necessarily on iBooks --- for example Readium or Calibre ebook-viewer now support the audio element as per EPUB 3 specs). The EPUB 3 specs do not seem to provide much meat, nor the "official" samples do.

The support is --- surprise, surprise --- spotty. When I change chapter in ebook-viewer, the audio track that has started playing stops. On iBooks, on the other hand, this does not happen. So, if I need to listen to a different track (from, say, Chapter 2), I need to go back and stop the track associated with the previous chapter (say, Chapter 1).

Does anyone have good pointers to solve/document these issues? Thanks in advance.

i'm kind of unclear on what it is you're trying to do, but it sounds like you might be attempting to use the <audio> element to create a media-overlay(?)

as i understand the specs, an audio clip should be included using the html5 audio element, but an ambient soundtrack or narration should be done with a media overlay. i think that playback controls for media-overlays are provided by the e-readers, though.

AlPe · 10-03-2012, 04:57 PM

Hi,

thank you for the interesting pointers. They all look promising.

Just to clarify my request: I do not want to create a media-overlay, because I am working with several different audio clips whose reproduction should be left on the user's will.

I was just asking if it was possible to "tweak" the <audio> tag in order to have it displayed in the same way on every reading software (a way to achieve this might exploit the epub:trigger, I will give it a try tomorrow) and whether it is possible to automatically stop an ongoing audio clip if the user exits the chapter it belongs to.

Thank you again for your suggestions!

AlPe · 10-04-2012, 02:52 PM

For anyone interested: download cc-shared-culture-20120130.epub from http://code.google.com/p/epub-samples/downloads/list

The epub:trigger is a good way to define the play/pause/mute/unmute controls.

However, still no idea about "confining" an audio element to play only when the XHTML page is actually rendered, and to stop it when the XHTML page is changed. (For example, from my test, iBooks seems to stop the audio when you go back, but not when you go forward)

Also, SMIL does not seem suitable for what I want.

ms82 · 10-25-2012, 04:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlPe

For anyone interested: download cc-shared-culture-20120130.epub from http://code.google.com/p/epub-samples/downloads/list

The epub:trigger is a good way to define the play/pause/mute/unmute controls.

However, still no idea about "confining" an audio element to play only when the XHTML page is actually rendered, and to stop it when the XHTML page is changed. (For example, from my test, iBooks seems to stop the audio when you go back, but not when you go forward)

Also, SMIL does not seem suitable for what I want.

Has anyone tried this epub:trigger? I downloaded this cc-shared-culture-20120130.epub and epub:trigger seems to be not supported (I used calibre, FBReader, and epubReader in Firefox). I tried also to write some example using instructions from http://idpf.org/epub/30/spec/epub30-...l-epub-trigger but also without a success (no actions are triggered when I click on the Play/Pause/... 'buttons').

If you managed to have this working could you please say on which reader you launch it? And one more thing, namely is there a need to have some JavaScipt for this (as it was in case of ops:trigger)?

AlPe · 10-25-2012, 04:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlPe

Also, SMIL does not seem suitable for what I want.

Correction: SMIL is the right way to go, as, per spec, it provides a way of "limiting" the reproduction of an audio clip to a certain portion of text.

Some caveats:

1) iBooks does not support it (not even iBooks 3) and ADE neither
2) AZARDI offers some minimal support to SMIL
3) Readium offers support for SMIL, but --- to date --- the "stable" version (0.5.3 9/29/2012) has problems with internal links and SMIL. They have already been solved in the sources, so you might want to get the source code via git, and load it into Chrome as "unpacked extension".

So, for the moment, for my needs (iBooks, unfortunately), I will simply embed the audio file, add an <audio> tag, but I will not add SMIL yet.

I hope SMIL will gain traction soon.

AlPe · 10-25-2012, 04:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ms82

Has anyone tried this epub:trigger? I downloaded this cc-shared-culture-20120130.epub and epub:trigger seems to be not supported (I used calibre, FBReader, and epubReader in Firefox). I tried also to write some example using instructions from http://idpf.org/epub/30/spec/epub30-...l-epub-trigger but also without a success (no actions are triggered when I click on the Play/Pause/... 'buttons').

I do not remember exactly, but I made some code (modifying cc-shared-culture) working on iBooks 2. I will check my notes when I get back home. All other readers failed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ms82

If you managed to have this working could you please say on which reader you launch it? And one more thing, namely is there a need to have some JavaScipt for this (as it was in case of ops:trigger)?

AFAIK, not even Readium supports it. Check the support spreadsheet here: http://www.bisg.org/what-we-do-12-15...pport-grid.php

AlPe · 10-25-2012, 03:27 PM

I confirm that epub:trigger works in iBooks 3 (I think it was working in iBooks 2 as well), at least for pause/play/mute/unmute, without JS, just load the xml-events namespace. See cc-shared-culture demo.

mzmm · 10-26-2012, 02:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlPe

I confirm that epub:trigger works in iBooks 3 (I think it was working in iBooks 2 as well), at least for pause/play/mute/unmute, without JS, just load the xml-events namespace. See cc-shared-culture demo.

hey great to hear - thanks for uploading.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlPe

1) iBooks does not support [smil] (not even iBooks 3) ...

smil actually is supported in iBooks. this is how they're creating their Read Aloud function, although i don't think i've ever seen it implemented in a flowing book. perhaps they only have support for it for their fixed-layouts?

AlPe · 10-26-2012, 02:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mzmm

hey great to hear - thanks for uploading.

You're welcome.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mzmm

smil actually is supported in iBooks. this is how they're creating their Read Aloud function, although i don't think i've ever seen it implemented in a flowing book. perhaps they only have support for it for their fixed-layouts?

Exactly. Media Overlays not supported in reflowable rendition. Hence, it is not (fully) supported. Put in other words, SMIL works only in fixed layout. Which is a pity, in my opinion.

codevise · 10-28-2012, 01:43 PM

We at Codevise implemented a polyfill for media overlays with reflowable content in iBooks>1.3. Basically, it parses the smil and provides menus to control the audio.
As this is nice and works for more than a year in production (full books; splitted on a per sentence basis), we'd love to see apple providing the "read-aloud" gui in non-fixed layout epubs too.

AlPe · 10-28-2012, 03:20 PM

Hi, thanks for the lead.

I was thinking of doing that as well (NOT from scratch, maybe from the Readium sources, of course)*, maybe at the bare minimum required for my pet project. I assume you cannot make the JS public, as it is a "proprietary" tool, right?

(The funny thing is that I have all the 100 SMIL files, and they work well in Readium and AZARDI, but not in iBooks, since my ebook is reflowable... shame on Apple)

EDIT: added ()*

06-27-2012, 01:53 AM	#1
josephmwheeler Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jun 2012 Device: none	Audio Controls in ePub3 Is there a way to hide the audio controls in ePub3? That is to say, I would like to click on the word and hear the audio rather than the control button. I have looked high and low and tested more times than I want to remember. Thanks in advance. Joe

10-25-2012, 03:27 PM	#11
AlPe Digital Amanuensis Posts: 501 Karma: 1169999 Join Date: Dec 2011 Location: Padova, Italy Device: Kindle3, Odyssey, eDGe, A60, PRS-T1, iPad3, KoboGlo	I confirm that epub:trigger works in iBooks 3 (I think it was working in iBooks 2 as well), at least for pause/play/mute/unmute, without JS, just load the xml-events namespace. See cc-shared-culture demo. __________________ Personal Website (EN): http://www.albertopettarin.it/ (My) Company Website (EN/IT): http://www.smuuks.it/ Coordinator Member of eBookClub Italia: http://ebci.it/

10-28-2012, 03:20 PM	#15
AlPe Digital Amanuensis Posts: 501 Karma: 1169999 Join Date: Dec 2011 Location: Padova, Italy Device: Kindle3, Odyssey, eDGe, A60, PRS-T1, iPad3, KoboGlo	Hi, thanks for the lead. I was thinking of doing that as well (NOT from scratch, maybe from the Readium sources, of course), maybe at the bare minimum required for my pet project. I assume you cannot make the JS public, as it is a "proprietary" tool, right? (The funny thing is that I have all the 100 SMIL files, and they work well in Readium and AZARDI, but not in iBooks, since my ebook is reflowable... shame on Apple) EDIT: added () __________________ Personal Website (EN): http://www.albertopettarin.it/ (My) Company Website (EN/IT): http://www.smuuks.it/ Coordinator Member of eBookClub Italia: http://ebci.it/ Last edited by AlPe; 10-28-2012 at 03:40 PM.

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06-27-2012, 07:45 AM	#2
mrmikel Book Twiddler Posts: 1,023 Karma: 1118807 Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Central Oregon Coast Device: PRS-300	You might ask in the Apple section, if you haven't already.

10-02-2012, 09:38 AM	#3
AlPe Digital Amanuensis Posts: 501 Karma: 1169999 Join Date: Dec 2011 Location: Padova, Italy Device: Kindle3, Odyssey, eDGe, A60, PRS-T1, iPad3, KoboGlo	I am wondering about the same issue, as I am working on a pet project involving an audio eBook. Specifically, I would like to customize the audio player control bar (not necessarily on iBooks --- for example Readium or Calibre ebook-viewer now support the audio element as per EPUB 3 specs). The EPUB 3 specs do not seem to provide much meat, nor the "official" samples do. The support is --- surprise, surprise --- spotty. When I change chapter in ebook-viewer, the audio track that has started playing stops. On iBooks, on the other hand, this does not happen. So, if I need to listen to a different track (from, say, Chapter 2), I need to go back and stop the track associated with the previous chapter (say, Chapter 1). Does anyone have good pointers to solve/document these issues? Thanks in advance.

10-03-2012, 04:57 PM	#6
AlPe Digital Amanuensis Posts: 501 Karma: 1169999 Join Date: Dec 2011 Location: Padova, Italy Device: Kindle3, Odyssey, eDGe, A60, PRS-T1, iPad3, KoboGlo	Hi, thank you for the interesting pointers. They all look promising. Just to clarify my request: I do not want to create a media-overlay, because I am working with several different audio clips whose reproduction should be left on the user's will. I was just asking if it was possible to "tweak" the <audio> tag in order to have it displayed in the same way on every reading software (a way to achieve this might exploit the epub:trigger, I will give it a try tomorrow) and whether it is possible to automatically stop an ongoing audio clip if the user exits the chapter it belongs to. Thank you again for your suggestions!

10-04-2012, 02:52 PM	#7
AlPe Digital Amanuensis Posts: 501 Karma: 1169999 Join Date: Dec 2011 Location: Padova, Italy Device: Kindle3, Odyssey, eDGe, A60, PRS-T1, iPad3, KoboGlo	For anyone interested: download cc-shared-culture-20120130.epub from http://code.google.com/p/epub-samples/downloads/list The epub:trigger is a good way to define the play/pause/mute/unmute controls. However, still no idea about "confining" an audio element to play only when the XHTML page is actually rendered, and to stop it when the XHTML page is changed. (For example, from my test, iBooks seems to stop the audio when you go back, but not when you go forward) Also, SMIL does not seem suitable for what I want.

10-28-2012, 01:43 PM	#14
codevise Junior Member Posts: 2 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2012 Device: ipad, kindle	We at Codevise implemented a polyfill for media overlays with reflowable content in iBooks>1.3. Basically, it parses the smil and provides menus to control the audio. As this is nice and works for more than a year in production (full books; splitted on a per sentence basis), we'd love to see apple providing the "read-aloud" gui in non-fixed layout epubs too.


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