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| title | Aikuma Tutorial |
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This guide outlines how to use Aikuma (version 1.0.0-beta.17). The most current version can be downloaded from the Google Play store.
This is the screen you will see when you first open Aikuma. From this page you can go to the other parts of the application, and see the list of recordings that have been made. This list of recordings includes all recordings made on this phone, and recordings made on another device that has been synched with this one.
Using the icons along the top of the screen you can navigate to other features of the application. There is more detail on each of these features in the sections below:
- The Aikuma logo on the very left will always bring you back to this screen when you are in other areas of the application.
- The red recording button will take you to the recording screen. This is where you can make a new recording.
- The question mark will take you out of the application to this page on the Aikuma website.
- The person image will take you to the list of users. You will be able to add a new user.
- The gear will take you to the settings screen. Here you can set the default languages and synching mode.
The main space on this screen is filled with the list of recordings that have been made by users of the application. As you can see from the list in the image above, this includes an image of the speakers, and the date and duration of the recording, as well as a title. You can select a recording to listen to it or add commentary. This is explained in the playback section below.
Below the list of recordings is an "import audio file" button. This allows you to load existing recordings into Aikuma for people to listen to and provide commentaries. This is optional, and discussed at the bottom of this page.
Press the record button on home screen. It will bring up this screen:
This is where you can make a new recording.
###Make a recording###
You can record in one of two different ways.
- Press the record button. There will be two short beeps and then you can begin to talk.
- Hold the phone up to your ear, you will hear the two short beeps and then you can begin to talk.
To stop recording either press the pause button or lower the phone from your ear. You will be able to see how long the recording is at the top of the screen. You can continue the recording again using either of the two options.
If you don't want to make a recording, of you've made a recording that you do not want to keep press either the back button or the Aikuma homepage button. This will ask you to discard the recording and take you back to the main screen.
Once your recording is complete press the save button. This is the image of the disk above the recording button. This will take you into the save screen:
At the top you can listen back to the recording by pressing play. You can stop the recording by pressing the button again. You can move along the recording by dragging the blue dot along the timeline. You will now need to save the recording.
To save a recording you must add at least one speaker. Do this by pressing on the user image. This will take you to the user screen. You can select one of the users already in your list, or create a new user (this is explained here).You can add more than one speaker.
After you have added at least one speaker choose what languages are spoken in the recording. All of the languages listed for the person or persons you have added will appear in the list. Tick the languages that are in the recording.
Next you need to add a description for your recording. Click on the 'description' section and type in a basic title, for example "Jackal and Crow" or "when the village got electricity".
Once you have added at least one speaker, selected the languages and created a description the tick at the bottom of the page will become green and you can save the recording. The screen will remind you that your recording will be shared with everybody, if you do not want your recording shared you cannot save it.
Pressing the large green tick at the bottom of the screen will save the recording to your collection. Pressing the red cross will give you the option to discard the recording. Pressing the Aikuma logo at the top of the screen will also ask you to discard the recording.
Your recording will now appear in the list on the main screen, with the date, duration, description and the image of the people in the recording.
To go back to the main screen at any time press the Aikuma logo in the top left-hand corner of the screen. Doing this at some points in the process will mean that you lose your recording.
###Original recording### When you select an original recording from the list on the main screen you will be taken to this playback screen. It contains the recording date, duration, description and speakers from the recording. Pressing the play button will start the recording, and pressing the same button again will pause it, you can drag the blue dot anywhere along the timeline to skip to another part of the recording. You can turn the volume up or down using your mobile phone volume control (most often located on the side of the phone).
If there are other user pictures below the timeline as in the image above this means that there are commentaries on this original recording, including the code for the language the commentary is in. You can listen to these by clicking on the picture. You can also access these commentaries via the main menu. Listening to commentaries is discussed in more detail [below][#PlayCommentary].
###Adding a commentary### As well as listening to the recording you can choose to add a commentary. This could involve respeaking the recording more clearly, or translating the recording into another language that you speak. You could also give additional information about the content of the recording. These recordings are useful for helping share you language with members of your community, or with other communities.
There are two ways to add a commentary. These are listed on the bottom of the screen. The first is "Thumb commentary", where you use butons on the screen to move through the recording. The second is "Voice-activated commentary" where you hold the phone to your ear and interrupt the recording with your voice. These two options are explained in more detail below.
###Thumb commentary### When you enter the Thumb commentary mode you will see a green play button on the left and a red record button on the right. Although you can use these with the phone lengthwise it is generally more comfortable to rotate the phone and use the bottons in the position shown in the image below. Use your thumbs to navigate these two buttons.
Play a short section of the recording by holding down the green button. If you hold down the green button again you will hear that section of the recording repeated. When you are ready to add your commentary hold down the red button to record a translation or respeaking for that section. Repeat listening to small segments and recording your commentary until the end of the original recording. The press the save button.
The process for adding information about the saved recording is the same as discussed above for an original recording. Your commentary will now appear in the list of recordings on the main screen.
###Voice-activated commentary### The second way of adding commentary is to use the Voice-activated commentary.
At the bottom of the screen is the voice sensitivity slider. When you start using the voice-activated commentary you may find that the phone does not stop the recording when you speak, which means the sensitivity is set too low. You may find that it keeps stopping even when you are quiet, which means the sensitivity is set too high. You may need to move the blue dot along the sliding scale to adjust it. Moving the blue dot to the left will make it less sensitive, and moving it to the right will make it more sensitive. If you find a level that works well for you, it can be set as the default on the settings page.
Now you can begin to make your recording. Hold the phone up to your ear and listen to the recording. At a convenient break start your translation, respeaking or commentary. The phone will recognise your voice input, stop the original recording and record your voice. When you stop talking the recording will go back a second or two and continue. Do this until you hear the beep that signals the end of the recording, then press the save button.
The process for adding information about the saved recording is the same as discussed above for an original recording. Your recording will now appear in the list of recordings on the main screen.
###Play commentary### You can select a commentary to play from the recording list on the main screen or by in the playback screen for the original recording. Playing back a commentary will include playing back the segments of the original recording as well as the commentary.
The playback screen for the commentary looks very similar to that for the original recording, but you will notice red lines on the timeline. These are the points in the original recording that the comments were made. The original recording will play, and the blue dot will move along the timeline. When the blue dot gets to a red line that section of commentary will play. The next segment of the original recording will then follow, until the end of the recording. For some commentary recordings the timeline will only appear when the phone is held sideways.
The images of the people in the original recording are at the top of the screen, and the image of the person doing the commentary is below the timeline, outlined in red. If there is more than one commentary recorded the one you are listening to is circled red. You can move to another commentary by clicking on the other image(s). You can return to the original recording through the main screen.
To go back to the main screen at any time press the Aikuma logo in the top left-hand corner of the screen. If you are in the middle of a recording it will ask you if you want to discard it. If you do, press 'Discard', if you don't press 'Cancel' and save the recording before exiting.
This is the page that lists all of the users. You can also add a new user.
Here you can see that all users are listed with their photograph, name and languages that they speak.
To add a new user click on the large grey button with the user icon at the top of the screen. It will open this menu:
Sherpa is already listed a language because it has been set as a default language, this is done in the Settings screen (discussed below). To add a new user follow these steps:
- Add the person's name.
- Take a photograph of the person using the phone's camera. You will be given the chance to accept the photo or reject it and try again.
- Delete any of the default languages the person does not speak (press the red cross next to the language name).
- Add any additional languages the person speaks. This is discussed in more detail below.
The information screen should now be full of information like this:
- Press the green tick to accept and add the user to the list.
You will notice that the tick only becomes bright green when information is added to each field (name, image, languages). You will not be able to press the green tick and accept the user until all information has been added. Once the green tick is pressed the new person is now added to the list of users.
To go back to the main screen at any time press the Aikuma logo in the top left-hand corner of the screen. If you are in the middle of creating a user it will ask you if you want to discard it. If you do, press 'Discard', if you don't press 'Cancel' and save the recording before exiting.
###Setting a user's language### You can attribute as many languages to each individual as necessary. You can either select languages from the list provided or add a language that does not appear in that list. The list of languages is taken from the ISO 639-3 languages list, so your language may appear there, but spelt differently.
If you press the "Add language from list" button you will be taken into this full list of languages. This is very long, so use the search box at the top of the screen to find the language you want to select. Click on it and it will be added to the speaker's languages. Do this again for each language you want to add.
You can also set a custom language ("Add Custom language") if the language you speak does not exist in the longer list. In this option you add the name of the language using the keypad and press "Add Custom Language". After a custom language has been added it will appear in the list of default languages, but it will not have a three letter code after the colon as it is not part of the ISO 639-3 list.
To remove a language from the list press the red cross next to the language name and it will be removed.
To go back to the main screen at any time press the Aikuma logo in the top left-hand corner of the screen.
In the current version of Aikuma the question mark 'Help' button at the top of the main screen brings to you to this page of the website. There will be a built in help screen in future versions of the application.
The settings page allows you to set the default languages and default recording sensitivity. It also has setting for synchronising the recordings on different devices, and will tell you information about the recordings that have been made. Below is a screenshot of the settings page, and each feature described in the order it appears on the screen.
###Recording information### On the settings page you can see information about the recordings on that phone. This information includes:
- Hours used: This is the number of hours of recordings already made, including both original recordings and commentaries.
- Hours available: This is the number of hours of free space left where you are storing the Aikuma recordings. This space is used by other applications on the phone as well, and so may be reduced.
- Original recordings: This is the total number of original recordings currently on this device.
- Commentaries: This is the total number of commentaries currently on this device.
###Default languages### Pressing the "Default Languages" button will take you into the page where you can change this setting. You are able to set any number of default languages that are automatically listed when you create a new user. This is useful if you are working in a community where the majority of people will all have at least one common language.
To add a new default language, press the "Add language from list" button. This will bring up a list many languages (all languages with an ISO 639-3 code), so use the search box at the top of the page to narrow down the options.
Once you have selected a language it will appear in the list of default languages.
You may select as many languages as defaults as you like. You can remove a default language from the list by pressing the red cross next to the language name.
You can also set a custom language ("Add Custom language") if the language you speak does not exist in the longer list. For example there is no distinction in the codes for Traditional Tiwi or Modern Tiwi (Australia), so speakers of Modern Tiwi might add it as a custom language.
After a custom language has been added it will appear in the list for that speaker.
If you remove a language from the list of default languages it will not change the languages listed for participants you created earlier.
To go back to the main screen at any time press the Aikuma logo in the top left-hand corner of the screen.
###Syncing the device to a server### This part of the settings page is only relevant if you are using Aikuma as part of a network of devices. Clicking on the "Sync Settings" button will take you to this page:
If you have created a central server for the network you can type in the IP address and information. 'Automatic Sync' can be turned on or off by pressing the button. Pressing 'Sync now' will sync the data on this device with the server only if the correct information has been typed above and there is an available connection.
To go back to the main screen at any time press the Aikuma logo in the top left-hand corner of the screen.
###Default sensitivity### This slider allows you to set the default sensitivity that will be used in the voice-activated commentary. You will still be able to change the sensitivity for each recording, but this will change the default point on the slider.
At the bottom of the home screen is an "import audio file" button that allows you to load any existing .WAV recordings onto the handset for people to listen to and provide commentaries for. Place all of the files you want to upload in a folder that is easy for you to find on the phone. In Aikuma press the "import audio file" button, this will bring up the file directory. Navigate to the folder you have put the files in, and choose the file you want to upload.
When you've imported the audio file it will take you to the page where you can save the recording by adding the relevant information. It will then appear in your list of recordings.
If you have downloaded Aikuma through the Google Play Store you will be notified when a new version is available. We recommend you update to newer versions where possible, as this tutorial will always give information on how to use the most current version.
When you download a new version it will ask you to delete the old version. This is absolutely fine to do. You will not lose any recordings. All recordings and users will be available when you open the new version of Aikuma.
You can see what version of Aikuma you are using on the settings page.
Images: The profile pictures used in this tutorial come from wikipedia and are available under a Creative Commons license. Woman 1, Woman 2 and Man 1.
