Checker

An Audio File Validator for LibriVox Contributions

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Contents

Introduction
Getting Started
Download
Ways You Can Help Out
Version History
Source Code

IMPORTANT: the checker program is currently in alpha release.

Introduction

Checker is a tool that looks for common problems with recordings for LibriVox, a site where volunteers collaborate to make audio books of public domain texts. The checker tool can save you time by checking your file for common issues before you go to the trouble of uploading it.

To use checker, drag and drop one or more MP3 files (or a folder or ZIP archive that contains them) onto the checker window and allow it to analyze them. Once it is done, click on any file to see a report of any issues that were detected. The report will either state that the file "passed" (no problems were detected), or it may list a number of errors or warnings. Errors generally indicate more serious problems that should be fixed before uploading the file. A warning is a less serious problem, or in some cases a potential problem that checker is not sure about.

What does Checker Check?

The program checks many technical features about your file. It can find problems with file name conventions, metadata (ID3 tags), audio format and MP3 encoding options, volume, and more. Checker has also been designed with extensibility in mind, so other programmers can easily add new tests (or modify the existing ones) in the future.

It does not check the content of the recording: it won't tell you if you've read a word incorrectly or criticize your performance.

Download

Once you have Java 6 installed, you can download checker and run it by double clicking the downloaded file. (For OS X, it is recommended that you download and unzip the separate OS X version.)
 
Current Release—0.2 alpha January 6, 2009
Windows checker-0.2.exe (0.98 MB)
Mac OS X checker-osx-0.2.zip (0.95 MB)
All Platforms checker-0.2.zip (0.9 MB)

Getting Started

Windows: Download and run the installer as you would any other Windows software. If you get an error message when you try to run the program, you probably don't have Java installed. See below for help.

OS X: Download the .zip file and double-click it to open. Then drag the checker icon into your Applications folder to install it.

Other: Download and unzip the JAR file. On most platforms, you can double-click the JAR file to run it. If that doesn't work for you, you can it start it from the shell using a line like: java -jar checker.jar

Java Help

Checker was written in the Java language, so it will run on all of the most popular platforms, including Windows, Linux and OS X. It works best with version 6 of Java, or newer, but it will also run under version 5 with reduced functionality.

If the button does not work (for example, if you have disabled JavaScript in your browser), use one of the following links instead:

Ways You Can Help Out

Things you can do to help now:

  1. Writing additional "mini help" files to accompany the various tests.
  2. Suggesting language that will be friendly to novice LV volunteers.
  3. Throw a lot of MP3s at it so that the decoding and analysis system can be made as stable and reliable as possible.
  4. Report any bugs (or submit fixes).
  5. Provide feedback about the results and/or sensitivities for the various tests.

Things that will be possible later:

  1. Translate the default English localization files into other languages, as demand dictates.

History

October 29 2008 (prototype 1)

  • initial release

January 6 2009 (alpha 0.2)

  • multiple levels of validation rules can now be defined; the package comes with "Gentle" and "Strict"
  • tweaking of validation parameters
  • added explicit Remove All option, as requested
  • added tool to upgrade ID3 tags to v2.4, as requested
  • files should now either complete or finish with an error (previously, a file would sometimes "stall" due to internal errors or problems in the libraries)
  • validators are executed in the order they are listed in within the class list, so it is possible to write validators that depend on the results of other validators

Source Code

checker-0.2-src.7z (461 kB)

This program uses the JavaLayer library for decoding MP3 audio and the Jaudiotagger library for parsing ID3 metadata. Both of these are made available under an LGPL license. Source code to both of these libraries is included with the source for checker.

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October 29, 2008  — Updated January 01, 2011