Probably some of you are doing this already but I think it’s worthwhile mentioning it here just in case someone may find this tip useful.
When you download an MP3 audio file from a lesson, it is really worth spending a little extra time to add to the file the text of the lesson as lyrics. (Perhaps the content providers can make life easier for everyone by adding the text to the sound file before uploading it.)
I didn’t do this before because the iPod I used couldn’t display lyrics and so there was no point for me to do so. Now I listen to my LingQ content mostly on the iPhone. I found out by accident a couple of weeks ago that the iPhone can display the lyrics as you listen to a file. (I really should have thought of this mu;ch earlier. Sigh!) Now I can always refer back to the text whenever I am not sure what I’ve just heard. This is a such useful feature! And it will be even more useful with the new iPad or other tablet PC’s with their much bigger screen.
Yes, Cantotango, we have big technical advantages these days and that makes learning easier. Showing the lyrics is a cool feature of iPod, iPhone and iPad, that was also an essential idea of iPod founders. You can also see the lyric in Windows Media Player or Winamp.
I downloaded the program, Tagged a list of items in iTunes, now how do I see the lyrics? He seems to right click on something in iTunes and then show lyrics. I do not see anything that would enable me to see lyrics.
After having the lyrics copied to iTunes you will have to sync the iTunes with your iPod. After that when you play a song on the iPod the lyrics will be there.
I downloaded Get Lyrics, follow instructions. I synced my iPod and there is no text to be seen. I am referring to articles from LingQ and the transcripts of podcasts that I have downloaded. Thanks for the help.
I dare to interfere without, actually, knowing the details. However, it seems to me that marbatis and Steve speak about different things. Marbatis speaks of the songs with the ALREADY MADE lyrics, where the lyrics is a TIME-STAMPED text in a special format. The player reads the time-stamps and knows thereby which portion of the text (or which line of the lyrics) to display at certain time along the audio.
Steve speaks of the texts from lings, which are not time-stamped and not in the appropriate format.
Please correct me, because I certainly may be mistaken, because I have not looked at the links provided.
Not sure about this time-stamped thing. I copied the transcript of one podcast “Notes from Spanish” and it worked fine. I did create a playlist and moved the podcast to there. On that playlist I righ-clicked and chose “GETINFO” and pasted the podcast tanscription to the “lyrics” tab. Sync’d the iTunes and iphone. It worked!
This information is for iPod Touch.
Open the lesson in LingQ that you want to get the text for. Go to the printer symbol just under the blue band. Click on the symbol. The printed text will open. Highlight and and copy the printed text. Go to iTunes. Select audio selection that you want to add text to. Right click-select “Get Info”, this will bring up a dialogue box with tabs. Select the lyrics tab. After you open the lyrics tab, paste the lyrics that you copied from the LingQ text file. Then select Ok at the bottom. Syn. the iPod. When using the iPod pick your selection. When it starts, click the center wheel. One mine, the first click will bring up artwork, the second click brings up the text. Click again the make text dissappear.
For copying the text to the file, I do as what ghenders has described above.
The iPod I have cannot show the lyrics. The iPhone, I believe the new iPods with multi-touch screen as well, can show lyrics. When a song is playing, you either see the lyrics/text or a white background. If you see the white background, you just tap the screen to toggle the lyrics screen.
I use RealPlayer (no affiliation) v.10 for all of that. It allows me to insert or edit the text by two clicks. Also it has build-in browser so you can open an .html locally or from the web. But I like it mostly for its very handy controls. I downloaded it from BBC for free in 2006. Then there was some scandal and BBC refused to cooperate with them. Of course the program has scandalous reputation but I like it all the same. It may bother you with ads but if you choose duringh installation the speed of your connection 28 kbit/s it won’t bother you at all. I use iTunes only for automatic downloads because it has too clumsy controls to play .mp3 with it.