Festive Frolics

[gareth]

As Christmas is nearly upon us, does anyone know where I can get some top-of-the-range Christmas ringtones for my XDA? :x-mas:

[PhatCohiba]

Does it take MIDI? or WAV?

[Janak Parekh]

WAV.

You could just rip a couple tunes off a CD using any standard ripper, cut them down to size, and copy them to your PPCPE, right? I haven't played with the ringtone feature too much as the closest PPCPE to me is a friend's, but I'd assume it supports 44KHz, 16-bit PCM audio for ringtones.

--bdj

[gareth]

Cheers.

I haven't had much of a chance to play with it either, so I guess I'll just have to make a few assumptions and try some stuff out. I think that I'm still getting used to all this technology, having previously only had mobiles which beep at you in a poor parody of a recognisable tune :turn-l:

[Russ]

Yes you can just rip any kind music to WAV and squidge it down for RingTones. Put them in your PocketPC Windows directory. I'd remove the T-Mobile apps. If you fancy trying some free voice alarms you can get them here:
http://shoesforindustry.net/html/pdavoice.html All we've done is create some wav's from a text to speech program. My partner has 007 signature tune (full orchestra stuff) for her ring tone -way too much!

Hope this helps,
Russ

[gareth]

Russ,

Thanks for the link - Great site. Are there any film versions of the e-books planned? :lol:

You'd be coining it in!

The James Bond thing sounds good - I did try to do the same thing with Mission Impossible, but I don't think that I made it small enough, cos I can't play it!

It'll give me something to do over the weekend, I suppose!

[Russ]

Russ,

Thanks for the link - Great site. Are there any film versions of the e-books planned? :lol:

You'd be coining it in!

The James Bond thing sounds good - I did try to do the same thing with Mission Impossible, but I don't think that I made it small enough, cos I can't play it!

It'll give me something to do over the weekend, I suppose!

Well thank you for your kind comments, as for films, it would be nice, but it's a non-profit site. It just kinda reflects what we have/do etc. We were lucky enough to find a few great authors and were glad to help out in coverting their work to ebooks. There will be more ebooks from the same authors and others of a similiar quality coming soon. Personaly I think Lust Over Pendle is a hoot and can't wait for the sequel. It really has taken the fan fiction web sites by storm - it's just so well written and researched for fan fiction. But there in lies the rub. It is fan fiction and therefore could never be made into a film because of copyright etc etc. Oh well...don't suppose I'd make a great movie director anyway!

As for the wav files, they really don't have to be that good a quality for music alarms. (It pays to use quite good quality for voice alarms though.) In any event you don't want it to big because it will take to long to load when the phone rings ! If you're still stuck I'm sure I have a few wav files kicking around, maybe even Mission Impossible... :)

Russ

[gareth]

I seem to be struggling here - what software should I be using for converting audio files and cutting them down to size?

As you can tell, I'm not exactly a techie!

If the software is free, all the better! :lol:

[Russ]

Sorry about the delay Gareth, been soooo busy, anyway...

If you've got XP ? The easiest way to squidge a WAV files, presuming you have the WAV files you want, is to right click on the file. Select 'Record' from the pop up menu.
This brings up Windows Sound Recorder. You can click play to listen to the WAV.

From the'File' menu, Select file 'Save As'. Notice the Format 'Change' button at the bottom of the 'File Save' dialog, along with the format information. To change the format/quality/size hit that 'Change' button. Selecting a lesser quality means a smaller file. Only you can really decide what is good enough for you. Have a go with a few different qualities and try them out. I really only use the PCM format. The free voice alarms on our web are PCM 22.050 kHz, 16 Bit, Mono - although I mentioned these are quite high quality to get the right sound of the voice.

HINT: You can also get to this format conversion from the 'File/Properties' menu in Sound Recorder - you may find this easier - I just did the file Save as stuff as I thought it made more logical sense ??

Hope this helps and happy alarm/ring tone creation.

Russ

[gareth]

Russ,

Cheers for the info.

I have 98, but I've just checked out the sound recorder utility, and it seems to offer the same functionality in its old incarnation.

Looks like there's no holding me now!

(I completely forgot about using it, I guess I must be too used to using Real Player to play all the sounds on my PC. I've uninstalled it now though - far too slow!)

gareth

[Russ]

I'm pretty sure the Sound Recorder in WIn98 is the same as the one in XP. It certainly looks the same.

Russ

[gareth]

You're right about that - works like a charm!

Now all I need to do is go and buy a Christmas CD, and I can get all the festive ringtones I need! :x-mas:

Er - on second thoughts, maybe that's just a bit too embarrassing :oops: - I'll try and download a few instead!

Merry Christmas!