Importing and playing 'voice memos' from a voice recorder (not a camera)

[_MZ_]

I'm a somewhat happy owner of a camera that by design is deprived of the so-called 'voice memos' feature (Nikon D800 to be specific).

Lately I began working on all sorts of projects that require fairly extensive annotation. Scribbling something down on a piece of paper is almost never a possibility. The only sensible way to address this is to carry a dedicated voice recorder.

We all know the drill. Lightroom can store and play audio annotations from just about any source. The voice memos do not have to originate from a camera like the Nikon D4. In order to assign a 'voice memo' to any photo, the WAV file can be copied to the folder which contains that photo and then simply renamed. And voila! The voice memo now appears as a sidecar. *As luck would have it, Lightroom isn't being too finicky in this department.

But how do I match each individual recording to its corresponding photo? Well, a recorder that timestamps the audio files should do the trick. As long as its clock is synchronized with the camera's, it should be a piece of cake... Well, yeah.. if you don't mind the manual labor and tons of it. But I've thought of something else.

There should be a good batch renaming utility that fits the bill. Before inquiring in a dedicated computer forum, I thought I'd make sure I'm not reinventing the wheel.
Isn't there a LR plugin for this? A plugin that I'm thinking of should be able to check the timestamps of audio files and import the ones that match with any of the photos in the catalog. By "import" I mean "copy the WAV files to the corresponding folder while assigning to each the appropriate filename". Nothing fancy, really. My logic tells me a plugin like that should be out there. If it doesn't exist, someone ought to code it. I think it's a great idea for a plugin. Personally I would pay money for one.

Plan B (originally plan A):

There's a ton of batch renaming utilities. Utilities that can be tasked with renaming millions of files in all sorts of clever ways. I'm looking for one that can be programmed to do something like this:

Look, here's a folder(A) with a bunch of photos. Here's another folder(B) with a bunch of audio files. Compare the timestamps in folder B against the timestamps in folder A. If there are any matches (within the acceptable range), rename the matching files in folder B; assign to the matching files the same names (as in folder A) but keep the extension (WAV).
Something like that would be splendid.

So what do you think? I know I can't be the only one who's ever needed this.

PS: I do realize that giving the audio files names that correspond to the photos and only then importing everything is more preferable in some ways.

 

[clee01l]

...So what do you think? I know I can't be the only one who's ever needed this.

PS: I do realize that giving the audio files names that correspond to the photos and only then importing everything is more preferable in some ways.

I know of no plugin or other tool that will matchup voice memos with still images. That said, I have never heard of anyone that needed this.

It is possible that you could record a short video file with the D800 after each still image that needed annotation. The video file can be imported along with the stills from camera card. At least with the imported video, you can listen to the annotation in LR. When you generated sidecar files of any type, they are not directly accessible in LR, So naming the audio and the file name brings you no benefit inside of LR Whereas the audio from the MOV file is available in LR.

 

[_MZ_]

When you generated sidecar files of any type, they are not directly accessible in LR, So naming the audio and the file name brings you no benefit inside of LR

You'd know that statement to be false if you actually tried doing it yourself. Or maybe I didn't paint an accurate enough picture. Since I have no intention of convincing anyone of anything I am not about to engage in a pointless argument.
I do believe, however, that your knowledge and experience are sufficient enough to give me a definitive answer regarding the availability of a dedicated plugin, or in this case, the lack thereof.
I'll go with plan B.

Thank you.

 

[clee01l]

You'd know that statement to be false if you actually tried doing it yourself. Or maybe I didn't paint an accurate enough picture....

JPEG and XMP sidecar files are not directly accessible in LR. I don't know how to create an Audio file that can be imported with the same name as the image file.

 

[Hal P Anderson]

Cletus,

http://www.adobepress.com/articles/article.asp?p=1609381&seqNum=3

It looks like LR has had that ability for a long time.

 

[Hoggy]

Oh wow! That's a cool feature! Wish I had known about this..

I think one of my cameras might have a recorder feature, so I'll have to look into these features more.

And I would like some plugin/program to do this with a stand-alone voice recorder as well.. It would be a great thing to do with my voice recorder.. Now, if only there was a way to get the audio in.. It's an older recorder that only has internal flash memory - no SD card or anything - plus, there's no type of USB port to transfer any audio files [IIRC].. Maybe I could rig it's headphone jack into the microphone jack on my laptop or something.

But that would be problematic if there's no program or plugin to do this automatically. Now I wish there was something like this too! It would be great to take notes of where I might shoot, sometimes - when pen/paper would be too problematic or time-consuming.

 

[clee01l]

Cletus,

http://www.adobepress.com/articles/article.asp?p=1609381&seqNum=3

It looks like LR has had that ability for a long time.

Well, Surprise, surprise. Until now, I never knew this. Never needed it either.

 

[_MZ_]

Oh wow! That's a cool feature! Wish I had known about this..

I think one of my cameras might have a recorder feature, so I'll have to look into these features more.

And I would like some plugin/program to do this with a stand-alone voice recorder as well.. It would be a great thing to do with my voice recorder.. Now, if only there was a way to get the audio in.. It's an older recorder that only has internal flash memory - no SD card or anything - plus, there's no type of USB port to transfer any audio files [IIRC].. Maybe I could rig it's headphone jack into the microphone jack on my laptop or something.

But that would be problematic if there's no program or plugin to do this automatically. Now I wish there was something like this too! It would be great to take notes of where I might shoot, sometimes - when pen/paper would be too problematic or time-consuming.

You can get all kinds of voice recorders on ebay for around $10. You can opt for something slightly more expensive in the $50 range. In either case, getting a very compact and capable voice recorder is not a problem nowadays. One important feature to look for is the ability to properly timestamp each recording. The audio format is also something that should be taken into consideration. Obviously, you (and I) need something that produces audio that's compatible with LR.

I myself am a little surprised that there's no dedicated plugin for importing voice memos, simply because of the fact that the 'Voice memos' feature isn't available in the vast majority of DSLRs and other 'advanced' cameras. Also, in the cameras that do have this feature, it is limited in some ways. For example, with Nikon cameras you can record only up to 60 seconds of audio, which would be very problematic should the photos require any sort of comprehensive annotation. Automatic linkage of photos to audio recorded with an external device is a feature that should have been available in every dedicated photo archival software released since the beginning of this century. At least that's one opinion, which I'm entitled to.

Luckily, Lightroom will not object if you decide to handle the task yourself. If all you have are a few voice memos per import session then linking them to the actual photos is fairly painless and requires no special tools or skills. All you have to do is rename and then copy/move a few files prior to the import.
Linking voice memos to photos that have already been imported is also very easy but there's one drawback (that I know of).

In order to make it even easier (for me) I'll have to find a suitable batch renaming utility. And if I don't, I can pay someone to code one for me. I know a fella who'll do it for under $1000. I can probably get it done for much less if I find the right person.

 

[rob211]

I investigated this a while back and gave up. The linkage isn't really that difficult in theory, but it does have a bunch of things that are gotchas. You need, I think, just WAVs. The file names have to be the same. If you want to semi-automate the naming, then the WAV has to be timestamped accurately. Although they are RIFF based, and I guess theoretically can have an exif creation date, I never figured out how to get one. So you're stuck with file creation date, which can work if you are fastidious about doing all the work when you first create the image and audio files.

And then I got to the problem of how to handle groups of photos. It's neat that Lr treats the WAV as a sidecar; you can move the image and the sidecar goes with. But I did that, and then I don't have the commentary for the other photos. And I couldn't figure out how to link one sidecar to many, and duplicating it with sequential names was just too much. That's about when I gave up on that. Tried a notes plugin as well; didn't like it much.

I decided it was easier to use Bridge. Just dump the audio file in there with the images and keyword it the same as the images. It works with MP3s, so I didn't have to also convert to WAV. It doesn't travel around like a sidecar, but I actually prefer it stays with the folder, not the file, since my recordings related to image groups. YMMV. The disadvantage is that you can play a WAV in Lr, but you can't play the MP3 from within Lr. Although I don't find that much of a problem either.

Things evolved even more. I had used a dedicated voice recorder, but as my phone got smarter so did I. I'm a lawyer and do lotsa interviews, and the voice plus written notes apps are amazing, and completely eclipsed anything I could do with a voice recorder. So I used my iPhone more, and now I'd never go back unless I need to use my external mic.

I now use Evernote. Here's a typical use: I take a shot of a bird, maybe some brackets, different lenses. I open Evernote, maybe take a pic so as to preserve GPS info. Record the bird song, and draw a circle on it's photo in Evernote to indicate that's the one singing. Later export the whole thing into the folder in the desktop. The m4a audio file can be played, and keyworded in Bridge. It's sorted by file date with the photos, including the iphone photo, with the annotations on it. So I can ID the bird, add it's real name to the keyword, then paste that from within Lr from the iphone jpeg to the RAWs, as well as the location info.

Evernote exports it's notes as HTML. So in the case above, it exports a folder with an HTML page and resources. That goes into the folder with the RAW or other camera images as a subfolder. It includes a web page with the photo, text, and link to the audio. In a subfolder are the Evernote jpg and m4a audio file. A "synchronize" brings the Evernote jpg into Lr. One problem is that Bridge doesn't preview the HTML; you can preview the audio and photo, just not any text you've entered. I rarely do that, but it's something I might have to work around in the future. It can also just export the attachments.

I wonder if anyone knows of a dedicated photos notes type app; anything?