Simple audio recorder for voice notes on a notebook mic?

[fundog]

I have looked through v901, ibiblio, gslapt, sfs manager and searched the forum with no success. A more complex program that could be configured would be fine if I could figure out how to do it. I apologize if there is an obvious solution that I have missed. My notebook is an elderly ThinkPad and it likes 901 very well! Thanks guys!

[step]

901 has audacity and mhWaveEdit preinstalled in the Multimedia menu group. Both programs can be used to record audio, albeit they may not look simple at first sight. mhWaveEdit is probably simpler: run, press F12, fill in, select low quality audio format then click "start recording" - more info.

In a terminal the simplest thing is probably arecord /root/FILENAME.wav and start talking. Press Ctrl-C to stop recording (ignore the "interrupted system call" message). You will find your recording in FILENAME.wav inside your home folder.

[fundog]

Thank you Step! I did not know about arecord but I do now. In general, I will use the GUI unless I already know I get a better result using a terminal (rsync for example). I tried "Simple" at first of course but I only got static. Then I noticed that arecord returned a bit of text mentioning that some microphones did not work at a low rate setting. I tried "-f cd" and it worked.
On a roll, I looked at mhWaveEdit again and I found a "Record" button under the "Play" menu! As with arecord, I just got static at low bitrate recording. Stepping that up to "cd", I again got a usable file. I was only listening on the notebook speakers but the quality with mhWaveEdit was better.
One last thing about Audacity. I know about the program but it does not appear in my Multimedia menu group. Did I miss something?
Thanks for making today fun!
fundog

[step]

You're right. Audacity isn't in the multimedia menu, not even in Gslapt package manager. I got confused with this post by @don570. Tenacity - a FOSS fork of audacity, which I understand went commercial - is available in Gslapt package manager. I don't know how good it is.

[mikewalsh]

@fundog / @step :-

I don't know whether the SimpleAudioRecorder-portable would work for fundog. I cobbled it together following some work from Bill (rcrsn51) because I have an "awkward" audio card that doesn't "see" its loopback function under Linux; SAR 'fixed' this by using the snd-aloop module in the kernel.

viewtopic.php?t=9774

Entirely up to you, of course. I don't even know if it would work under FatDog. Just a suggestion, like.

Mike.

[step]

Hi Mike, to be honest, before I wrote my answer to fundog I had read your post, downloaded SAR-portable and tried it under Fatdog. I fixed a couple of minor errors concerning urxvt and rox(*), and got the GUI running successfully. I was hopeful it could become an option for fundog and other Fatdog users. However, I stopped for two reasons. 1) SAR's GUI doesn't show a button to just record the microphone, which is what fundog needs. 2) SAR silently overwrites the user's .asoundrc file. So, anyway, thanks for tuning in. I like the SAR concept, and I like the GUI you created.

________________

(*) Things I changed in your script

/usr/local/bin/rox => rox
(there is no need to use the whole path, which btw doesn't exist under Fatdog, where it's /usr/bin/rox)

urxvt -hold ls -e .....command => urxvt -hold -e .....command
(IIRC this one occurs twice in the script; it looks like a bad copy-pasta; it doesn't prevent urxvt from running. But still.)

[fundog]

Hi Mike! Recently I discovered your "Ungoogled_Chromium-portable64" and it works very well in FD64-901. So, I have followed your link and downloaded the "SimpleAudioRecorder-portable". The GUI does come up but all that you described does not appear for me. Also, some buttons do not seem to bring any response. However, in all things a problem is usually because of what I don't know.

Thanks again for your work for "Portables". I just tried to post this reply but the Forum automatically pauses and points to an post that Step made while I was writing. Very Cool... Having read Steps post I can only watch folks do 'cause I don't have a clue!
Have fun!

[rockedge]

@fundog This is what I use to do similar recording, created by @wiak called wex

Screenshot(54).jpg (5.48 KiB) Viewed 1427 times

[fundog]

Hello there Rockedge, and thanks!
I have read that ".pets" will not work in FatDog64, but I tried to convert the package format to that needed by FD64 anyway.
Although the converted package did report installing correctly and I did get to look around at it a bit (The "configuration" button pops up a surprising versatility) but I could not actually make a recording yet. Perhaps someone with greater skills and experience could "find a way" for the .pet to record.
It's a surprisingly small package!
Thanks again!

[wiak]

Maybe the wex pet was by default expecting pulseaudio? And maybe fatdog needs instead the likes of plughw config typed in appropriate config entry for straight to alsa?. I'm on android phone just now and can't remember syntax but hovering over bottom input boxes pops up help tool tips on that.

[Keef]

I found I could directly record from the inbuilt microphone after unticking the X11 video selection. Didn't have to touch anything else. It is checked by default, and would not record any audio until unchecked.

[fundog]

Hi Keef! You are referring to VLC?
Thanks!

[Keef]

No, the wex pet.

[step]

Maybe the wex pet was by default expecting pulseaudio? ...

If so, there is an experimental pulseaudio SFS to be loaded via Control Panel > System > SFS Manager.

edit: pulseaudio isn't needed, see next post

[step]

The pet package doesn't work well in Fatdog64. Be careful if you start recording because the stop button doesn't work (or at least it didn't for me), and will continue recording in the background and potentially filling your savefile. The attached txz package includes my fix to stop recording, and some adaptations for Fatdog64.

I found I could directly record from the inbuilt microphone after unticking the X11 video selection. Didn't have to touch anything else. It is checked by default, and would not record any audio until unchecked.

I think that happened because the default video selection method needs scrox, which doesn't exist unless installed separately. Without scrox, one can either unselect video, as @Keef did, or record video with fixed selection only, as detailed in the wex help dialog:

NOTE: For mouse selection of screen area or window, this program depends on scrox to be installed since that is used to select the coordinates of the X display area to be recorded. scrox is my fork of the popular scrot screen image capturing program; it includes identical scrot image capturing option strings and functionality as original scrot, plus additional functions of my own that are used by this program. If scrox is not installed, only the fixed capture region mode will work. The coordinates for that mode are entered manually, via the main configuration screen, in the form DISPLAY+Xoffset,Yoffset and W x H.

Unfortunately, even with the attached txz package, I couldn't set a fixed video area by ticking "Fixed region" and entering the four coordinates. The GUI just seemed not to care. I don't know what went wrong. So - for the purpose of fixing the stop button only - I resorted to setting a fixed area by running wex then, with wex still running and not recording, create /tmp/wex/plugings/select_region.plug with this content: X11WIDTH=100 X11HEIGHT=100 XOFS=100 YOFS=100

For audio (and video) you need to select the correct ALSA audio and video capture devices, which depend on your hardware. The default inbuild microphone is 'plughw:0,0' in Fatdog64. You can list audio capture devices in a terminal window with arecord -l.

Final note: for combined audio/video capture you may also consider using the default video/audio capture program in the system menu "Multimedia > Screencaster". Unlike wex, screencaster can't create a separate audio only file.

[fundog]

A "Thumbs Up" for all of you! I have downloaded the file step made and I will study that.
Once I fixed the microphone incompatibility and discovered that the mhWaveEdit "Record was under the Play menu (Thanks to step for the F12) I have been using that. I had a voicemail that was unintelligible and after playing it on the phone for mhWaveEdit I used VLC and the familiar Compression and EQ to clean it up enough to discover it was just another scam call...
Have fun!

[wiak]

The pet package doesn't work well in Fatdog64. Be careful if you start recording because the stop button doesn't work (or at least it didn't for me), and will continue recording in the background and potentially filling your savefile. The attached txz package includes my fix to stop recording, and some adaptations for Fatdog64.

I found I could directly record from the inbuilt microphone after unticking the X11 video selection. Didn't have to touch anything else. It is checked by default, and would not record any audio until unchecked.

I think that happened because the default video selection method needs scrox, which doesn't exist unless installed separately. Without scrox, one can either unselect video, as @Keef did, or record video with fixed selection only, as detailed in the wex help dialog:

NOTE: For mouse selection of screen area or window, this program depends on scrox to be installed since that is used to select the coordinates of the X display area to be recorded. scrox is my fork of the popular scrot screen image capturing program; it includes identical scrot image capturing option strings and functionality as original scrot, plus additional functions of my own that are used by this program. If scrox is not installed, only the fixed capture region mode will work. The coordinates for that mode are entered manually, via the main configuration screen, in the form DISPLAY+Xoffset,Yoffset and W x H.

Unfortunately, even with the attached txz package, I couldn't set a fixed video area by ticking "Fixed region" and entering the four coordinates. The GUI just seemed not to care. I don't know what went wrong. So - for the purpose of fixing the stop button only - I resorted to setting a fixed area by running wex then, with wex still running and not recording, create /tmp/wex/plugings/select_region.plug with this content: X11WIDTH=100 X11HEIGHT=100 XOFS=100 YOFS=100

For audio (and video) you need to select the correct ALSA audio and video capture devices, which depend on your hardware. The default inbuild microphone is 'plughw:0,0' in Fatdog64. You can list audio capture devices in a terminal window with arecord -l.

Final note: for combined audio/video capture you may also consider using the default video/audio capture program in the system menu "Multimedia > Screencaster". Unlike wex, screencaster can't create a separate audio only file.

Precord is a bit like wex, but audio only. I note a dotpet version for alsa here, but I don't have time to check if still okay sorry: viewtopic.php?p=51958#p51958
Depending what you are trying to record, Precord sometimes uses ffmpeg, sometimes lame (for MP3) and I think arecord from alsa as dependencies underneath. Occasionally if its config file gets corrupted it will stop working as far as I remember; but just delete its config file and restart it should fix such rare issues; I can't remember off the top of my head where the config file is, but likely in ~/.config/precord I'd think EDIT: yes, that link in fact says the latter is its location.

Yes, I remember trying wex in FatDog some long time ago and discovering the 'stop' didn't work. I found the reason and fixed it via some mod I had to make, but I've lost track of that info sorry. It was something to do with ffmpeg process being different in FatDog so the kill command needed modified.

EDIT2: Ah, was on old forum something about wex/FatDog issue: https://oldforum.puppylinux.com/viewtop ... 2d#p918785
That's an old version of wex on the old forum of course (but maybe not much difference), but will have the fix for the mentioned 'two child processes' difference.