DAISY DTB Production Quick reference

This document is designed especially to provide the new users of Obi a go-ahead for
creating a Digital Talking Book (DTB) compliant with the DAISY 3 standard. This is not
a complete manual, but helps you create you first DTB without requiring a prior
acquaintance with the software.

Screen layout:
Obi screen is divided into five segments:
 TOC view (F6)
 Content view (F6)
 Transport bar. (Ctrl+F6)
 Metadata view (Ctrl+Alt+M)
 Panel splitter

We can navigate among these views by pressing Ctrl+Tab or Ctrl+Shift+Ttab.

Follow the steps listed below to create your first Digital Talking Book compliant with the
DAISY 3 standard.

1) Start Obi. A dialog box appears showing various options. Select the first one, -
Create a new project. Obi opens the Create new project dialog box displaying the
following fields:
Field Field Description
Type
Title Edit Box Enter a title of your project. This will be the title of
the exported DTB.
Automatically Checkbox If checked, Obi will create a section for the title
create a title section.
section with this
title
ID Edit Box Enter a unique identifier for the book. This identifier
should be compliant with the scheme of allotting
identifiers to a book in your organization. You can
leave this field with the default value provided, if you
are not sure at the moment. ID is stored in the
metadata and can be changed any time.
Generate Button Generates an identifier for your project randomly and
fills in the ID field.
Location Edit Box Enter the location where you want to store your
project. You can also browse for a location by
Clicking the Select button or pressing Alt+S.
Select Button Opens a Windows file browser to select a directory
 for your project.
If the selected location is not empty, Obi will suggest
one. Click Yes or press Alt+Y to accept or click No
or press Alt+N to ignore.
2) Enter the information in the fields listed above, and click on the OK button. The
Audio settings dialog gets displayed; click OK. A blank project is opened in the work
area of Obi.

3) Now, the main structure of the book should be created, and the best place to create it
is the TOC view. Keep in mind, Obi uses a hierarchical structure of sections for each
entity of the book. This means that whether it’s a chapter, a topic or a sub-topic –
each of them will be mapped to a section, though their levels will be different. Use
the following commands to create the sections and subsections:
 Add section (Ctrl+H)
 Add subsection (Ctrl+Shift+H)
 Insert Section (Ctrl+Alt+H)
The sections created by you will show in both the views – TOC view and Content
view.

2) After creating the book structure (sections and subsections), audio should be placed in
them using live recording or by importing existing audio files.
 Live recording:
o Select a section in content view & click the record button on the
transport bar, or press Ctrl+R for starting pre recording monitoring.
The amplitude of microphone input will be displayed in graphical peak
meter as well as textual peak meter. You may adjust the microphone
volume using the system microphone amplitude control.
o Click start recording on the transport bar or press Ctrl+R again to
start recording.
o If you want to skip pre recording monitoring and start recording
directly, press Ctrl+Shift+R. However, it is advisable to monitor the
audio before recording for the first time in a session.
Operations available while live recording:
o Mark phrase (K)
o Mark page (P)
o Mark section (H)
 Importing external audio files: If pre-recorded audio files are available in wav
or mp3 format, they can be imported into a section by performing the
following:
o Select a section or a phrase inside a section in the Content View.
o Press Ctrl+I.
o Select the audio files and click Open. The import audio files dialog
gets displayed with the list of selected files, few other controls, and
checkboxes.
o Uncheck the checkbox Create a section for each audio file.
 o Click OK. The Phrase detection settings dialog appears; click OK, and
Obi will import the audio files.
Obi will import the audio content from the files and split it into phrases.

3) After the audio content of the book has been placed, it should be verified and edited,
if necessary. Use the Up and Down arrow keys to select a section, and then, Right or
Left arrow keys to select a phrase of the selected section. Use the following
commands for editing the book content:
 To edit a phrase or its audio content:
o Merge phrase (Ctrl+M)
o Split phrase (Ctrl+q)
o Phrase detection (Ctrl+Shift+P)
 To edit a section:
Commands available in Content view:
o Merge sections (Ctrl+Shift+M)
o Split section (Ctrl+Shift+Q)
Commands available in TOC view:
o Increase level of section (Ctrl+Shift+Right Arrow)
o Decrease level of section (Ctrl+Shift+Left Arrow)

4) Now that all the contents of the project of the book have been entered and verified, it
is time to mark pages and special roles.
 To mark a page, select a phrase that contains the audio announcing
the page number, such as “Page 56”. Then, click Phrase->Assign
role->Page on the menu, or press Ctrl+Shift+G. Enter the
properties of the page such as page number and page type in the
dialog box, and click on the OK button.
 Other roles such as heading, silence (used for phrase detection) etc
can also be assigned in a similar way.

5) Enter the book metadata to the best of your knowledge. By default, the metadata view
is hidden. You can make it visible by clicking View->Show metadata view on the
menu, or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+M.

6) Now, clean all the unreferenced audio that may be consuming a fair amount of disk
space, by clicking Tools->Clean Unreferenced audio on the menu, or by pressing
Ctrl+L.

7) You are now ready to create your first DAISY DTB. Click Tools->Export as DAISY
on the menu, or press Ctrl+E. The DAISY standard selection dialog appears with the
radio button DAISY 3 selected; click OK. The Export dialog gets displayed; check
the checkbox Encode to MP3 and click OK. Your DTB will be created in the
subdirectory of your project directory, namely DAISY3 Export.

8) But, you must authenticate your DTB before distributing it. This step is very
IMPORTANT as you must ensure that your DTB conforms to the DAISY standard,
 and hence, runs on DAISY 3.0 players. To validate the exported DTB, click Tools-
>DAISY 3 validator on the menu. Click on the OK button on the dialog box just
opened. If the exported DTB does not conform to the DAISY 3 standard, an error
report will be shown. Correct all the errors and export the DTB again.

For details of any of these operations, refer to the user reference manual by clicking
Help->Contents on the menu bar of Obi, or by pressing F1.

Remarks:
 There are many other commands that let you select a portion of audio and perform
very minute audio editing.
 You can also perform cut, copy, paste, or delete operations on a section, a phrase, a
portion of audio, or text.
 In addition to the play command, Obi offers a variety of commands that would make
audio editing much simpler, such as preview, play with elapse back, or nudging the
audio cursor.
 Obi provides a wide range of keyboard shortcuts that would further speed up the
process of book production.