Computer usage for dummies

Snowfire · Post by **Snowfire** » Tue Dec 29, 2015 12:49 pm

I have been scanning some old photos. The type taken back in the late 50's early 60's, so naturally many of them are tiny.

I used paint to resize them because I want my relatives to see them on Facebook.

My trouble is I cannot then copy/paste, move them in the resized version. Doing so gives me a pop up box which says copy/paste violation ??. Is that because the original is in the folder I'm trying to copy too ? I need the original to be able to resize it in paint.

Sorry in advance for my idiocy in matters like this

Post by **LarsMac** » Tue Dec 29, 2015 12:58 pm

What format are you saving them in after re-sizing?

Hopefully, you're renaming them after the re-size.

Snowfire · Post by **Snowfire** » Tue Dec 29, 2015 1:20 pm

Lars, thank you for your reply, I used a different programme. Much more straight forward and successful.

All resized and ready to go. And I must say, remarkably sharp now the aren't the size of a stamp

Post by **LarsMac** » Tue Dec 29, 2015 2:05 pm

Good to hear. I was going to suggest GIMP.

Glad you got it done.

FourPart · Post by **FourPart** » Tue Dec 29, 2015 7:25 pm

The problem with Paint is that it's so limited. There's plenty of Freeware Graphics Editors available out there, but it's always worth investing in a decent one.

Post by **LarsMac** » Tue Dec 29, 2015 7:34 pm

FourPart;1491049 wrote: The problem with Paint is that it's so limited. There's plenty of Freeware Graphics Editors available out there, but it's always worth investing in a decent one.

You're right.

GIMP is my favorite, freeware. It is quite capable, and competes with several of the commercial editors. I have seen some remarkable work produced with it.

If you're going to spend money, Adobe's Photoshop and Lightroom are fantastic tools.

Post by **spot** » Wed Dec 30, 2015 3:46 am

For resizing, possibly with cropping, I'd happily use IrfanView. It's light and it takes very few instructions to do what you describe. But if you found a bit of software that's ideal, stick with it.

Snowfire · Post by **Snowfire** » Wed Dec 30, 2015 6:22 am

The only things I needed to do was to rotate and resize them. Paint did that perfectly well bu then prohibited me from copying/pasting/moving etc.

My first problem, as Lars points out was that I didn't rename the images after they were scanned to my laptop.

I accept that the likes of Irfan and photoshop would do far more than Microsoft Paint with more professional results but as it happens, the simple step of using Microsoft Photo was perfect for what I needed and intuitively easy for the dummy that I am. Just a few clicks provided me with exactly what I needed and it updated the originals to my requirements.

As I said, the clarity of these old photos isn't realised until they are expanded. Now every person can be recognised and the full glory of them can be appreciated.

Delighted ! And so is the family.

Post by **Bryn Mawr** » Wed Dec 30, 2015 8:09 am

So the next question for the panel is :-

What's the best way to rip audio cassettes to MP3?

I have a box full of cassettes (maybe a hundred or so) that are irreplaceable but I can no longer play.

Snowfire · Post by **Snowfire** » Wed Dec 30, 2015 8:38 am

There are cassette to mp3 converters available and they are incredibly cheap to buy

USB Cassette Player and Tape-to-MP3 Converter UCP218: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics

I have no experience in using one though but at that price it's worth a gamble

Post by **Bryn Mawr** » Wed Dec 30, 2015 9:30 am

Snowfire;1491061 wrote: There are cassette to mp3 converters available and they are incredibly cheap to buy

USB Cassette Player and Tape-to-MP3 Converter UCP218: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics

I have no experience in using one though but at that price it's worth a gamble

It certainly is worth a gamble at that price. As long as the software is a help rather than an essential (or there's an Ubuntu variant) it will be perfect, thanks.

Snowfire · Post by **Snowfire** » Wed Dec 30, 2015 10:08 am

There's often a chance that windows will let it work without the software installed (There's me talking like I know about this stuff) I know how awful that kind of software can be, so I never bother installing it if I can avoid it

Post by **Bryn Mawr** » Wed Dec 30, 2015 11:39 am

Snowfire;1491065 wrote: There's often a chance that windows will let it work without the software installed (There's me talking like I know about this stuff) I know how awful that kind of software can be, so I never bother installing it if I can avoid it

I have a question out with the sellers - answer expected in about a week's time.

Post by **LarsMac** » Wed Dec 30, 2015 1:03 pm

Here is a guy that tried out one.

Post by **Bryn Mawr** » Wed Dec 30, 2015 1:31 pm

LarsMac;1491070 wrote: Here is a guy that tried out one.

Hmmmm, that makes it sound like the sound capture is done by the software provided.

That being so, I think I'll go with this one :-

Ezcap Portable Cassette Tape to Mp3 Digital Media Converter with USB Port for pc | eBay

which will happily write the mp3 directly to a USB flash drive without the need to touch the PC during capture.

Many thanks for the help.

FourPart · Post by **FourPart** » Wed Dec 30, 2015 2:29 pm

I've done it with vinyl records (same principle) by using Total Recorder (although any streaming software should do the job). Play it through Line-In. Save it as a .WAV file (huge, I know) & then use a simple MP3 convert program (such as Format Factory).

Post by **Bryn Mawr** » Thu Dec 31, 2015 4:58 am

FourPart;1491076 wrote: I've done it with vinyl records (same principle) by using Total Recorder (although any streaming software should do the job). Play it through Line-In. Save it as a .WAV file (huge, I know) & then use a simple MP3 convert program (such as Format Factory).

I'll see how the walkman thingy does before I go back to basics

The bit I'm not looking forward to is typing in all of the track and album details - that will probably take more time than capturing the sound.

FourPart · Post by **FourPart** » Thu Dec 31, 2015 5:45 am

Bryn Mawr;1491093 wrote: The bit I'm not looking forward to is typing in all of the track and album details - that will probably take more time than capturing the sound.
1st MP3 Tag Editor - perfect utility for that. I've been using it for years. Does an entire batch in a matter of seconds - apart from typing in the info, of course, but even then it has a facility whereby sometimes you can simply import the album info from online sources (it searches for the info for you).

1st MP3 Tag Editor - Download

Post by **spot** » Thu Dec 31, 2015 9:32 am

I expect his cassette contents are slightly more abstruse than any online music index will cope with. I did his CDs ten years back and half of those needed typing up.

Post by **Bryn Mawr** » Fri Jan 01, 2016 7:14 am

spot;1491104 wrote: I expect his cassette contents are slightly more abstruse than any online music index will cope with. I did his CDs ten years back and half of those needed typing up.

As you say, the CDs are mainline music, most of the cassettes are home labels done by the artist and bought directly from them.

Post by **Bryn Mawr** » Fri Jan 01, 2016 7:15 am

FourPart;1491097 wrote: 1st MP3 Tag Editor - perfect utility for that. I've been using it for years. Does an entire batch in a matter of seconds - apart from typing in the info, of course, but even then it has a facility whereby sometimes you can simply import the album info from online sources (it searches for the info for you).

1st MP3 Tag Editor - Download

If it makes the typing easy I'm all for it - some of the utilities I've used in the past have, shall we say, a non-optimal interface

FourPart · Post by **FourPart** » Fri Jan 01, 2016 9:29 am

Where I've programmed & put together Training MP3s for choirs I've had to tag each track by Title, Part, Season, Year, Sequencer, Copyright, etc. The ones that are standard for all (Season, Year, Sequencer, Copyright) can be done en bloc. Then the same for Parts (eg. Sop 1, Sop 2, Alto 1, Alto 2, etc) can also be done en bloc, as can the Titles (Same Title for each Part) so essentially the info only needs entering the once for each tag field. You just need to specify where they're to be duplicated. If they needed typing out individually it would take forever.

Post by **Bryn Mawr** » Wed Jan 06, 2016 12:09 pm

Bryn Mawr;1491071 wrote: Hmmmm, that makes it sound like the sound capture is done by the software provided.

That being so, I think I'll go with this one :-

Ezcap Portable Cassette Tape to Mp3 Digital Media Converter with USB Port for pc | eBay

which will happily write the mp3 directly to a USB flash drive without the need to touch the PC during capture.

Many thanks for the help.

So, it's arrived and I've made a start.

The capture is smooth enough - the first two cassettes didn't work the way I expected but that's a case of RTFM. The only "fail" I've had is that it split a couple of tracks on one album but I've managed to splice the segments back together.

In the end I've gone with PuddleTag to edit in the track data. It's tedious but as clean as you can reasonably expect - predictably enough none of the data comes back automagically but I've started with tapes produced by various friends back in the eighties / nineties and I wouldn't expect the studios involved to have uploaded the data to the relevant databases.