Here we cover some of the knottier problems we have been asked to help with over the last few months, together with solutions…
Case Study 1: RECOVERING ACCIDENTALLY DELETED PHOTOGRAPHS FROM AN SD CARD by Richard
Michael was distraught when he discovered he’d deleted an awful lot of his photographs, and came to us to see if we could help.
He takes a lot of wildlife photographs, particularly birds, and uses ‘burst mode’ to capture 6 or more when he presses the shutter release. His usual practice is to delete all but the ‘best’ ones in-camera, before transferring to his laptop for further processing. It was during this selective deletion that he realised something that usually took seconds was taking a lot longer – had he pressed ‘Delete All’ by mistake? Michael had the presence of mind to remove the battery from the camera before it had completed, but he was at a loss as to what to do next. He approached one of our mentors for help.
As well as the bird photos all his holiday photographs from his recent trip to Iceland were on that SD card! Our mentor knew that there were several ‘undelete’ or ‘file recovery’ programs (apps) which might help. He locked the SD card so that no further damage could be done and ran one of the recovery programs against Michael’s SD card and recovered 3,400 photographs onto a separate Memory stick… Michael’s task was then to go through them all and copy the ones he wanted onto his computer, saving his holiday memories as well as his ornithological ones.
Case Study 2: HOW TO CAPTURE A JOURNEY FOR THE GUINNESS BOOK OF RECORDS by Graham
Tony came as a new member to the club in early June. He is planning a walk from John O’Groats to Lands End. He aims to be in the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest person to complete this walk and anticipates it taking, i think he said, 60 days.
He has an old galaxy tablet that he bought in South Africa but he can’t remember the password to the login. He also has a new galaxy tablet that he has logged into in this country and uses this one for taking video, as well as all his usual activities, such as email and pictures. He has experimented with video creation whilst out on walks recently. I was able to add a second login to the Galaxy tablet so that he should be able to see the Google Drive from both devices.
The Guinness book of records demand that he submits 10 minutes of the video per day on the walk and I advised that these should probably not be kept on the tablet because, were the tablet to be lost or damaged, the videos would be lost. We, together, have experimented with uploading videos to a Google Drive, and this seems to be successful. Tony has asked if he can create five x 2-minute videos and I will maybe need some help in helping him joining these together to make the 10 minute video required.
He anticipates that he will be at a bed and breakfast each evening and can do the uploading of the videos from there to his Google Drive and I showed him how he can share the folder with his friends and family, so that they can see the videos too.
He uses Strava to map a lot of his existing walking, but this format will not be acceptable to the Guinness Book of Records, and they are demanding it in a PFD format. I have researched and discovered that there are a couple of online sites which can convert GPX type data, such as Strava and others produce, into the required format. As far as I can see, he will need to convert these GPX type data files into the required type each evening he is in a bed and breakfast.
I have wondered whether he would be of benefit to be shown the dictation method so that each evening when he’s typing up his notes on the current state of his walk, he can use dictation rather than having to type it all up.
I was able to pass on details of a contact a family member of Michael’s, who has done similar long distance walks, and it is hoped that the two of them will be in touch with each other.
Case Study 3: Henfield Museum
Henfield Museum conduct audio interviews with people who have lived in Henfield, or who have grown up there. These interviews are then published via the Henfield Museum webpage, and the Museum was looking for a way of transcribing these interviews, so that there is a written copy of the interview, as well as an audio copy.
The interviews were previously conducted using a dictaphone-type device, and then somebody would need to listen to these interviews and try to type them up, in order to gain the written copy.
With assistance, the Museum purchased a refurbished second-user laptop, (solid state hard drive, 8gb RAM, windows 10 operating system) (cost £89 on ebay as there was a £20 off voucher) in order that these interviews could be conducted using the audio facilities of the laptop. We found a program called BRAINA, which has the ability to transcribe audio files. Thus, the laptop can provide the full service that the Museum needs, in order to conduct these interviews and gain a written copy.
Now the interviews are conducted whilst the whole conversation of the interview is recorded via the native app “voice recorder” on the laptop. The audio file created can then be transcribed using Braina. Braina provides a simple text transcription of the interview, and, on our advice, LIBRE OFFICE (free) was installed on the laptop, so that the interviews can be formatted to a better standard.
During trials with the new method, it became obvious that Braina struggles with long audio files, so therefore we looked to a program called “free audio splitter” in order to be able to split up longer interviews, into more manageable “chunks” and it seems that about 25 minutes is the optimum time length? The resultant text files can then all be (copy/pasted) assembled into one nicely formatted long file using LIBRE OFFICE.
(Link to Henfield Museum webpage)
MORE CASE STUDIES COMING SOON…