An Idea that came to my mind today, would be cool if it would be possible to directly record audio and attach to Notes using the dropdown menu similar to capturing a Picture, it would instead let you record audio snippets.
I looked into the code and checked out some dependencies, if there would be general interest I would like to sit down and see what I can do.
Yes if you can create a PR for it I’d accept it. One difficult here is to import the native libs to support audio recording on iOS and Android and get the app to build. Did you find any good library?
Hmm, you have to make sure though that the attachment is not too big.
The best audio codec for such a thing would be opus.
I checked out some libraries and the most up to speed library is react-native-audio, it would require to add the permission to the respected platform and linking the dependencies. It will use the audio recorder of the specific platform by default.
Regarding the comment @tessus made about using opus, I checked the library and it seems like aac would be best to use here since it is supported on both platforms
Encodings supported on iOS: lpcm, ima4, aac, MAC3, MAC6, ulaw, alaw, mp1, mp2, alac, amr
Encodings supported on Android: aac, aac_eld, amr_nb, amr_wb, he_aac, vorbis
However we could limit the bitrate and provide settings for audio quality like: low, medium, high.
I think if we expect the users to record voice audio it is fair to say that low audio quality is sufficient since there is not much bitrate needed to clearly understand voice. Since i did no testing I cannot say how big the audio is gonna be, but I would set a general limit to 2 - 3 Minutes.
This would be a useful feature for me. I use a voice recorder app on my phone and then manually transcribe when I get back to my office. It would be nice if it were already there in Joplin.
This is strange, since AAC is technically not free, but has to be licensed. Either way, it mostly depends on the bitrate. For speech 12-16kbit/s is enough, which translates to roughly 5.3 - 7MB per hour for mp3. The thing is that opus sounds better than mp3 in those low bit rates. I can’t say anything about AAC.
However, I really suggest that someone runs a test how much MB are used for an hour.
If it’s under the attachment limit, we are good. And recording an hour of speech in under 10 MB should be possible without problems. That is, if the library is a good one.
I would not limit the duration to minutes. Some people use audio recorders for university, presentations, and/or speeches. This is why a proper encoder, quality, and small filesize is more important than anything else.
What do Evernote or OneNote use for example? I guess they’ve already done their research and picked a good format, so maybe we can start from there.
Any updates here? This is a killer feature for me, would love to see it.
A lot of people are considering leaving Evernote at the moment, one reason being the fact that the new desktop app is not playing audio files any more. (They have announced that the feature will be back eventually, though.)
I am surely not the only one who would switch to Joplin at the top of the hat if I could keep my workflow, which is to take written notes AND an audio recording of interviews on my mobile app, and then transcribing necessary parts of the audio file on the desktop app.
Is the feature being considered at all?
Evernote uses AMR.
I would also like this feature, and I don't think the design should assume only a voice use case. I often record ambient sound and music. I don't have a problem with the attachment size - if I want to record an hour of high quality audio, I accept that the resulting file may be large. Perhaps the user could be allowed to configure bitrate.
audio record notes/attachments would be EXTREMLY WOW and USEFUL!!!!
Please, please, please!!
As someone migrating from Evernote that used it as a songwriting tool, I think I actually have to rely on something other than Joplin until this kind of feature is implemented. Being able to record and attach even extremely compressed audio files easily would make Joplin a no brainer for me
gstreamer, ffmpeg and libVLC are all good libraries to use, great feature to have indeed. The file can be compressed using any of those tools and limited to a certain size. very easily tuned with parameters
is there a fork anyone has made for this?