Please note that this information relates to our legacy courses sold on radiolingua.com before December 2016. For up-to-date information relating to the new version of our courses on the Coffee Break Academy, please see the relevant section.
The enhanced podcasts which form part of the Silver, Gold and Platinum CBF and CBS packages are formatted as .m4a files. The difference between these and .mp3 files is that .m4a files allow the inclusion of images synchronised to the audio. Some podcasters produce podcasts which have photos linked to certain parts of the audio, but here at Radio Lingua we have used the format to produce 'flashcards' which accompany the podcast to help learners see how words and phrases are written in the language they're studying. These .m4a files can be played using iTunes or QuickTime Player on the computer, or on most iPods and iPhones. The files can't normally be played on other mp3 players.
Accessing the flashcards on a Mac or PC
The flashcards used to be accessible in earlier versions of iTunes, but this functionality has been removed from iTunes in more recent versions of the software. This means that to view the enhanced audio file with the flashcards you now need to use QuickTime Player. Download the .m4a file to your computer and right-click or control-click on the file. Choose "open with QuickTime Player" and you will be able view the flashcards as the audio plays. QuickTime is a free application which can be downloaded from the Apple website.
Accessing the flashcards on an iOS device
Certain versions of the Apple Podcasts app have been used successfully to access the flashcards. However, some listeners have experienced problems with this. For this reason, we advise that you use the Downcast app. Full details for using Downcast and a tutorial video can be found here.
Once you've subscribed to the content in Downcast and entered your username and password in the settings for that podcast, you can tap on one of the enhanced audio files and it will start playing.
Now tap on the thumbnail of the audio file and the larger version of the image will appear, showing the flashcards synchronised to the audio.
Accessing the flashcards on an Android device
Unfortunately we don't know of any application for Android devices which will allow the playing of the enhanced podcasts. Please let us know in the comments if you come across an app which does allow this.
Comments
3 comments
Hi - do you know if m4a files can be made to work properly on Android? I can get the audio to work, and the initial CBS image is displayed, but no further images are shown as the audio proceeds.
Hi Tim,
Whilst the majority of our material is in mp3 and pdf format, which should work on any platform, some of our members' files are formatted as .m4a (enhanced podcast) and .epub (electronic book) files, depending on the course you are interested in. Currently we do not know of a guaranteed way to listen to and view these files on the Android devices. Some websites suggest ways to convert the files into formats that will be able to be read by the Android devices, but there does not appear to be a proven method available yet, and the methods I have found by searching on Google seem to only convert the file into mp3 format so you get the audio content, but not the visual content (which defeats the purpose of course!).
We're always looking to make our material available to as many different platforms as possible, so we will continue to look for options for the Android operating system.
I am using an Android app (MX Player) that can be setup to play m4a files, which displays the flashcards from the enhanced version.
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