2016-01-10



As I had the opportunity to get it cheap,  I  bought  a  Logitech
K350  keyboard. It replaces a Logitech Elite Keyboard, I used for
over ten years.

The new keyboard is wireless. I paired the keyboard and  receiver
using the `pairing_tool', following this howto.  [0] That  worked
at once.

The non-standard keyboard layout (F-keys in triples; Insert  next
to  F12;  Pos1  and End above the double-sized Del and PgUp keys,
etc.)  is a bit strange, but not too strange. I would  have  pre-
ferred more standard key positions, but fortunately, they are not
too different.



As I was already working on the keyboard, I realized a plan I had
for  some  time already. Every now and then, I want to transcribe
some part of an audio or video recording. With minimal effort,  I
set up a configuration that eases doing so.

I made mplayer controllable via a fifo. In ~/.mplayer/config add:

     input=file=/home/meillo/.mplayer/fifo

Then I created this fifo file, of course:

     mkfifo ~/.mplayer/fifo

Then I installed xbindkeys with the following ~/.xbindkeysrc con-
fig file:

     "echo pause > ~/.mplayer/fifo"
             XF86Tools

     "echo speed_incr -0.1 > ~/.mplayer/fifo"
             F8

     "echo speed_incr 0.1 > ~/.mplayer/fifo"
             F9

     "echo seek -5 > ~/.mplayer/fifo"
             F4

     "echo seek 5 > ~/.mplayer/fifo"
             F6

The keys to use are based on the K350 keyboard (which has its  F-
keys strangely grouped in threes not fours).

To transcribe, I start xbindkeys in the foreground  (with  `-n'),
to  be  able  to kill it later, because I want to have these key-
bindings only active for the transcribing session.  Then I  start
the recording with mplayer on some other virtual desktop. Finally
I open the text editor and start transcribing.

I am able to adjust the playback speed,  toggle  pause  and  seek
forward and backward in small steps.

My first two (small) sessions felt much better than  my  previous
working  model.  Some  fine-tuning  (like seeking a tiny bit back
when unpausing) could improve the setup. I'll do so  on  the  fly
during future transcribing work.

[0]  https://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Logitech_Unifying_Empfänger/


http://marmaro.de/lue/        markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de>