Creating multimedia flashcards

In Anki, you create a Note record containing data and then Anki uses flashcard templates to automatically generate one or more flashcards that display that data. You can customize which fields each Note Type has; in this example we'll use two dictionary-oriented Note Types, LIFT_Word and LIFT_Sentence, which are included in FlashGrab. To 'install' it, just download and double-click the APKG file, or select it via File, Import.

Note: If you might want to customize the fields or flashcards, it's best to clone these note types before creating Note records with them. And to rename them, e.g. to MalayWord and MalaySentence. Below, we'll just use the names "Word" and "Sentence".

In the main Anki window, click either Browse or Deck, then Add, and the Add Notes dialog will appear. For language learning, you'd typically create either a Word card or a Sentence card.

Word cards

To create a Word flashcard, click the box next to "Type" (circled in brown above) and select "Word". Then fill in the following boxes (which are known as 'fields'):

• Click in the fields labeled "Lex Audio" or "Audio". You can either (a) record it right then using the red button, or (b) use the paper clip button to select an existing file. (Buttons circled in blue above.)

To (a) record it right then, click the record button, as shown above. When you are finished recording, click "Stop". The resulting filename will consist of random characters, and the new file will be stored in your %userprofile%/Documents/Anki/User 1/collection.media folder. You can rename it if you do so in both the field and in the actual file's name; but if you find yourself doing this very often, it would be more efficient to use recording software such as Audacity to create the files in collection.media with the names you want, and then paste those names in using using the syntax that Anki expects.

To (b) select a file to use, click on the paper clip button, then use the standard file-choosing dialog to find and select the audio you want to insert. Click "Open". The filename will be entered into the data field using Anki's standard pattern/syntax for audio files, [sound:filename.mp3]] , and the file itself will be copied to your collection.media folder.

TIP: to listen to the audio, click the "Cards..." button and pick any card type that includes the field you jut added audio to.

• If you have a written form, you can type it in the box next to where it says "Lexeme Form" or "Word".

• Type a gloss (brief definition) in the box next to where it says "Glosses" or "Meaning".

• Click in the field labeled "Picture". Then click on the same paper clip icon as described for audio above. Follow the same steps, but choose a picture file rather than an audio file. Rather than showing the filename, Anki will show the picture itself. To view/edit what data is actually being stored in the field, click the dropdown button, then "Edit HTML". The syntax for image files is <img src="filename.png" /> , which is the standard HTML syntax for displaying an image.

• Enter any relevant tags in the Tags box, separated by spaces. (Circled in brown above.) For example, if you were learning about numbers on day 4, you might tag most of that day's records with d4 number or number d4.

TIP: If a Note record has media, make it a habit to always tag it indicating whether its media files are copyrighted or in the public domain. (It's best not to mix the two in the same record--e.g. a copyrighted image and public-domain audiorecording. If you do so, try using distinct tags such as pubDomainImg and pubDomainAud, and then don't use pubDomain at all. Ditto for copyrImg, etc.)

Shrinking media files into manageable sizes

See the FlashGrab wiki for info on using Irfanview and Audacity to shrink images and audio files. (These can be processed either in batches or one by one.)

Sentence Cards

To create a sentence card, click the box next to "Type" and select "Sentence". The steps are the same as for a "Word" card, except that the data fields are different:

• Click in the field labeled "Example Audio" or "Audio". You can either (a) record it right then using the red record button, or (b) use the paper clip button to select a file to use. (See screenshot above.)

• If you have a written form of the sentence/phrase, type it in the box next to where it says "Example" or "Sentence".

• Type the translation in the box next to where it says "Example Translations" or "Translation".

• If you have a image file for this sentence, click inside "Picture", then use the paper clip button to select a file to use. (See screenshot above.)

• Enter any relevant tags in the Tags box, separated by spaces. (See above.)

Note from the Anki manual about making unique cards

Be sure to fill in whichever field is listed as the first one. You may need to reorder the fields: go to Browse, select a note of the right type, click the "Fields..." button, and Reposition.

Anki checks the first field for uniqueness, so it will warn you if you enter two cards with a Front field of “apple” (for example). The uniqueness check is limited to the current note type, so if you’re studying multiple languages, two cards with the same Front would not be listed as duplicates as long as you had a different note type for each language.

Anki doesn’t check for duplicates in other fields automatically for efficiency reasons, but the browser has a “Find Duplicates” function which you can run periodically.