[gareth magennis]

Hi,

a guy saturday tried to record the entire nights music onto his PC laptop,
using Audacity. This is 8 to 9 hours total. The screen showed the
appropriate stereo waves right up to the end I believe, I was keeping an eye
on levels most of the night. Apparently when he first tried to save the
single file, it showed a size of zero.

I got a text from him to say that he eventually managed to save the first
hour and a half, and that he had to manually piece together 16000 temp files
to get the total recorded up to 6 hours or so, losing the last hour and a
half.


What is the maximum recording time, and/or is there a way to do a better
job of recording in the first place? I don't know any details of his system
at all, just wondered if I could help him out. He's somewhat embarrased and
frustrated, as he tried to do the same last month but didn't realise that
when he shut the laptop lid down, Audacity stopped recording, so only got
the first hour and a half.



Cheers,



Gareth.

[gareth magennis]

The OS might be Linux



Gareth.

[Richard Crowley]

"Gareth Magennis" wrote...
The OS might be Linux

That may significantly reduce your chances of getting a
response from someone who actually uses Audacity on
Linux.

Unless you want to brave one of those Linux newsgroups.
But PLEASE don't cross-post anything from Linux-land to
over here to the real world! It always leaves r.a.p littered
with rubbish whenever the Linux guys show up.

[Scott Dorsey]

Richard Crowley wrote:
"Gareth Magennis" wrote...
The OS might be Linux

That may significantly reduce your chances of getting a
response from someone who actually uses Audacity on
Linux.

I use Audacity on Linux, and I don't see any limits that I would expect
to hit other than file size limits. But the honest truth is that I have
never tried to record six hours straight with it. Nor would I even TRY
such a thing. Stop and save files often if you're using a computer. If
you're using a tape machine in the field, use confidence monitoring and
don't use the longest posisble tapes.

Unless you want to brave one of those Linux newsgroups.
But PLEASE don't cross-post anything from Linux-land to
over here to the real world! It always leaves r.a.p littered
with rubbish whenever the Linux guys show up.

Sadly agreed.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Les Cargill]

Scott Dorsey wrote:
Richard Crowley wrote:
"Gareth Magennis" wrote...
The OS might be Linux
That may significantly reduce your chances of getting a
response from someone who actually uses Audacity on
Linux.

I use Audacity on Linux, and I don't see any limits that I would expect
to hit other than file size limits. But the honest truth is that I have
never tried to record six hours straight with it.

The audience and performers have to go to the bathroom sometime. Maybe
even the recordist...

Nor would I even TRY
such a thing. Stop and save files often if you're using a computer. If
you're using a tape machine in the field, use confidence monitoring and
don't use the longest posisble tapes.

Unless you want to brave one of those Linux newsgroups.
But PLEASE don't cross-post anything from Linux-land to
over here to the real world! It always leaves r.a.p littered
with rubbish whenever the Linux guys show up.

Sadly agreed.
--scott

--
Les Cargill

[Max[_4_]]

"Les Cargill" wrote in message
ng.com...
The audience and performers have to go to the bathroom sometime. Maybe
even the recordist...

It only becomes a problem if the mikes are sensitive and can pick up what
goes on in there ;-)

[philicorda[_6_]]

On Tue, 08 Jul 2008 00:00:03 +0000, Gareth Magennis wrote:

The OS might be Linux



Gareth.

If he is using Linux, then Ardour is better for this kind of thing.
It supports Wav64, so can handle large files.
He could also run two copies simultaneously and save/record with overlaps
between them.

As with any computer based recorder, I'd do a test run first to make sure
everything is working right. Record the radio for eight hours and then
check the jack logs to see if there were any xruns while recording
(buffer underruns).

[Rich R]

Gareth Magennis wrote:

The OS might be Linux



Gareth.

I have a program on Linux called Rezound. It's not as polished as Audacity
but I have successfully recorded long radio broadcasts over 6 hours at a
time with no problems. It records to a .rez file which is it's native file
format but you can export to mp3, ogg, flac etc... It's included in the
repositories of most distro's afaik but if not you can grab it from
http://rezound.sourceforge.net/

Rich

[Geoff]

Rich R wrote:
Gareth Magennis wrote:

The OS might be Linux



Gareth.

I have a program on Linux called Rezound. It's not as polished as
Audacity

!!!

geoff

[Geoff]

Gareth Magennis wrote:
Hi,

a guy saturday tried to record the entire nights music onto his PC
laptop, using Audacity. This is 8 to 9 hours total. The screen
showed the appropriate stereo waves right up to the end I believe, I
was keeping an eye on levels most of the night. Apparently when he
first tried to save the single file, it showed a size of zero.

I got a text from him to say that he eventually managed to save the
first hour and a half, and that he had to manually piece together
16000 temp files to get the total recorded up to 6 hours or so,
losing the last hour and a half.


What is the maximum recording time, and/or is there a way to do a
better job of recording in the first place? I don't know any details
of his system at all, just wondered if I could help him out. He's
somewhat embarrased and frustrated, as he tried to do the same last
month but didn't realise that when he shut the laptop lid down,
Audacity stopped recording, so only got the first hour and a half.

Not sure in what format Audacity records - probably WAV, which has a 2GB
filesdize limit ( which imposes a limit of time depending on bitdepth and
sample-rate).

Some apps cope with bigger WAV file sizes or switch automatically to a
different format. Sony apps save larger files as W64 ( their variation of
WAV that biggyfies the allowable size ).

Maybe Audacity sucked the kumera when the WAV size got too big and didn't
have a strategy to save something sensible instead....

geoff

[Mike Dobony]

On Tue, 8 Jul 2008 12:19:09 +1200, geoff wrote:

Gareth Magennis wrote:
Hi,

a guy saturday tried to record the entire nights music onto his PC
laptop, using Audacity. This is 8 to 9 hours total. The screen
showed the appropriate stereo waves right up to the end I believe, I
was keeping an eye on levels most of the night. Apparently when he
first tried to save the single file, it showed a size of zero.

I got a text from him to say that he eventually managed to save the
first hour and a half, and that he had to manually piece together
16000 temp files to get the total recorded up to 6 hours or so,
losing the last hour and a half.


What is the maximum recording time, and/or is there a way to do a
better job of recording in the first place? I don't know any details
of his system at all, just wondered if I could help him out. He's
somewhat embarrased and frustrated, as he tried to do the same last
month but didn't realise that when he shut the laptop lid down,
Audacity stopped recording, so only got the first hour and a half.

Not sure in what format Audacity records - probably WAV, which has a 2GB
filesdize limit ( which imposes a limit of time depending on bitdepth and
sample-rate).

Some apps cope with bigger WAV file sizes or switch automatically to a
different format. Sony apps save larger files as W64 ( their variation of
WAV that biggyfies the allowable size ).

Maybe Audacity sucked the kumera when the WAV size got too big and didn't
have a strategy to save something sensible instead....

geoff

Audacity has its own recording format and then exports to the common
formats. It records small, incremental files. Better off with something
like Total Recorder.

[Geoff]

Mike Dobony wrote:

Audacity has its own recording format and then exports to the common
formats. It records small, incremental files. Better off with
something like Total Recorder.

Guess it's another case of "you get what you pay for" ....


geoff

[Richard Crowley]

"geoff" wrote...
Mike Dobony wrote:
Audacity has its own recording format and then exports to the common
formats. It records small, incremental files. Better off with
something like Total Recorder.

Guess it's another case of "you get what you pay for" ....

No, Total Recorder is worth much more than $18

:-)

[Mike Rivers]

geoff wrote:

Guess it's another case of "you get what you pay for" ....

Now, now, let's not disrespect a program that you don't understand.
Audacity's native recording format is odd, and in general is invisible
unless you go looking for it (which is what the 16,000 files is about).
When you stop the recording, you can save the project in the program's
native format, or you can export it as a WAV file (or other common audio
formats).

8 or 9 hours of continuous recording at any "pro" sample rate is more,
in a single file, than most computer programs can handle. Some programs
are clever enough to automatically break up long programs into
manageable files (usually 1 or 2 GB) but sometimes it's the user that
needs to be clever. There's no reason why Audacity can't do this job if
you learn how to use it.

--
If you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring and reach
me he
double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo -- I'm really Mike Rivers
)

[Richard Crowley]

"Gareth Magennis" wrote...
a guy saturday tried to record the entire nights music onto his PC laptop,
using Audacity. This is 8 to 9 hours total. The screen showed the
appropriate stereo waves right up to the end I believe, I was keeping an
eye on levels most of the night. Apparently when he first tried to save
the single file, it showed a size of zero.

I got a text from him to say that he eventually managed to save the first
hour and a half, and that he had to manually piece together 16000 temp
files to get the total recorded up to 6 hours or so, losing the last hour
and a half.


What is the maximum recording time,

Depends on the application, the file type, and the OS.
The specific information for his combination is likely
availalbe online somewhere.

and/or is there a way to do a better job of recording in the first place?

Use an application specifically designed for long-form recording.
There are some very inexpensive ones (Toal Recorder, etc.)
They tend to write max-length files, and then automatically
create new files (in real-time) as needed.

I don't know any details of his system at all, just wondered if I could
help him out. He's somewhat embarrased and frustrated, as he tried to do
the same last month but didn't realise that when he shut the laptop lid
down, Audacity stopped recording, so only got the first hour and a half.

He seems to continue making a large number of inadvisable
assumptions. I'd certainly make a test recording before
committing the scheme to anything I wanted for real.

[David Morgan \(MAMS\)]

"Gareth Magennis" wrote in message om...
Hi,

a guy saturday tried to record the entire nights music onto his PC laptop,
using Audacity. This is 8 to 9 hours total. The screen showed the
appropriate stereo waves right up to the end I believe, I was keeping an eye
on levels most of the night. Apparently when he first tried to save the
single file, it showed a size of zero.

It should never, under any circumstances, have been a single file of
such duration.... a couple of hours is enough for common sense to
kick in if you've done this since before yesterday. Someone mentioned
getting what you pay for, but I think *they* were talking about software. ;-)

I got a text from him to say that he eventually managed to save the first
hour and a half, and that he had to manually piece together 16000 temp files
to get the total recorded up to 6 hours or so, losing the last hour and a
half.

Hmmm.... :-(

Perhaps spending more time on the PC and less time on the telephone?

What is the maximum recording time, and/or is there a way to do a better
job of recording in the first place? I don't know any details of his system
at all, just wondered if I could help him out.

There's just no way that I'd normally ever let a single file size exceed the
max limit for an audio CD. Most software (I'm not an Audacity user) will
stop and start with the press of the spacebar, creating a new file with
each new start.... then, when the program is over, save each segment.
It only takes a fraction of a second to hit the space bar twice... losing
virtually nothing if done at an opportune time. Then again, one had best
pray for flawless battery transition, the mental illumination to turn off any
sort of screen-savers, power-saving settings, etcetera, etcetera. Surely
there was *some* convenient time to have stopped recording and
saved the files; the shorter the files, the quicker the save, if saving is
even imperative at that point. Between 90 minutes and two hours is all
I'd chance going without opening a new file.

He's somewhat embarrased and
frustrated, as he tried to do the same last month but didn't realise that
when he shut the laptop lid down, Audacity stopped recording, so only got
the first hour and a half.

That... is just plain lack of experience and common sense. 99% of all
laptops that aren't specifically configured for audio, will automatically
fall into standby or hibernate when the lid is closed.... an unfortunate
part of the dumbing-down of PC users who are too impatient to boot
their computers when they take them out of the bag. That's really sort
of a no-brainer... faaar more embarrassing than making a file too long.
Choosing the right software for the gig and thoroughly testing the stuff
*before* the gig, is a fairly important aspect to accomplishing anything.
But then again, it would appear that this is a learning experience and
not a job, so I imagine that no one was really expecting anything.


DM

[Gareth Magennis]

"David Morgan (MAMS)" /Odm wrote in message
news:OZBck.657$HY.170@trnddc01...

"Gareth Magennis" wrote in message
om...
Hi,

a guy saturday tried to record the entire nights music onto his PC
laptop,
using Audacity. This is 8 to 9 hours total. The screen showed the
appropriate stereo waves right up to the end I believe, I was keeping an
eye
on levels most of the night. Apparently when he first tried to save the
single file, it showed a size of zero.

It should never, under any circumstances, have been a single file of
such duration.... a couple of hours is enough for common sense to
kick in if you've done this since before yesterday. Someone mentioned
getting what you pay for, but I think *they* were talking about software.
;-)

I got a text from him to say that he eventually managed to save the first
hour and a half, and that he had to manually piece together 16000 temp
files
to get the total recorded up to 6 hours or so, losing the last hour and a
half.

Hmmm.... :-(

Perhaps spending more time on the PC and less time on the telephone?

What is the maximum recording time, and/or is there a way to do a better
job of recording in the first place? I don't know any details of his
system
at all, just wondered if I could help him out.

There's just no way that I'd normally ever let a single file size exceed
the
max limit for an audio CD. Most software (I'm not an Audacity user) will
stop and start with the press of the spacebar, creating a new file with
each new start.... then, when the program is over, save each segment.
It only takes a fraction of a second to hit the space bar twice... losing
virtually nothing if done at an opportune time. Then again, one had best
pray for flawless battery transition, the mental illumination to turn off
any
sort of screen-savers, power-saving settings, etcetera, etcetera. Surely
there was *some* convenient time to have stopped recording and
saved the files; the shorter the files, the quicker the save, if saving is
even imperative at that point. Between 90 minutes and two hours is all
I'd chance going without opening a new file.


Well unfortunately this requires uninterrupted recording, any gaps are
unnacceptable. It is a club night with a DJ blending tracks together
continuously, for rebroadcast on the Net.


Cheers,


Gareth.

[Mike Rivers]

Gareth Magennis wrote:

Well unfortunately this requires uninterrupted recording, any gaps are
unnacceptable. It is a club night with a DJ blending tracks together
continuously, for rebroadcast on the Net.

You think someone's actually going to LISTEN to ten hours of
continuously blended DJ music on the Internet? Jeez, that's public
abuse. G

It's for broadcast. Who's going to know (or care) if there's an edit if
you drop a few seconds between files as long as it's done skillfully
(with the similar skill as a DJ "blending" tracks?


--
If you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring and reach
me he
double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo -- I'm really Mike Rivers
)

[Gareth Magennis]

"Mike Rivers" wrote in message
news:JsIck.896$4a3.605@trnddc04...
Gareth Magennis wrote:

Well unfortunately this requires uninterrupted recording, any gaps are
unnacceptable. It is a club night with a DJ blending tracks together
continuously, for rebroadcast on the Net.

You think someone's actually going to LISTEN to ten hours of continuously
blended DJ music on the Internet? Jeez, that's public abuse. G


Yes, it's what most of the people attending the club would like to do again
back home, maybe at another party, along with those who weren't there.


It's for broadcast. Who's going to know (or care) if there's an edit if
you drop a few seconds between files as long as it's done skillfully (with
the similar skill as a DJ "blending" tracks?


Probably a reasonable percentage of people listening to it. Tbe whole point
of the excersise is NOT to do this, it is a recreation of the live
experience with nothing added and nothing taken away. As far as we know it
hasn't been done before. The audience are extremely discerning listeners to
their chosen genre of music, and want to hear the DJs work, not the
soundfile editor.


Gareth.

[David Morgan \(MAMS\)]

"Gareth Magennis" wrote in message ...

As far as we know it
hasn't been done before.

There's a reason for that. ;-)

[Scott Dorsey]

Mike Rivers wrote:
Gareth Magennis wrote:

Well unfortunately this requires uninterrupted recording, any gaps are
unnacceptable. It is a club night with a DJ blending tracks together
continuously, for rebroadcast on the Net.

You think someone's actually going to LISTEN to ten hours of
continuously blended DJ music on the Internet? Jeez, that's public
abuse. G

It used to be, the DJ guys used VHS Hi-Fi on the slowest possible speed
to get the long recording times. It didn't sound very good, but nobody
noticed.

It's for broadcast. Who's going to know (or care) if there's an edit if
you drop a few seconds between files as long as it's done skillfully
(with the similar skill as a DJ "blending" tracks?

I thought it was still polite to do a station ID on the hour, even on
the internet?
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Richard Corfield[_3_]]

On 2008-07-08, Gareth Magennis wrote:

Well unfortunately this requires uninterrupted recording, any gaps are
unnacceptable. It is a club night with a DJ blending tracks together
continuously, for rebroadcast on the Net.

I've done well on a low powered laptop using the rec program. No user
interface, just a single command line that sucks data from the sound
card and puts it in a file. This laptop even managed to pipe it through
an MP3 encoder and keep up (400MHz P2, not much RAM, not enough power to
run a user interface like current Audacity that reliably though older
simpler Audacities it could keep up with)

Watch your filesystem file size limit if writing to a single file.

- Richard

[Arny Krueger]

"Gareth Magennis" wrote in
message

Well unfortunately this requires uninterrupted recording,
any gaps are unnacceptable. It is a club night with a DJ
blending tracks together continuously, for rebroadcast on
the Net.

You can record 6 hours of really pretty good uninterrupted audio with a
stand-alone DVD-DVR. No actual video input is required - the resulting
video will usually be a blue screen. So what? ;-)

If that DVR is HDD-based maybe 50 hours of uninterrupted recording are
possible.

Software is available to pull just the audio out of video files on a DVD-R
or DVD-RW.

I've been known to use CEP 2.1 for that purpose.

[Gareth Magennis]

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
"Gareth Magennis" wrote in
message

Well unfortunately this requires uninterrupted recording,
any gaps are unnacceptable. It is a club night with a DJ
blending tracks together continuously, for rebroadcast on
the Net.

You can record 6 hours of really pretty good uninterrupted audio with a
stand-alone DVD-DVR. No actual video input is required - the resulting
video will usually be a blue screen. So what? ;-)

If that DVR is HDD-based maybe 50 hours of uninterrupted recording are
possible.

Software is available to pull just the audio out of video files on a DVD-R
or DVD-RW.

I've been known to use CEP 2.1 for that purpose.




Sounds like the best idea I've heard so far. Are these pretty reliable?



Cheers,


Gareth.

[David Morgan \(MAMS\)]

"Gareth Magennis" wrote in message

Sounds like the best idea I've heard so far.

Which does nothing to convert the audio to the proper format
and get it posted to the server.

Sorry... but I think you simply have to face your budgetary limitations.

DM

[Arny Krueger]

"Gareth Magennis" wrote in
message
"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
"Gareth Magennis" wrote in
message

Well unfortunately this requires uninterrupted
recording, any gaps are unnacceptable. It is a club
night with a DJ blending tracks together continuously,
for rebroadcast on the Net.

You can record 6 hours of really pretty good
uninterrupted audio with a stand-alone DVD-DVR. No
actual video input is required - the resulting video
will usually be a blue screen. So what? ;-) If that DVR is HDD-based
maybe 50 hours of uninterrupted
recording are possible.

Software is available to pull just the audio out of
video files on a DVD-R or DVD-RW.

I've been known to use CEP 2.1 for that purpose.

Sounds like the best idea I've heard so far. Are these
pretty reliable?

I have 2. The Philips/Magnavox DVD-DVR is about 3 years old and has been in
continuous use. The RCA HD-DVR is over a year old, was B stock, and is also
in continuous use.

[David Morgan \(MAMS\)]

"Gareth Magennis" wrote in message ...

Well unfortunately this requires uninterrupted recording, any gaps are
unnacceptable. It is a club night with a DJ blending tracks together
continuously, for rebroadcast on the Net.

Hmmm... then it seems as if there should have been someone
there with not only the appropriate software and the ability to
reassemble them with maximum transparency in post, but that
actually, the file(s) should have been immediately converted to
the proper format and stored directly on the server. That's not
something that any old Jowe Blowe can just walk in with a PC
and do. "Gaps" are very nearly a requirement due to file size
limitations, both in the computer software as well as on the
hoster/server. Large binary files are often busted into hundreds
of parts for later reassembly due to transmission (bandwidth and
continuity) limitations. If you really want to pull this off, you'll need
the on-site ability to dial up to the server and store the file in the
proper format, in the proper place, on the fly.... otherwise, you
deal with the limitations of the on-board software and the required
post production needs. If you want to help the guy, you need to
educate him. Anyone can do the recording, given the limitations
of 95% of all computer's file size restrictions.

Who is doing the format conversion?

What are the format requirements?

Who is doing the uploading to the server?

What are the server's requirements?

How will the server actually name and manipulate the file(s) to make
them available for streaming?

Has anyone actually looked into this beyond the idea of recording?

[gareth magennis]

"David Morgan (MAMS)" /Odm wrote in message
news:XvMck.829$Ae3.84@trnddc05...

"Gareth Magennis" wrote in message
...

Well unfortunately this requires uninterrupted recording, any gaps are
unnacceptable. It is a club night with a DJ blending tracks together
continuously, for rebroadcast on the Net.

Hmmm... then it seems as if there should have been someone
there with not only the appropriate software and the ability to
reassemble them with maximum transparency in post, but that
actually, the file(s) should have been immediately converted to
the proper format and stored directly on the server. That's not
something that any old Jowe Blowe can just walk in with a PC
and do. "Gaps" are very nearly a requirement due to file size
limitations, both in the computer software as well as on the
hoster/server. Large binary files are often busted into hundreds
of parts for later reassembly due to transmission (bandwidth and
continuity) limitations. If you really want to pull this off, you'll need
the on-site ability to dial up to the server and store the file in the
proper format, in the proper place, on the fly.... otherwise, you
deal with the limitations of the on-board software and the required
post production needs. If you want to help the guy, you need to
educate him. Anyone can do the recording, given the limitations
of 95% of all computer's file size restrictions.

Who is doing the format conversion?

What are the format requirements?

Who is doing the uploading to the server?

What are the server's requirements?

How will the server actually name and manipulate the file(s) to make
them available for streaming?

Has anyone actually looked into this beyond the idea of recording?






Well at the moment most of the night minus the last hour and a half (which
may not be recoverable as it may not even have been recorded) is now
streaming online, as an mp3 at 128K stereo with full track and artist
titles. You can't start from the beginning, you can only listen in to this
endless loop. So I guess the guy is capable or knows people capable of
putting it on the web, but is rather inept at recording it in the first
place. I suspect he was up for 24 hours splicing those 16000 temp files
together ........




Gareth.

[David Morgan \(MAMS\)]

"Gareth Magennis" wrote in message m...

"David Morgan (MAMS)" /Odm wrote in message
news:XvMck.829$Ae3.84@trnddc05...

"Gareth Magennis" wrote in message
...

Well unfortunately this requires uninterrupted recording, any gaps are
unnacceptable. It is a club night with a DJ blending tracks together
continuously, for rebroadcast on the Net.

Hmmm... then it seems as if there should have been someone
there with not only the appropriate software and the ability to
reassemble them with maximum transparency in post, but that
actually, the file(s) should have been immediately converted to
the proper format and stored directly on the server. That's not
something that any old Jowe Blowe can just walk in with a PC
and do. "Gaps" are very nearly a requirement due to file size
limitations, both in the computer software as well as on the
hoster/server. Large binary files are often busted into hundreds
of parts for later reassembly due to transmission (bandwidth and
continuity) limitations. If you really want to pull this off, you'll need
the on-site ability to dial up to the server and store the file in the
proper format, in the proper place, on the fly.... otherwise, you
deal with the limitations of the on-board software and the required
post production needs. If you want to help the guy, you need to
educate him. Anyone can do the recording, given the limitations
of 95% of all computer's file size restrictions.

Who is doing the format conversion?

What are the format requirements?

Who is doing the uploading to the server?

What are the server's requirements?

How will the server actually name and manipulate the file(s) to make
them available for streaming?

Has anyone actually looked into this beyond the idea of recording?






Well at the moment most of the night minus the last hour and a half (which
may not be recoverable as it may not even have been recorded) is now
streaming online, as an mp3 at 128K stereo with full track and artist
titles. You can't start from the beginning, you can only listen in to this
endless loop. So I guess the guy is capable or knows people capable of
putting it on the web, but is rather inept at recording it in the first
place. I suspect he was up for 24 hours splicing those 16000 temp files
together ........




Gareth.


I'm curious.... got a link ??


DM

[[email protected]]

On 2008-07-08 /Odm said:
Hmmm... then it seems as if there should have been someone
there with not only the appropriate software and the ability to
reassemble them with maximum transparency in post, but that
actually, the file(s) should have been immediately converted to
the proper format and stored directly on the server. That's not
something that any old Jowe Blowe can just walk in with a PC
and do. "Gaps" are very nearly a requirement due to file size
limitations, both in the computer software as well as on the
hoster/server. Large binary files are often busted into hundreds
of parts for later reassembly due to transmission (bandwidth and
continuity) limitations. If you really want to pull this off,
you'll need the on-site ability to dial up to the server and store
the file in the proper format, in the proper place, on the fly....
otherwise, you deal with the limitations of the on-board software
and the required post production needs. If you want to help the
guy, you need to educate him. Anyone can do the recording, given
the limitations of 95% of all computer's file size restrictions.

I posted to this thread and never saw it appear, so I"ll
recap my comments, which somewhat dovetail with DAvid's. I
don't understand why all these amateurs think they can take
the computer intended to balance Joe BLow's checkbook, do
word processing, play games and all sorts of other crap and
use it for mission critical audio recording live.
THis is why I went stand alone hard disk recorder for the
remote truck.

Even when folks are using what appears to be regular
computers off the street for this type of application the
operating system and hardware have been tweaked for
reliability. Unnecessary processes and drivers removed,
etc.

Iow, you get what you pay for. I"m a linux fan so it isn't
linux, it's that the fellow the op is trying to help isn't
clued up enough to know what's going on.
HE either needs to get that way or hire the pros.

YOU can bet we get a gig which is to provide streaming audio
I'll be consulting real networking experts to make sure our
connection is up to snuff. MOSt applications we'd probably
be tasked with would be streaming live as it happens, and
I've some serious questions about ways to do that.




Richard webb,
replace anything before at with elspider

[Mike Dobony]

On Tue, 8 Jul 2008 10:40:28 +0100, Gareth Magennis wrote:

"David Morgan (MAMS)" /Odm wrote in message
news:OZBck.657$HY.170@trnddc01...

"Gareth Magennis" wrote in message
om...
Hi,

a guy saturday tried to record the entire nights music onto his PC
laptop,
using Audacity. This is 8 to 9 hours total. The screen showed the
appropriate stereo waves right up to the end I believe, I was keeping an
eye
on levels most of the night. Apparently when he first tried to save the
single file, it showed a size of zero.

It should never, under any circumstances, have been a single file of
such duration.... a couple of hours is enough for common sense to
kick in if you've done this since before yesterday. Someone mentioned
getting what you pay for, but I think *they* were talking about software.
;-)

I got a text from him to say that he eventually managed to save the first
hour and a half, and that he had to manually piece together 16000 temp
files
to get the total recorded up to 6 hours or so, losing the last hour and a
half.

Hmmm.... :-(

Perhaps spending more time on the PC and less time on the telephone?

What is the maximum recording time, and/or is there a way to do a better
job of recording in the first place? I don't know any details of his
system
at all, just wondered if I could help him out.

There's just no way that I'd normally ever let a single file size exceed
the
max limit for an audio CD. Most software (I'm not an Audacity user) will
stop and start with the press of the spacebar, creating a new file with
each new start.... then, when the program is over, save each segment.
It only takes a fraction of a second to hit the space bar twice... losing
virtually nothing if done at an opportune time. Then again, one had best
pray for flawless battery transition, the mental illumination to turn off
any
sort of screen-savers, power-saving settings, etcetera, etcetera. Surely
there was *some* convenient time to have stopped recording and
saved the files; the shorter the files, the quicker the save, if saving is
even imperative at that point. Between 90 minutes and two hours is all
I'd chance going without opening a new file.


Well unfortunately this requires uninterrupted recording, any gaps are
unnacceptable. It is a club night with a DJ blending tracks together
continuously, for rebroadcast on the Net.


Cheers,


Gareth.

Again, too long of a recording for a single file. Best to use a recording
program that records directly to MP3 or WAV and automatically does a break
and record to a new file segment. For a few $$$$ Total Recorder does a
nice job of doing this, a very modest investment. I would suggest spending
the $$ for the Pro version.

Set the split at about 60 minutes. After recording you can combine 2
tracks together and do custom splits so that the slits don't happen in the
middle of songs. Then again, you have another problem, copyrights. DJ's
usually play copyrighted music and to copy them to rebroadcast on the net
is a copyright violation unless you get special (expensive) rebroadcast
rights to all the songs you put up on the net.

Mike D.

[Big Tim]

On Jul 8, 10:40*am, "Gareth Magennis"
wrote:
Well unfortunately this requires uninterrupted recording, any gaps are
unnacceptable. *It is a club night with a DJ blending tracks together
continuously, for rebroadcast on the Net.

Cheers,

Gareth.
Another way of doing this is to set up a stereo track in your DAW for
each hour of the performance, arm the first stereo track and start
recording. As it approaches the second hour of the performance, arm
the second track which will start recording and once you've got a
short crossover, disarm the first track so you're now only recording
on the second. When it gets towards the third hour, arm the third
track and disarm the second track when you've got a suitable
crossover. Repeat. That way you've got hour-ish-long chunks which
slightly overlap, leaving an easy edit to join them all back up again
into a continuous piece, and also smaller file sizes, each of which
will be saved out when the track is disarmed. It's a little more
interactive than just "setting and forgetting" but I'm quite sure even
Audacity can function in this way. Certainly anything along the lines
of Reaper or any LE version of Cubase, Sonar etc will cope quite
happily.

[Chris Whealy]

Gareth Magennis wrote:
Hi,

a guy saturday tried to record the entire nights music onto his PC laptop,
using Audacity. This is 8 to 9 hours total. The screen showed the
appropriate stereo waves right up to the end I believe, I was keeping an eye
on levels most of the night. Apparently when he first tried to save the
single file, it showed a size of zero.

I got a text from him to say that he eventually managed to save the first
hour and a half, and that he had to manually piece together 16000 temp files
to get the total recorded up to 6 hours or so, losing the last hour and a
half.


What is the maximum recording time, and/or is there a way to do a better
job of recording in the first place? I don't know any details of his system
at all, just wondered if I could help him out. He's somewhat embarrased and
frustrated, as he tried to do the same last month but didn't realise that
when he shut the laptop lid down, Audacity stopped recording, so only got
the first hour and a half.


Audacity's maximum recording time is calculated using the amount of free
disk space.

I've had lots of problems during long Audacity recordings - usually it
just crashed leaving a temp directory full of fragments. This has been
on PC, Mac and Linux. In the end, I gave up trying to use Audacity as a
recorder (I use SoundStudio instead) because it would crash after a
random period of time (usually around the 50 - 70 minute mark).

The temp files created by Audacity are .au format and are each 6 seconds
long. If you are recording in stereo, then you get a pair of .au files
for each 6 second block where (usually) the even numbered file
corresponds to the left channel fragment, and the odd numbered file to
the right channel.

Learn from my (bad) experience - don't use Audacity for recording
anything that you consider "mission critical". Its fine for a bit of
basic editing afterwards, but not for long recordings.

Chris W

--
The voice of ignorance speaks loud and long,
But the words of the wise are quiet and few.
---

[David Morgan \(MAMS\)]

"Chris Whealy" wrote...

Learn from my (bad) experience - don't use Audacity for recording
anything that you consider "mission critical". Its fine for a bit of
basic editing afterwards, but not for long recordings.

At the risk of repeating myself...

au·dac·i·ty [aw-das-i-tee] –noun, plural: -ties.
1. boldness or daring, especially with confident or arrogant
disregard for conventional thought....


The voice of ignorance speaks loud and long,
But the words of the wise are quiet and few.


The whole problem with the world is that fools and
fanatics are always so certain of themselves,
but wiser people so full of doubts.
-- Bertrand Russel

[Chris Whealy]

David Morgan (MAMS) wrote:
Learn from my (bad) experience - don't use Audacity for recording
anything that you consider "mission critical". Its fine for a bit of
basic editing afterwards, but not for long recordings.


At the risk of repeating myself...

au·dac·i·ty [aw-das-i-tee] –noun, plural: -ties.
1. boldness or daring, especially with confident or arrogant
disregard for conventional thought....


The voice of ignorance speaks loud and long,
But the words of the wise are quiet and few.


The whole problem with the world is that fools and
fanatics are always so certain of themselves,
but wiser people so full of doubts.
-- Bertrand Russel


What point are you making here? And what does it have to do with the
OP's questions?

I am an Audacity user - when its appropriate to use it. Its free
software and it does not perform up to the standards of commercial
software. It works in most situations but is not (in my experience)
reliable enough for long recordings.

Audacity does not record to a single file. It records to multiple .au
files of no more than 6 seconds duration - one per channel. This enables
(in theory) Audacity to record for as long as you have free disk space.
Therefore, you don't need to hit the space bar twice to stop and restart
the recording to avoid excessive file sizes. This is a great design
concept, but in practice, crashes happen typically because the OS is
unable to open the next temp file in time and Audacity craps out.

Exporting the recording in some format such as WAV or OGG or MP3 is a
whole different question. Its only at this point in time that file size
needs to be considered.

Chris W

--
The voice of ignorance speaks loud and long,
But the words of the wise are quiet and few.
---

[Mike Rivers]

Chris Whealy wrote:

I am an Audacity user - when its appropriate to use it. Its free
software and it does not perform up to the standards of commercial
software.

That's not really an accurate statement. What defines "the standards of
commercial software?" What you really mean is that it isn't well suited
for extended periods of recording. What PC or Linux program, commercial
or not, is capable of recording continuously for ten hours? And have you
tested it to verify that it actually does, and in what form?

It works in most situations but is not (in my experience)
reliable enough for long recordings.

It's not about reliability, it just isn't designed to do that.

Audacity does not record to a single file. It records to multiple .au
files of no more than 6 seconds duration - one per channel. This enables
(in theory) Audacity to record for as long as you have free disk space.
Therefore, you don't need to hit the space bar twice to stop and restart
the recording to avoid excessive file sizes. This is a great design
concept, but in practice, crashes happen typically because the OS is
unable to open the next temp file in time and Audacity craps out.

This is a rather elegant design, I think. The fact that the computer
(which includes the operating system) can't handle the program's output
over an extended period of time isn't a fault of the program. Perhaps a
faster computer would work fine. Perhaps a fast enough computer/OS
hasn't been invented yet.

Exporting the recording in some format such as WAV or OGG or MP3 is a
whole different question. Its only at this point in time that file size
needs to be considered.

And that's an important consideration if the requirement is a
continuous, no-break, ten hour net broadcast.

--
If you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring and reach
me he
double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo -- I'm really Mike Rivers
)

[[email protected]]

Mike wrote:
That's not really an accurate statement. What defines "the
standards of commercial software?" What you really mean is that it
isn't well suited for extended periods of recording. What PC or
Linux program, commercial or not, is capable of recording
continuously for ten hours? And have you tested it to verify that
it actually does, and in what form?
even though I hate windows to pieces and don't use a mac
this is why I don't like using general purpose computer
system for recording mission critical audio.
Everybody wants to cheap out, wimp out, take this laptop
with some sort of audio interface out of the bag and do
mission critical audio with it.
IF it's got to be to some sort of media such as hard disk,
what's wrong with a system which does one thingg, and that's
play and record audio, creating standard files such as
broadcast wav, etc. in the bargain?
tHe os doesn't need a scren saver, printer drivers, all that
crappola you don't need. A one trick pony as it were.

That's why even with the hoops that have to be jumped
through to get audio into standard formats at the end of the
job I went with the Alesis multi-track unit.
AT least a guy can give a client a cd-r with hd24tools at
the end of the night along with his hard disk if the client
doesn't have the Alesis fireport etc.

HEre again the old tag line fits. "WHen the only tool
you've got is a hammer everything begins to look like a
nail."
THat's the only tool these manufacturers want to give us,
because after all these boxes are supposed to do everything
better and cooler than anything we've ever seen. hrrrumph


If you put garbage into a computer, nothing comes out
but garbage. But this garbage, having passed through a
very expensive machine, is somehow enobled, and none dare
criticize it.




Richard webb,
replace anything before at with elspider


Google aids and abets spammers!!!

[Mike Rivers]

Chel van Gennip wrote:

It's not about reliability, it just isn't designed to do that.

In Linux this works reliable. On a MT2496 too,

But we're talking about Audacity here. When I check out a new disk drive
for my Mackie HDR24/96, I hook a radio up to it, put it in Record, and
let it run all day. That works, too.



--
If you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring and reach
me he
double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo -- I'm really Mike Rivers
)

[gareth magennis]

"Chel van Gennip" wrote in message
...
Mike Rivers wrote:
Chris Whealy wrote:

I am an Audacity user - when its appropriate to use it. Its free
software and it does not perform up to the standards of commercial
software.

That's not really an accurate statement. What defines "the standards of
commercial software?" What you really mean is that it isn't well suited
for extended periods of recording. What PC or Linux program, commercial
or not, is capable of recording continuously for ten hours? And have you
tested it to verify that it actually does, and in what form?

Well, in Linux one could experiment on a command line with:
rec -c 2 -f w -r 44100 -t RAW - | lame - recording.mp3
You need about 60MByte of free space per hour, so for 10 hours you need
about 600MByte free space.

You might choose another kind of compression or no compression at all,
with different space requirements.

For this the free packages "sox" and "lame" should be implemented on your
Linux system.

If you don't want all these difficult commands on a command line, buy a
MT2496, set record format to MP3 of your desired quality and press record.
That will do about the same.
For such long recordings external power for the MT2496 is recommended.

It works in most situations but is not (in my experience)
reliable enough for long recordings.

It's not about reliability, it just isn't designed to do that.


In Linux this works reliable. On a MT2496 too,

I don't know if sox or lame were specifically designed to do this, but
getting audio input and put it as a RAW PCM stream on an output pipe is
within the design of sox, and taking a PCM stream from an input pipe and
saving it in a MP3 file is within the design of lame.
That are normal Unix/Linux design philosophies.

Linux is designed for sufficient long uptimes without crashes too.

--
Chel van Gennip (chel vangennip nl)
Visit Serg van Gennip's site http://www.serg.vangennip.com



Sorry, havent been able to contact the guy til now, but it seems that the
Server is Linux, the recording laptop is actually running Windows.
It looks like the Net side of things is pretty much sorted, they seem to
know what they are doing as it is currently streaming. It is just the live
recording side of things, the subject of this thread, that could do with a
little more work.



Gareth.

[Richard Corfield[_3_]]

On 2008-07-08, Chris Whealy wrote:

Audacity does not record to a single file. It records to multiple .au
files of no more than 6 seconds duration - one per channel. This enables
(in theory) Audacity to record for as long as you have free disk space.
Therefore, you don't need to hit the space bar twice to stop and restart
the recording to avoid excessive file sizes. This is a great design
concept, but in practice, crashes happen typically because the OS is
unable to open the next temp file in time and Audacity craps out.


I wonder if the bigger factor is therefore the filesystem you're
working on. Different filesystems have different levels of support for
large directories. On some it's very inefficient, and on some (older
Windows?) it can be hard limited.

Suggestions to the Audacity developers would be

Consider longer segments
Consider directory trees, maybe a new directory every 10 minutes
or so.
Consider making it tuneable if not already.

On modern Linux with filesystems able to take terabyte files consider
using mmap? Someone else may know more than me about mmap for
more time critical work. For a start, the OS becomes responsible for
what's in RAM and what's not so it may be a bad bad idea. Still, a
modern filesystem should be able to seek quite quickly.

- Richard