I’ve been advised by Police to use a sound recorder to capture noise, particularly loud bangs when doors slamming throughout neighbours house, which is being used as a form of harassment.
I received advice to buy a Jigmo JVR-32-32G, which I’m attempting to use for this purpose.
It is recording sounds well, but unfortunately I am totally inexperienced with setting up to use with Audacity for playback purposes.
What I have for Timelapse camera is a date and time of images captured, to easily locate playback period.
When opening file with sound recordings, on it is showing date in format 22020725, which is easily recognised but do not have a corresponding time to go to event that I’ve heard. Is there a way to have time appear along with date on recording playback? This date is of saved file, so does not correspond to date when recording commences, only when saved. Is there anyway to do what I’m attempting or should I be looking at this from another direction?
Have left sound recorder running for a couple of days, it is picking up a lot of sounds, especially of nearby busy road, as I have upstairs windows open (recorder is downstairs), can hear all kinds of sounds but so far have been unable to detect the loud bangs coming hrough from neighbours.
Is there a way to have time appear along with date on recording playback?
Lack of Time-Of-Day display, capture, and certification is one of the reasons Audacity can’t be used for Surveillance, Law Enforcement, and Conflict Resolution.
Do the JIGMO instructions mention any way to carry time-of-day in the recordings?
I see the recorder has Voice Activated Recording. That’s the last thing you want if you have no reliable way to manage time display.
You can get video recorders to record time with your performance.
There are expensive broadcast ways to carry time, but they’re awkward to use and take up one of the two stereo sound channels.
How did you get your existing recording? I can think of one method of getting a burned-in time reference. Get a receiver that can tune one of the WWV or CHU-Canada short wave stations where they announce the correct time every so many seconds. “CHU CANADA, FIVE HOURS, THIRTY FIVE MINUTES. [BEEP.]”
Then turn off the receiver but don’t stop the recorder. Start recording the doors. The sound file will give you the date. Use the rolling time displays in Audacity to get event time. You may need a time calculator.
Is that because the neighbours were not banging in that time period,
or because the Jigmo voice recorded failed to pick up the noise,
or because you can’t find the bangs in the 2 day recording?
Do the JIGMO instructions mention any way to carry time-of-day in the recordings?
Waiting reply from Jigmo.
so far have been unable to detect the loud bangs coming through from neighbours.
Is that because the neighbours were not banging in that time period,
or because the Jigmo voice recorded failed to pick up the noise,
or because you can’t find the bangs in the 2 day recording?
Cannot locate bangs on recording.
I’ve been advised by Police to use a sound recorder to capture noise, particularly loud bangs when doors slamming throughout neighbours house,
What did they say the recording was for?
You could slide the entire recording along the time-line to correspond to its starting time. For example the following recording starts at 1:30PM. You will have to get creative at the midnight boundary:
So why are you “tampering” with it in Audacity? Surely if the police want evidence, they would want the original, unmodified recording
Please note that we are not able to give legal advice, (though I would have thought that this would be a matter for your local council rather than the police).
If you can phrase your questions here so that they are specifically about using Audacity, then we will probably be able to help with those aspects.
Many years ago (when I was still a developer) I worked on a very early theatre booking system.
One of my task was to write the driver app for the ticket printing - I spent a good couple of days figuring if 12:00 was Am or PM (similarly 00:00/14:00) - most tickets had the for of say 7:30pm.
In the end I settled for the text Midnight and Mid-day for those to edge cases …
You could slide the entire recording along the time-line to correspond to its starting time.
So you could tamper with the evidence. See where we’re going with that?
they would want the original, unmodified recording
Seems to me if that messing about in Audacity doesn’t bother you, you could record yourself slamming your own doors. Success rate would go way up if you did that. Nobody has to know except us. Keep a log of the real slams and noises and replicate that in your house. Then it’s up to them to prove it’s not the real thing.
Just to be clear I’ve been advised by Jigmo to use Audacity to hear playback of recordings.
I only wish to be able to locate the ‘noise’ I’ve heard, to find out if it has been picked up by recording.
Once I’m satisfied that the noise is being picked up, then I can just leave on to record and produce as evidence.
I have no desire to tamper with evidence, that is illegal, as I have said if I hear the noise I can note the time, but presently am having difficulty finding noise, as time not shown.
Jigmo have not as yet got back to me, but so far their customer service has been first class.
Sorry for any misunderstandings.
but you can see how easy it would be to tamper? That makes it very weak evidence because it is virtually impossible to prove that you haven’t tampered with it.
It’s not that hard to use the Audacity time listings on the bottom of the time line and your paper and pen notes. Particularly if you only have to do it once or twice. Note when you start the recording and then another note when you hear the door slamming in real life.
Subtract those two times. Add that number of hours and minutes to the start of the timeline. As mentioned forever, Audacity doesn’t make this easy by being able to tailor the timeline.
I have an actual time calculator from when all we had was long, thin, brown videotape.
