Sync radio audio broadcast with television video broadcast

[Gale Andrews]

I stumbled upon this software that has the ability to Time Shift while recording.
This is what it says:The Time-shift feature enables you to listen to recorded sound while a recording is being made. While listening, you can move anywhere within the recorded part of the sound stream and start playback. This feature is available for both ordinary recordings and when background recording Internet streams.
http://www.totalrecorder.com/productfr_trPRO.htm

I do not know if this is a common feature with digital audio editors.
Certainly would come in handy.
Wonder how hard it be to implement into audacity.

I don't know but it would be very related to the capabilities of the PortAudio library we use for Audio I/O.

I can add your vote for such a feature in Audacity.



Gale

[Gale Andrews]

I know of the above software you mentioned. Here a demo on YouTube of it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwCunk26dO8
Here is another. http://www.fountainware.com/Products/Au ... /index.htm I believe they both have record feature.
I have not tried them. If I did, would I be able to record the delayed signal through Audacity.

In principle, yes if you can record computer playback .


Gale

[rcavictor]

I don't know but it would be very related to the capabilities of the PortAudio library we use for Audio I/O.
I can add your vote for such a feature in Audacity.
Gale

Hello Gale,

You definitely can add my vote for such a feature in Audacity.
An example would be:
If you did not hear something correctly, you could back up the cursor/progress bar into the recorded part of the sound stream and play it again.
Then have a "Real time" button to click which jumps the cursor/progress bar back to the beginning or to "Real time" recording.
This would be a very unique feature.

There are a lot people that would rather listen to the local radio broadcast and sync-up the audio with the digital television processing lag time.
DirecTv and Dish network DVR satellite receivers have what is called a "Live Buffer" that automatically and temporally stores up to 90 or 120 minutes of audio video on to the hard drive. If you change channels you lose the "Live Buffer" unless you save it to the hard drive.
For some reason no one has done this with a radio receiver. To do it you would have to convert the analog radio signal to digital, put it on the hard drive then convert it back to analog. Maybe its not feasible.
It not the recording feature that's the most important, its the ability (After you say to yourself) "What did they say" to go back into the live buffer and hear the sound bite again.That's the most important.

I don't think http://www.totalrecorder.com/productfr_trPRO.htm should call it time shifting.
That implies recording and listening at a different time.
It should be called Live Buffer Review or Live Sound Stream Review or Recorded Sound Stream Playback
Audacity would garner a lot attention with this feature.
The only question is how hard would it be to do?

Thanks For the Reply,

Vic

[Gale Andrews]

I don't know but it would be very related to the capabilities of the PortAudio library we use for Audio I/O.
I can add your vote for such a feature in Audacity.
Gale

You definitely can add my vote for such a feature in Audacity.

OK it will be added.

DirecTv and Dish network DVR satellite receivers have what is called a "Live Buffer" that automatically and temporally stores up to 90 or 120 minutes of audio video on to the hard drive. If you change channels you lose the "Live Buffer" unless you save it to the hard drive.
For some reason no one has done this with a radio receiver. To do it you would have to convert the analog radio signal to digital, put it on the hard drive then convert it back to analog. Maybe its not feasible.

Audacity of course stores the recording as digital data on the hard drive.

Audacity currently lets you hear what you are recording by sending a delayed copy of the input to the output (software playthrough) but the delay is not configurable.

So you have two choices. You can hugely increase the buffer so you can somehow navigate it. This probably means you then won't be able to play anywhere near the current live point of the stream. It also relies on the computer having copious amounts of RAM.

Or you can play the audio you have already recorded from disk. This means given Audacity's current audio data block size that the part you can play will always be up to six seconds before the live point that's recording. You could reduce the block size but it would tax slower computers and risk recording damage.

I don't know what Total Recorder does exactly. I guess it's reading from disk but I don't have time to play with that right now. Peter may know what it does.


Gale