Sound Compressing

I have some audiotapes, about 65 hours worth, so a big box of high quality audiotapes that came out of some recent qualitative testing. I?d like to give them to the client on DVD, so they can post the files to a server, if they want. I?ve got 2 questions?

1) I?d like to send this out, I think it is too much for us to do ourselves. Do you know of anyone, or even just the type of business that might provide this service? Ideally, they?d be local to me, but I guess I could consider sending the tapes off if I couldn?t find local service.

2) Do you have a recommendation for data compression? For Sound files that we?ve recorded using our micro recorder, Byron has recommended .wav files, to preserve the quality. We do want high quality, but the files are very large. Any other ideas?

Thanks!
Luna Antonioni

1) What sort of tapes, are they DAT's?
2) Do you just need the data (aiff, wav, mp3) files burned to DVD or do they need to be able to play the audio on a DVD player?
3) What format are the micro recorder files in already?

Hi there ...
They are analog cassette tapes, and they will be put onto DVD only for storage.
What would be a high quality format (yet not massive size), and what is the best way to go from analog tape into the computer? RCA to camera to firewire in? Or some better way?
Thanks for the help!
Luna

aac seems like a pretty good form of audio compression to my ears.

mp3 might be a bit more universal, though.


nick

I wouldn't consider analog cassette tapes a "high quality" format.
As to a way of digitizing, if you're looking for the best possible quality, then get a hold of a decent cassette player with xlr or 1/4" balanced outputs. I would then digitize into a sound app that has a choice of codecs to use. Do a test and pick which codec you feel offers the best quality, verses file size.

If no one is planning on doing anything other than listening to the audio files after they are on DVDs, I'd go with high bitrate mp3 for universality or aac for file size/quality.
If there is ANYONE in the organization that has plans, even as yet unspoken, to process, clean up, re-use or do anything else with the files I would bite the bullet and record the files to 44.1Khz/16bit AIFFs or if it's totally broadcast/tv/film material 48Khz/16bit. You could fit four hours on one DVD as data, and if you already have a DV camera or deck you could loop audio through the deck from your audio cassette player and capture as 48/16 files and burn the results without any post processing.
It's not a studio quality way to capture audio but cassettes, even ones made from the iron particles plucked from the eyelashes of magnetic angels are not studio quality. But you don't want to compress whatever signal you do capture if you plan on doing anything with it later. The future sound person will thank you.

ak

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

Thanks gang-
So, I was thinking of going RCA into my dv cam, capturing into FCP. Then burning the aiffs onto DVD.
Although I like the idea of going straight into a recorder. Except I'd need additional RCA jacks then.

I don't know much about DVD recorders but I am guessing that your control over what format they record in and how useful it would be to you after would be limited.

It would probably mux the audio into a mpeg2 file or something stupid that you would have to extract to get at later.
I am willing to be proven wrong by the existence of a DVD recorder that can record PCM files to DVD and play them back and make them accessible on a computer.

There are CD recorders that do this quite well however. One disk would probably equal one cassette based on my memory of making mix tapes and killing the record industry way before this whole mp3 nonsense.

ak

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

True, it probably would be limited in control, and be a mpeg2.
I think I'll go from a deck, into camera, firewire into computer, compress, burn.
So ... there are 65 tapes. Any ideas as to how much I should charge/quote?
Luna

Quote
alquimista
Any ideas as to how much I should charge/quote?

Is it your FCP gear? Is it your camera? Will you buy the blank discs?

If you already have a rate for editing that you are comfortable with, base it on that. If the work of getting all this material to disk can't be automated to the point where you are able to do other work then you should charge your regular rate. If half the time is spent burning disks and watching House while you render or while you're editing other things you could consider that a factor in how much you are charging.

If you are doing it informally, quote a high number and if they don't blink add "per day"

ak

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

If somebody held a gun to my head and said I had to do this, I would find a reasonable "living room" quality cassett player and plug the line outputs directly into the Line In of my iBook/PowerBook, etc.

Download the free Audacity audio program and go to town. I think you can do it in GarageBand as well, but that is an extra cost item.

That's one way we record meetings at work. Audacity will natively export WAV files and several others. With an extra download, it will also produce MP3 files.

Have you listened to any of these tapes? Pre-Dolby cassett audio tapes are pretty dreadful. There are a number of tricks you can play to make analog cassett tapes sound pretty good, but the better you do, the worse the interchangability becomes.

Commercial audio cassettes with music performances on them tend to be recorded "flat" with no corrections other than to get the type of tape oxide right. They play with a high hiss level and some distortion.

Top quality tapes are Chromium Dioxide as a sound layer and Dolby C or DBX noise reduction. Those can sound very good--but only on a deck that knows what all those conditions are. Those tapes sound awful on a plain deck.

Koz

Hmmm, great suggestions (especially the 'per day', lol) ...
It is my equip yes, and Koz I like the idea of the line-in, hadn't thought of that. Would the quality be comparable to firewiring in? Probably.
Well, will throw all this around, but it looks like it'll be pretty simple.
Thanks for all the input everybody!
Luna

well i hate to bring in a dirty word but protools mbox would probably be a perfect way to do this. with the mbox2 you can go directly into a 44.1/16 or 48/16 environment and you are not limited on time. the hardware has a wide choice of interfaces to use ( rca,xlr,1/4inch...) if the tapes have separate track you could just record 1 track and then cut it put as needed.
the great thing about this process is that once in protools you could teak the frequencies to be whatever you need it to be quality wise.

you may not have protools but if you have $500 you will be happy with how many ways it can be used. it even takes video.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"