Tivo For Radio--time Shifting Recordings

2003-07-08 00:58:11

As a proud owner of a Tivo, I would like to accomplish the same for some public radio broadcasts to which I (try to) listen.

I have found a radio station that streams them in mp3 format on the web and gained considerable knowledge about scheduling streamripper, the console program. I have a workable solution there but find it incomplete due to network congestions and restart errors that eliminate the previously recorded portion of the show.

Since I can pull public radio off the air locally, I could just as easily record the OTA broadcast if I could find suitable software.

No major company seems to make USB FM tuners anymore--particulrly with support for Windows XP, so my best bet seems to be a simple boombox to soundcard connection. The only downside there is the lower sound quality and lack of ability to change the channel.

I don't need a gui, so a console program which rips the line in (with a built in timer) would be ideal. The closest thing I can find to this is wavplay (which contains wavrec), for linux. Unfortunately, I haven't found the equivalent for XP.

Any insight about a console program for timed WAV recordings from line in on XP or a better way to record OTA? Note that I plan to ultimately convert the recordings to MP3 to listen to on my MP3 hardware player.

Tivo For Radio--time Shifting Recordings

Reply #1 – 2003-07-08 02:54:39

I just happened to find this review while searching for the article I had in mind for your question.Leadtek WinFast TV 2000 XP Deluxe Tuner Review From July 3rd.
Okay, here’s the article I believe I'm thinking of.A TiVo Player for the Radio
Btw, you could most likely use a batch file that is called from Windows Scheduler to accomplish your task.

I've been wanting to do something similar but unfortunately I want to record AM radio.
The best of luck to you, Tec

Tivo For Radio--time Shifting Recordings

Reply #2 – 2003-07-08 03:32:05

This might suit your needs, although I haven't tried it myself.

"Fairy Radio gives your TV/Radio card functions of a very expensive FM receiver. The full-scale TimeShift function lets you listen to any moment of broadcast. You can shift the time at any moment in any direction. The equalizer lets you tune the sound to your liking."

http://www.axife.com/fr/

It requires a TV capture card with FM radio capabilities - I have a LiveView Flyvideo 3000 which does this pretty well, though the Leadtek WinFast TV 2000 XP Deluxe Tuner does look pretty good.


Also, apparently the Archos Ondio has limited timeshift recording capabilities. I'm hoping that the FM remote module for Archos HDD-based multimedia players also has this feature.

.dd.

Tivo For Radio--time Shifting Recordings

Reply #3 – 2003-07-10 21:07:26

Thank you. The links that you sent were very useful. I have learned a lot about PCI based FM boards but I don't think I want to invest in a board, particularly since the most available and supported boards also include a TV tuner (and cost accordingly).

I think a simple line in from a digital radio tuner to my sound card (which I already have) is the easiest and most cost effective.

I am still searching for the following:

* a WinXP command line (preferably GPL) wav recorder (from line in and with a timer) a la wavrec (which I have only found for Linux)

* a WinXP command line noise reduction program (nothing extravagant required, I just want to eliminate most of the hiss in FM transmission, as this will permit greater compression easier listening by headphones). Again, I value open-source more highly than closed.

I could then create a batch file triggered by Windows scheduler, which calls --> wavrecorder --> noise reduction --> lame

Tivo For Radio--time Shifting Recordings

Reply #4 – 2003-07-10 21:33:35

Messer is not a command-line program, nor is it GPL; in fact, it is no longer even being developed at all, but it is still free, allows for scheduled recording, and is also capable of encoding directly to MP3 via lame_enc.dll. (The author has also updated the page to the final development snapshot: v0.992)

  SoX is a command-line tool which has many powerful sound processing options, and might be useful for the sort of noise reduction you desire (although this would either require using a different recording application, or using Messer to record in WAV format for post-processing).

  Hope this is useful.

    - M.

Tivo For Radio--time Shifting Recordings

Reply #5 – 2003-07-23 13:33:35

Here's my current solution:
* My radio plugs into my soundcard;
* Windows Scheduler triggers Linco;
* Linco records the line-in audio to std-out for a specified duration;
* FLAC compresses the audio to a temporary file;
* Ogg produces a high-quality lossy image suitable for listening in front of the computer;
* Lame produces a low-quality image suitable for portable MP3 players.

Some thoughts how I arrived here:

* I wanted to time-shift and space-shift predominately spoken word radio programs that air daily. I record in monoraul audio. I have noticed that spoken word can compress very low but, unless you use a very agressive lowpass, it frequently exhibits artifacts at low bit rates (most notably at the highest frequencies).

* There no longer appear to be any stand-alone FM USB adapters or FM PCI cards that are generally available and supported in XP. FM, where available and supported, is offered as an addition on TV tuner cards (overkill and expensive for my purposes). Ultimately, I defaulted to using an old receiver.

* Messer was visually appealing but a.) seemed limited to single instance recording; b.) lacked a stdout; and c.) is no longer being developed. I much prefer Windows scheduler's flexibility for repeating recordings on select days per week.

* I looked for a long time before settling on Linco (http://rm.pp.ru/?n=1&v=lineincode), a small command line program. SOX can record from line-in only on Linux; I am using XP. MPEGREC initally looked promising but lacked stdout and, more problematically, resulting in continual popping sounds during the recording. The Linco author was quite friendly and even added a duration function to support timed recording. Lineco requires 0-2% CPUand 4.3MB memory while recording.

* I chose FLAC (a lossless format) as a temporary format to facilitate processing.  If you don't intend to process your audio or encode in multiple lossy formats, you could record directly to a lossy format. FLAC saves me considerable disk space over WAV (at least 100MB) and requires little processing power. FLAC requires 0%CPU and 1.2MB while recording.

* My recordings exhibited considerable hiss and I searched for a long time for a way to reduce this annoying background noise. SOX could help considerably by running a lowpass filter. But SOX suffers from considerable piping issues and it wasn't worth encoding in WAV initially and outputting a second WAV file with SOX's changes. Beyond the issue of disk space, I wanted to reduce disk usage while recording for other programs continues (since some programs are back-to-back) and I use my computer for other functions. I looked for command line programs that would address hiss more effectively than a lowpass filter. All I could find on XP supporting stdin/out was dnoise and I never could get it to work properly. My ultimate solution? A trip to Radio Shack for a $20 FM outdoor antenna.

* I chose Ogg because it produces a transparent recording at a relatively low bit rate and is well supported in foobar. Ogg sounds noticably better than LAME at 40kbps and all but indistinguishable from the OTA broadcast.

* I have a Rio 500--a small flash-memory based MP3 player on which I wanted to listen to the programs. Naturally, I use LAME to record to MP3. While the recordings are effective, I have temporarily remarked out the LAME encoding until I can isolate system hangs that only appear to occur about once or twice a day during encodings of 1-3 hour MP3 files at low bit rates. This appears to occur regardless of the version of LAME encoder (3.90.2, 3.93, and 3.94). Because it isn't supported by my player, I ruled out WMA. In any event, I am not aware of whether WMA can be encoded at the command line via stdin.

* Long term, I would like to buy an iPod and encode directly in MP4 format. Unfortunately, Psytel is the only command line encoder that I know of that is recommended on this board. And while I can create MP4 files using that, it sounds inferior to Ogg at low bit rates. I am aware that the author of Psytel now works for Nero and have read that the current Nero MP4 encoder is significantly improved over Psytel. What I haven't seen anything to indicate that Nero 6, which will include unlimited MP4 encoding, will include a command line MP4 encoder a la Psytel.  While hard drive space is a luxury on the iPod, I still want the smallest file size possible because I am considering posting the audio files to a private ftp site so I can listen to them at the office.

An aside:
* I didn't reply for so long because Mozilla doesn't display the Reply/New message images since the bulletin board update. IE works just fine.



Here's my batch files:
INSTALL_-_BBC_WORLD_UPDATE.BAT (this is only necessary if you want to streamline scheduler mods)
@echo off
at 5:00 /interactive /every:M,T,W,Th,F  "c:\streams\schedule\rip_-_bbc_world_update.bat"

RIP_-_BBC_WORLD_UPDATE.BAT
@echo off
c:
cd \streams
echo BBC World Update archiver
echo This program should be scheduled to run at 5am EST, Monday - Friday
linco -B 16 -C 1 -R 44100 -D 1:00:00 | flac --endian=little --sign=signed --channels=1 --bps=16 --sample-rate=44100 --seekpoint=300s - -o bbc_world_update.flac %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9
call flac2oggp bbc_world_update
rem call flac2mp3p bbc_world_update
del bbc_world_update.flac

FLAC2OGGP.BAT
@echo off
oggenc2 %1.flac -q2 -o %1.ogg

FLAC2MP3P.BAT
@echo off
flac -c -d %1.flac | lame --preset 32  -mm --lowpass 9 --strictly-enforce-iso - %1.mp3

Tivo For Radio--time Shifting Recordings

Reply #6 – 2003-07-23 14:18:17

You can try Total Recorder, which will do timed recording from streamed audio or
soundcard input:

http://www.highcriteria.com/

I haven't tried it, but read of it on the Vorbis web site.