BBC Radio Scotland

Currie · Post by **Currie** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 8:57 am

This is probably old news to many but for any newcomers Radio Scotland programs can be listened to online at the BBC Radio Player at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/mainfram ... romo.shtml

Just click "select a radio station" at the top to find Radio Scotland and a wide range of BBC Radio stations including local radio. They are having some problems with the player at the moment and not all programs are available but they can be heard on the individual stations web sites. Such as http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/

It is possible to record these programs using Audacity (free) or something similar and this seems to be OK according to the terms of use as long as it is only for personal use. (Someone could correct me if I'm wrong).

Happy listening,
Alan

Edit: I should add that you may need a Broadband connection to get a satisfactory reception. Note also that internet radio is a moderately heavy user of bandwidth and you may have to keep an eye on your download limit if applicable.

rye470 · Post by **rye470** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 4:30 pm

Hi Currie,

If you listen on a Sunday morning at 11.00 GMT, you'll hear our David on 'Digging Up Your Roots'.

Being stateside, I'm able to pick when it suits me to listen. I'm afraid I'm still pushing out the Zzzzzz's at that time on a Sunday.

Christine.

DavidWW · Post by **DavidWW** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 4:39 pm

rye470 wrote:Hi Currie,

If you listen on a Sunday morning at 11.00 GMT, you'll hear our David on 'Digging Up Your Roots'.

Being stateside, I'm able to pick when it suits me to listen. I'm afraid I'm still pushing out the Zzzzzz's at that time on a Sunday.

Christine.

Sadly the last in the series was last Sunday, and that will still be on the BBC website until tomorrow (Sat).

The programme returns in January ...............

David

rye470 · Post by **rye470** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 9:57 pm

Hi David,

Currie's post reminded me that I hadn't listened to last week's programme yet. Did that while I was sitting here last night and managed about 3/4 before sound problems intervened. Seems the BBC are having a problem with their listen again option.

If I have any problems reading old wills, I'll be in touch.

I'll have to keep make a note to watch out for your return in January.

Christine

Jamboesque · Post by **Jamboesque** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 12:50 am

It's just a pity that the program is not downloadable as a podcast, so we can refer to it over a period of time.

I've taped/recorded most of WDYTYA and sometimes refer back to get ideas on where to go next. Well it works for me and I'm pretty sure the Digging up your Roots programme could be used in the same way if you made your own index to find stuff.

I wonder if its a copywright/DRM problem?

Currie · Post by **Currie** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 5:21 am

Hello Jamboesque,

It’s just that the BBC has chosen that particular method to broadcast. My understanding is that it is permissible to record any of the BBC broadcasts as long as the recordings are for personal use. See the terms of use.

Any sounds produced by your computer can be recorded by your computer. All good things are free and probably the best program to use for this purpose is Audacity, available as a free download from Snapfiles and many other places.

It’s usually just a matter of installing the program, starting the broadcast, and hitting the Audacity record button. The drop down box at the bottom of the Audacity toolbar should probably be set to “stereo mix” although this may vary depending on your sound hardware.

Make sure the mike and speaker sliders on the same toolbar are central and experiment with the settings to ensure that the visual representation of the recording is strong but not so strong as to ever be hitting it’s head against the top of the bar (clipping).

While recording you can listen in & do other tasks on your computer or browse the internet, but don’t forget to turn it off when it’s finished otherwise it will just keep recording and use up all the empty space on your drive. You can make as much noise as you like while this is going on.

There can be variations depending on whether the program is coming via the BBC Radio player or Listen Again. I find the Player easier to keep track of things but they are having some problems at the moment.

You will have to keep the recording window open while recording if browsing simultaneously. Firefox users will know what to. Those using Internet Explorer should be made aware that tabbed browsing is available in the latest version of IE. Those using older versions of IE may have to open a second instance of IE. (Correct me if I’m wrong about this as I haven’t used the old IE jalopy of a thing for years).

Once the recording is made you can remove the unwanted bits and edit it to the limits of your imagination. The recording can then be exported as an mp3 using the file menu and these mp3s can be played on your computer, ipod, DVD player and many of the more recent CD players. There are better compressed formats than mp3 but they are not as universally known. If you intend to fiddle with the recording later export it in the Wav format otherwise a later save to mp3 may result in noticeable quality loss.

The raw recording (& wav) of a half hour program takes up about 300mb but the mp3 version is about 27mb and you can fit about 12 hours of recordings onto a normal CDR and more than 48 hours onto a DVD. (This would be a Data CD or DVD - a free burning program such a DeepBurner will do any task you throw at it and is probably far easier to use than the juggernauts you pay for or which came with your PC).

I have countless hours of BBC recordings I have recorded for personal use. I have also transferred a small number of life histories from tape to mp3 using a cable between tape machine line out and computer audio line in and selecting “line in” from the drop down box.

I would encourage anyone with precious audio tape to consider transferring the content to a more modern media. Audio tape is continually deteriorating and is rapidly dying as a technology. You could end up with great grandchildren using it as streamers because they don’t know what it is. Be warned however that the most modern media we use today will not last anywhere near as long, as a technology, as audio tape has. You will have to keep your valuable recordings up to date and remember to backup, backup, backup.

Alan