© Mike Hally/Mark Holdstock 2005.
Why drive when you can "upload"?
Having done all that efficient digital stuff it’s a bit silly to dub your edited material onto ¼ tape or mini-disc. If you have to go to a studio, maybe to record links as well, then burn your edited material onto CD first.
That can be either:
An audio CD – the type that plays in any hi-fi or domestic CD player. Fine for most purposes, and most digital editors can import the material very quickly (much faster than playing in real time).
A digital CD – the type that a computer understands, just copy the whole digital editing “session”.
This is great if for example you’ve done rough editing on your version of Pro Tools at home, and you want a specialist digital editor to finish the job for you in a studio, also using Pro Tools. Some editing software will also import sessions from others (eg Sadie will import Pro Tools, with the right “add-on”) But the really whizzy way to do it ... ... is to send high-quality audio files straight from your computer over the internet to the BBC! No not those pesky MP3 files made famous first by music pirates and now by the legitimate market represented by the iconic iPod. This is a BBC-devised system using approved compression to reduce the file sizes and all from your own (preferably broadband) internet connection.
Mark Holdstock is the pioneer as far as our network is concerned and here’s his description (some of it’s a bit technical, but persevere – I’ve added some links to explanatory footnotes)
“Since going over to the NAGRA Ares [compact-flash recorder] I have been working exclusively in a digital format. The BBC has set up an ftp server, which can be accessed by any contributor, externally, with a simple login. There’s no cost or complicated bureaucracy to get a login and files can be sent (uploaded) using Internet Explorer 6.
Basically it works by uploading sound-files, edited or raw into a BBC Server, which can then be accessed by any producer in the corporation. Although the system works best with Broadband, it will work adequately with an ISDN dial-up connection, and can even be used via Wi-Fi hotspots in cafes. Once uploaded it can be retrieved from a web-page set up on Gateway.
We are using a file compression programme called FLAC, which stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, and is open-source software. Unlike MP3 this only compresses the computer code (a bit like Winzip) and has no effect on the Audio quality. Therefore the technical people are quite happy for it to be used - it is in fact used by Radio 3 for transferring sound files of classical concerts around the EBU. It works with .wav files encoding them to about a third of the size for sending and decoding them at the other end.
The Gateway web-page incorporates the FLAC decoder so there is an option to decode the file back to .wav very simply. The big advantages of this method of delivery are:-
1) You can upload stuff out of hours. You don't have to wait for a producer to get a studio to take oyur stuff in.
2) You don't need to have ISDN or to go into a BBC Studio to send material
3) There is no degradation of the sound quality of material.
4) You can send in material recorded as stereo from any computer over the internet. Bear in mind though that stereo files are twice the size of mono files.
The system is in its infancy, although the BBC is very keen on it. And the `systems' people who have been managing it are both helpful and enthusiastic. Also the uploaded material can be retrieved by producers at any BBC desktop computer.” (Mark Holdstock)
ftp server, stands for “file transfer protocol” and “server” just means a computer; you don’t need to understand what that means – it’s just something that will accept your audio files and put them onto the BBC’s internal network
wi-fi hotspot is a place where you can connect your (wireless-enabled) laptop to the internet – often in cafes. So if you do have an audio recording you need to get very quickly into the BBC system, that is the way to do it (while relaxing with a skinny latte).
open-source is free software written by gentle idealists instead of greedy capitalists
Gateway is the BBC's intranet system, available to virtually all staff, but mostly inaccessible to outsiders