[cma-l] Remote Contribution Infrastructure

Mon Oct 3 12:59:15 BST 2016

At Eden FM, we use a laptop, Yamaha 03 mini-mixer, USB mic and headphones. PlayIt Live software with mucis, Butt as an encoder. Fed either to wi-fi, or to a 3G dongle. We stream back to the studio, so there is a delay, meaning this is more of a one-way broadcast, rather than two way interview.

Recent fun story on that, was last month when the Tour of Briotain cycle race came through the town. We did a live OB with the above kit. BBC Radio Cumbria were there and cvame to see whatw e were doing, assuming it was recording or inserts. Told them we were 100% live for two hours. They asked where the studio kit was! They had a van with a satellite dish, doing just inserts as they couldn;t do a full live show from it.

We ove the simple thinmgs in life :)

That said, we will look more closely at Skype for live stuff.

Also, for interviews, we have used an iPhone with a Voice Recorder app, plus a decent mic plugged in. Audio with this app can be saved, emailed, or saved to Dropbox. This means interviews can be used almost immediately from the studio email/Dropbox.

Beats the old Uher I used to carry!

-Nigel-
Eden FM, Penrith
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Two Lochs Radio 
  To: The Community Media Association Discussion List 
  Sent: Monday, October 03, 2016 12:38 PM
  Subject: Re: [cma-l] Remote Contribution Infrastructure

  Now that's one thing that never made it on to our show featuring music based on "50 things you might find in a lady's handbag"... no-one ever suggested a 12V lead acid battery!

  Alex

    On 02 October 2016 at 20:24 Mike Davison <mike at g1sbn.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:

    I was hoping someone would mention Skype. We have three kits for live interviewing as bi-lateral operation.

    They are affectionately known as THB1,2 and 3. THB stands for 'Talking Hand-Bag'.

    THB1 is just a simple mobile 'phone with 12volt Yuasa battery powering a car kit in a bag with sockets for mic and headphones. Quality just tolerable but it was a start and simple to use. One of our technophobe volunteers likes it.

    THB2 is a HP Netbook with 3G dongle in a Maplin flight case and sockets for mic and headphones. It is used with Skype only for interviewing.

    THB3 is a Windows phone clamped on a board with notepad and a 3rd party adapter to feed headphones and take a mic. It can be used on Skype or as a mobile accepting a quality reduction if internet connection not good.

    THB2 is also pressed into service for unilateral use on full remote OB operation using Windows Media Encoder streaming directly over the internet to studio where a PC runs WinMedia Player. We have done 4 hour OB's with no glitches being observed on a CD quality stereo link. The down side of using this 'free' software is a 7-8second delay but that's easily covered up.

    Mike Davison, Tempo FM.

    On 02/10/2016 16:16, Two Lochs Radio wrote:

      We've done numerous on the fly OBs - generally just using a laptop with ICEcast or similar over public internet, with complete success - all it needs is a reasonable broadband connection (we have no 3G let alone 4G within 50 miles!). But that's strictly for one-way work, with the whole show originated at the far end. 

      For really occasional two-way work not needing music from the far end we use Skype - as long as a decent microphone and reasonably powerful PC is used, the quality of Skype nowadays is remarkably good. Of course for really on the fly work you can use a smartphone running Skype for the remote end (and there are some quite high quality proprietary solutions for smartphones).

      For high-quality low-latency interviews and two-way shows we used to use ISDN, but once a regularly weekly two-way show finished we couldn't justify the couple of hundred pounds a quarter for the line rental just for occasional use.

      Alex

      (PS if anybody would like to buy two AudioTX ISDN licences we could talk!).

        On 02 October 2016 at 12:17 Callum McLean <mail at callum-mclean.co.uk> wrote:

        I was thinking about the Barix kit, but I didn't get the impression
        that it was going to be robust enough... 

        Good to know that other people have used the PS-kit successfully - and
        cheers for the heads-up about potentially high latency in the MP3
        format! Was hoping not to go down the MP3 route in any case, but still
        good to know...

        Good shout about using SIP to negotiate the connection - will look into
        it!

        Has anyone used this sort of kit in a flyaway environment - i.e. not in
        installations? Typically, this is the sort of thing where most people
        might use a) an ISDN line; b) a flyaway sat connection; c) a bonded 4G
        link. We *were* going to go down the multiple-carrier bonded 4G route,
        until the cost just became prohibitive for what we want to achieve.

        Also, to answer Iain's question, we're only using this over the public
        internet - the plan is to require the venue hosting the OB to provide
        us with a solid, wired internet connection - protected within their own
        networking infrastructure, where possible, and then do everything we
        can to keep latency and bandwidth down whilst retaining audio quality.
        The only downside with the Sonifex kit is that they don't support
        encoding in Opus :(

        Cal McLean

        --
        Station Technician // Halton Community Radio 92.3 FM
        mail at callum-mclean.co.uk

        _______________________________________________

        Reply - cma-l at commedia.org.uk

        The cma-l mailing list is a members' service provided by the Community Media Association - http://www.commedia.org.uk
        Twitter: http://twitter.com/community_media
        http://www.facebook.com/CommunityMediaAssociation
        Canstream Internet Radio & Video: http://www.canstream.co.uk/
        _______________________________________________

        Mailing list guidelines: http://www.commedia.org.uk/about/cma-email-lists/email-list-guidelines/
        _______________________________________________

        To unsubscribe or manage your CMA-L mailing list subscription please visit:
        http://mailman.commedia.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/cma-l

      > http://mailman.commedia.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/cma-l

_______________________________________________

Reply - cma-l at commedia.org.uk

The cma-l mailing list is a members' service provided by the Community Media Association - http://www.commedia.org.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/community_media
http://www.facebook.com/CommunityMediaAssociation
Canstream Internet Radio & Video: http://www.canstream.co.uk/
_______________________________________________

Mailing list guidelines: http://www.commedia.org.uk/about/cma-email-lists/email-list-guidelines/
_______________________________________________

To unsubscribe or manage your CMA-L mailing list subscription please visit:
http://mailman.commedia.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/cma-l

    _______________________________________________

    Reply - cma-l at commedia.org.uk

    The cma-l mailing list is a members' service provided by the Community Media Association - http://www.commedia.org.uk
    Twitter: http://twitter.com/community_media
    http://www.facebook.com/CommunityMediaAssociation
    Canstream Internet Radio & Video: http://www.canstream.co.uk/
    _______________________________________________

    Mailing list guidelines: http://www.commedia.org.uk/about/cma-email-lists/email-list-guidelines/
    _______________________________________________

    To unsubscribe or manage your CMA-L mailing list subscription please visit:
    http://mailman.commedia.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/cma-l

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  _______________________________________________

  Reply - cma-l at commedia.org.uk

  The cma-l mailing list is a members' service provided by the Community Media Association - http://www.commedia.org.uk
  Twitter: http://twitter.com/community_media
  http://www.facebook.com/CommunityMediaAssociation
  Canstream Internet Radio & Video: http://www.canstream.co.uk/
  _______________________________________________

  Mailing list guidelines: http://www.commedia.org.uk/about/cma-email-lists/email-list-guidelines/
  _______________________________________________

  To unsubscribe or manage your CMA-L mailing list subscription please visit:
  http://mailman.commedia.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/cma-l
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.commedia.org.uk/pipermail/cma-l/attachments/20161003/ee95f2ce/attachment.html>