Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with audio and media

Multimedia-filter: Looking for help from all you Network and digital media Gurus in making my first house totally awesome. Movies, Televsion, Music, Wifi, Streaming Content and 50mgbt broadband within.

Cogentesque — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 05:03:13 -0800

Multimedia-filter: Looking for help from HDTV, NAS, Media Servers and Network Gurus' in making my first house totaly awesome. Movies, Televsion, Music, Wifi, Streaming Content and 50mgbt broadband within. Ok guys, this is my first new message on metafilter, so thanks for everything thus far - to business.

The Premise:
In two weekends time, my girlfriend and I are moving into our first house together in Southampton (UK).

Thankfully she is very accomadating and shares the same views with me reguarding the wonder of technology and allure of gadgetry and thus: we have decided to go down the "cyberhouse" network route - all be it slowly.

What we currently have
50mgbt line and a Television package from Virgin.
2 relatively high-spec PCs downstairs (in the lounge) (XP/Vista soon upgrading to Windows 7 im sure)
A new TV - to be bought - (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/154997/show_product_reviews?offset=10&review_type=both&review_order_by=RLF - ebuyer's own)
1 ipod touch
Host of parts to make a low spec PC.

What I would like in my cyber house
DVD's playable on the TV
Normal channels (Virgin package) playable on the TV
Video (films, episodes) from PC's playable on the TV
Music, both downstairs and upstairs: DAB radio/Cd's/Downloaded Music/Online Radio (last.fm etc would be great)
The ability to change the music remotely (ideally, different sources for different rooms)

Some ideas I've been looking at so far
KVM Switch and a long HDMI cable for my computer to use TV as alternative screen - enabling videos from pc to be played
NAT Storage hiding somewhere in the network
Popcorn Hour to play video from PC
Sonos music system to play upstairs and downstairs
Media pc configured to do the job of sonos and popcorn hour (apparantly this is very tricky?)

What do you think metafilter? Remember that we are definately "on a budget" but I much more trust your collective ideas and conceptions than my own - so what would you reccomend should be my immediate course of action?

Wirelessly synched media storage in the car?

poppo — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:02:04 -0800

I just put a new stereo head unit in my car and it has a USB port for connections to most media players. I'm looking for suggestions for one. What I'd like is a USB device that is minimum 80GB, has wireless 802.11 b or g, and is powered by only the USB. Bonus: It will automatically synch up by wireless to the music collection in my house without ever being removed from the car.

An 80GB iPod seemed an obvious choice, but these don't do wireless, while the newer iTouch has the wireless but not the capacity.

I figured a portable USB hard drive might be a possibility, but I can't seem to find one that is both powered by USB only and has wireless capabilities.

I've run across the Archos 605 wifi but it's on the pricey side, presumably because of the LCD, which I don't need.

Is there something out there which better fits my requirements?

Help me store & play media on the cheap.

shimmer — Sun, 24 May 2009 10:24:19 -0800

I bought my mac laptop just before digital media became the thing. That said, my internal hard drive just can't hold it all. There are a lot of variations on this question on the hive and other places, but I am having trouble finding an answer to a basic question. How fast does a external hard drive need to be to play music and video off of without hiccups or interruption? Want to spend <$100 if I can.

Podcast Playback

Jenna Roadman — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:27:26 -0800

How can I get podcasts in my iTunes to play continuously from one podcast to the next? Some podcasts are only two minutes and it's so annoying to have to go back and click the next track every time. Even when I put them in their own new playlist, they still stop at the end of the podcast.

How can I get them to act like normal audio tracks in general?

Audio-Video-Computing wish list

Echidna882003 — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 13:56:10 -0800

I'm moving and starting over just about from scratch. I'd like people's input on what I should do about setting up nifty integrated audio/visual/computing stuff in my new place. Here are some details:
1) I'm renting, so things like mounting speakers inside walls, drilling a bunch of holes for cables, etc. is probably out.
2) I will have a decent LCD HDTV.
3) I own a 80 hour dual tuner TiVo, I like it okay.
4) I own a PS3 (w/ remote), so I have a pretty good BluRay player.
5) I have my nice T60p laptop (with XP) and a decent dell desktop (with Ubuntu.)
6) cable internet and TV from Comcast (sigh.)
7. I'm fairly technically competent, I just haven't kept up in this area.

So what would you do? Media server? What kind of stereo components are essential or just nice to have? Universal remote of some kind? A safe way to make and watch "backups" of DVDs (wink)? Software recommendations? Internet radio? Clever integration?

Which awesome website do you folks love that deals with this kinda stuff?

Thanks folks!

(sorry if this topic has been covered before, but I'm a very special person who deserves a lot of individual attention, plus I'm very lazy!)

Best web audio/video players

avocet — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 13:24:38 -0800

What are the best embedded open source/free audio/video players? I'm looking at finding a flexible media player for an arts related site I'm working on. Although I'm looking for something that will handle an audio playlist (i.e. like the ubiquitous myspace player) bonus if it can also handle flash video as well. I really like Flowplayer but it is $75 for a license and while that is a fair price, I'd rather find something free and open source with an active community around it. I'm looking for something to manage .flv and .mp3 files and would appreciate some more options. Thanks!

What do I need to know to stream a TV station to between 500 and 100 people?

asnowballschance — Sat, 03 May 2008 09:29:44 -0800

How do I set up a server to stream media ? A client has contacted us about developing a website with a streaming TV station and a streaming radio station. The stations will run 24/7 with a great deal of duplicated content. Content items will run from 15 minutes to 2 hours. The client wants to set it up as a broadcast, so that if someone tunes in at 8am, he sees the same program as everyone else, just like with regular stations. Because of the need for playlists, it looks like progressive (http) downloads won't work; however, if there are alternatives to setting up a streaming server, I'd love to hear about them.

Right now, I'm getting a handle on hardware and coding requirements so that we can put a team together. We're in West Africa, so the budget is thousands of dollars, not tens of thousands of dollars. We're also looking at a maximum of about 1000 simultaneous users, but hoping to average between 100 and 500.

What kind of hardware should I be looking at for (managed dedicated) servers? And where can we find the Terabytes of bandwidth we'll need?

What do I need to know about compressing media (into Flash)? Best practices?

Anything else I should generally be aware of?

Licensing, content, and profitability are not my problems. Putting together a plan, a budget, and hiring people to do this are.

Powerful, Web-friendly media indexing?

mykescipark — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:36:51 -0800

I work on the production team for a long-running public radio program. We have a massive archive of shows in digital format (MP3 and AIFF) which we need to collate into a powerful and highly flexible database - something like iTunes, but much more advanced. Does a program exist to do this? The program should meet the following criteria:

- Simple interface (usable by audio pros and administrative staff alike)
- Resides on a server (audio files can be shared and accessed on-demand by multiple users)
- Web-interfaceable (outside users can log on and access database via the Web)
- Streaming and preview capability (users can listen to files before pulling from server)
- Flexible indexing and search (can be searched or sorted by media type, artist, show name, etc.)
- Permissions capabilities (files are "read-only" to most, but read/write to certain key staff)
- Supports (and, preferably, generates) ID3 and other media tags

At the moment, it is strictly for internal use only, but there is some possiblity that we will convert it into a storefront in the future so folks can buy archived shows directly from the database ... but I'm not worried about that right now.

Is there a really high-powered media indexing program that can do all of these things? Or at least a significant subset of them?

How does Apple TV behave?

ascullion — Mon, 14 May 2007 09:46:24 -0800

Can someone with an Apple TV tell me something? When you listen to a music track on your Apple TV, does the play count of the song in the relevant iTunes library increase?

How to put a WMA into a WMV with blank video?

superboy422 — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 12:03:54 -0800

How can I turn a WMA into a WMV with blank video? Here's what I would like to do. I want to take an existing MP3, which I will convert to WMA, but I want to wrap it into a WMV with nothing but blank video (or a static image that is displayed in every frame) so that it can be played on a device that only supports WMV files natively (but not WMA audio files).

Bonus points for finding an open-source way to do this that can be automated easily. If I need to do it by hand each time, it will will be significantly more inconvenient.

Help me find an app which converts qcp files.

Izzmeister — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 15:05:16 -0800

software to convert .qcp files to mp3 or wav? I have QCP extension files from my Treo (voice memos) which i have emailed to myself.

these show up as qcp files. I know I can convert them via http://media-convert.com for free, for example- but Ideally i like a freeware or shareware program which could do this for me.

thank you!

Conan, let me hear you.

diastematic — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 00:23:59 -0800

Where can I find an audio clip of Conan the Barbarian screaming?

Light, cheap portable video/DVD with excellent audio?

allterrainbrain — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 01:40:41 -0800

Portable DVD player, or video player, or custom-built Frankendevice, with VERY high-quality audio output?? Video quality doesn't matter (could even be b/w), but screen should be 8"+ and unit should be as lightweight as possible. For live concerts where I need to see video, just for my own reference, that's exactly in sync with my pre-recorded audio (so I would make DVDs or video files with my audio + the visuals I need). Laptop = expensive/heavy/overkill.

Making Windows Media Videos louder?

plexiwatt — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 13:33:29 -0800

Is there any fast way to raise the audio level on 20-30 .wmv files? I edited a box of rather long videos for a client, and upon delivery was told that the audio needs to come up. Apart from raising the audio on the original and rendering to Windows Media again, is there a program or other solution which will systematically change audio level on multiple files? Thanks!

Streaming media

Pretty_Generic — Sun, 27 Mar 2005 07:41:10 -0800

How does IE decide whether to stream a media file or download it fully before opening it? How can I get players other than Windows Media Player to properly stream mp3s with a browser click?

remote control for my XP-based mp3/video player?

aberrant — Sun, 13 Feb 2005 16:15:00 -0800

HTPC owners: need recommendations, based on your direct experience, on a remote control for my XP-based mp3/video player. More requirements inside. I need a remote and receiver that are 1) cheap, 2) able to be used with iTunes and WMP without much tweaking, 3) additionally customizable, 4) preferably have not too many buttons, and 5) be able to be programmed into a universal remote (traditional stereo). I'm thinking it has to be IR for #5, but please enlighten me if I'm wrong.

Thanks!

Which laptop is the best for multi-track audio editing?

punkbitch — Sun, 13 Feb 2005 13:00:10 -0800

Laptops (again). I want to buy one. Specifically, I want to know which laptop is the best for multi-track audio editing (and why). Aditionally, which software should I use if I want to create stories "pro" enough for radio journalism? Do I have to get pricey studio stuff? Finally, when people out there submit already-produced audio stories to say BBC, NPR, PRI, Pacifica . . . is there a simple way to send the files via email? What kind of file would it have to be?

Free Plugin or Filter for Audio Hijack to Reduce Artifacts From Low-Quality Audio?

Mo Nickels — Thu, 20 Jan 2005 20:44:03 -0800

Is there a free VST- or AudioUnit-compatibile plugin designed to remove or reduce compression artifacts from low-quality audio being re-recorded at a higher bitrate? Or special settings for a specific filter that will do this? I need one for AudioHijack on OS X.

Recording RealPlayer Streams

beniamino — Sun, 21 Nov 2004 20:59:42 -0800

How can I reliably record RealPlayer streams for later listening, on Mac OS X or Linux? [MI] HiDownload does the job pretty well on Windows. It downloads different bits of the stream in parallel, (apparently) at whatever speed the connection can handle. So a slow connection doesn't produce a glitchy download. But I don't have a Windows machine!

IRecordMusic is the nearest I've found on the Mac, but it records in real time so my flaky wireless connection results in annoying drop-outs. How can I get perfect downloads?

Are there portable satellite radio receivers?

grumblebee — Sun, 10 Oct 2004 09:36:15 -0800

What with all the brouhaha over Howard Stern's move to saltellite radio, I've become interested in this service. But I listen to music almost exclusively on-the-go. So I'd only subscribe if I could listen on an iPod-like device. Are there any small, portable satellite radio receivers? I tried Googling, but I'm too ignorant about receivers to understand the results.

What's the best software for recording real audio streams and converting to mp3?

echelon — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 09:35:16 -0800

What's the best software for recording real audio streams and converting to mp3?