[peel] State of play

[Alasdair Macdonald]

2008/7/31 saipanda <saipanda@...>:

> Guess it makes good sense to go with Ken's idea and start by giving every tape an ID
> number so we can keep a track on who has what. Incidentally, do we have a final tally for
> just how many tapes we ended up with?


> 6. Not exactly sure on the best thing for tracklistings in the short term. Elsewhere, I've
> seen them uploaded on txt format files to go with the music file. Think this would be fine
> as an initial thing. Perhaps if any people who do digitizing of tapes find doing tracklistings
> as well too much time/trouble, we could throw open the job for particular FLAC files to
> volunteers from the list.
>
> Alternatively (additionally?), there's the question of a database, which would be excellent
> if it can be set up relatively easily. Seems to me it would be best to have something online
> and the simpler to use the better.

I didn't see any replies that addressed the informational / database
side of things (yet).

I haven't used http://peel.wikia.com/ (yet), but if it is available
for this project (and I certainly think it is suitable), a wiki is as
good a place as any to document this kind of project. I set up a wiki
at my workplace several months ago and we are finding it very useful.
Along the way we have encountered and solved a number of problems, and
I can see several strategies for using http://peel.wikia.com/ to
document and co-ordinate the project.

Although wiki-fied data doesn't have the relational database format
that would enable transportation and conversion to other platforms, it
is very much the flavour of the month - or of the decade - and page
data can be exported as XML, so there are some options for transport /
conversion. I don't know of any off the shelf "real" database that
would be up to the task (without additional programming), and although
I am a programmer by trade, I don't have time to choose a platform for
such a system, let alone write one. A wiki should do: it would provide
simple ways to enumerate tapes within this project, to flesh out the
contents of those tapes, and to create new articles like the ones that
are already in the wiki, once the identification of each tape was
confirmed.


Secondly ... file naming revisited. I had another thought; I think
that there is a strong argument for including the "source" (ie radio
station) of any peel recording within the filename. And a couple more
elements. So my new proposed standard naming convention is this:

peelCCYY-MM-DD.source.id-goes-here.digitiser[.complete|.incomplete][.sequence][.sample
size-bitrate].format

Sequence represents tape "side", or tape number, and may not be
appropriate or relevant in all cases.

Bitrate would be assumed to be 16bit @ 44k unless otherwise stated.

For instance:
peel1981-12-01.r1am.id-goes-here.rocker.flac

or
peel1981-12-01.r1fm.id-goes-here.rocker.b.16-44.flac
peel1981-12-01.r1fm.id-goes-here.rocker.b.256.mp3

peel1981-12-01.r1fm.id-goes-here.rocker.b.24-48.flac

The mp3 example above doesn't indicate the lossless source from which
it is derived, and I don't know if that would be of any importance or
significance to those who want, or those who would prepare the mp3
versions. I don't use mp3 files myself, so I can't really comment -
but if it were required, it oughtn't to be a problem to devise a
convention that would infer the lossless source within the mp3 name.

That would go something like this:
peelCCYY-MM-DD.source.id-goes-here.digitiser[.complete|.incomplete][.sequence][.sample
size-bitrate][.lossy attributes].format

For example:
peel1981-12-01.r1fm.id-goes-here.rocker.b.24-48.256.mp3
(ie an insane person makes a 24 bit / 48k digitisation which is then
converted to a 256kbps mp3).

The 44 / 48k sample rate issue might require some consideration; if
anyone intends to burn to CD, 44k is the only choice. If anyone
intends to burn to DVD, whether as LPCM or in a lossy format, 48k is
the only choice. 44k > 48k conversions are suboptimal (better to
capture in the preferred format to begin with), as are 48k > 44k
conversions (although probably slightly less so). from what I
understand, Blu-Ray and so on have more options.....


There *is* an argument for splitting what I have described as "source"
into two elements; the radio station and the broadcast type; so
"r1.fm" instead of "r1fm", but I don't necessarily see the value of
splitting it. If different sources were available, commonplace, and
desirable, it might be helpful. But in our case any "r1fm" version
would almost certainly obviate the need for any "r1am" source. The
source element really comes into its own for recordings that are not
the "default" - ie r1fm. I don't know how many circulate, from World
Service or the European stations, but the naming convention probably
needs such an element, in order to avoid clashes with a broadcast on a
different station on the same day.

There is *also* an argument for a .complete or .incomplete element.
logically, I think it would precede the sequence element.


Thirdly - the id. If it were me, I would use an alpha prefix and a
justified numeric suffix; it makes the id more human-readable. Rockers
stash could for instance have a "r" prefix, and since we know there
are several hundred (but less than 1000) cassettes, the ids would
range from r001 to r400. "r1", and "r01" however would NOT be valid
ids for this particular category / stash (they wouldn't sort well).
The prefix doesn't have to be a single character; it could be "rock",
or "rocker", or "ebay", or whatever.