Recording audio with LC

[Tim Selander]

Thanks for the various input!

Devin: Appreciate the link to your tutorial, and the tip to check 
out the LC dictionary. Why, oh, why does the RunRev 4 pdf manual 
not even /mention/ audio recording? Now I need to get the audio 
interface installed on my machine with LC, and see if I can get 
it to properly assign channels and record multiple clips. If it 
uses Quicktime, it may well work (on OSX...)

Stephen: I may have used the wrong word in "archive" -- we're not 
needing a true archive quality collection. We just have to 
reclaim some of our very pricey Tokyo real estate by getting 
decades of recordings off the shelves and onto hard drives (with 
backups of course.) I've worked in radio and TV production for 30 
years and am aware of and able to deal with the hardware/tech 
issues, including checking levels, recording quality, etc. 
'Metadata' will be simple folders and filenames to match what's 
already on the tape labels. No need to try to gather info on the 
contents of the audio. As cheap as disk space is (compared to 
real estate) I'm happy to go long and record 'dead air' -- just 
don't want the thing to record hours of silence if I get 
distracted by another task. Correcting filenames is such a fussy 
task in the Finder. Want to use LC to let me type in the titles 
of 8 tapes, record 8 mono tracks, save the files with the list of 
names I typed in, and, finally, hit the 'Stop Button' for me 
after a predetermined time. Next step is to test if LC can assign 
channels from the interface, and record 8 clips at once. I'll be 
the one using it, so it doesn't have to be pretty nor bullet-proof.

Bob: Appreciate your words of wisdom on consistent workflow -- I 
agree, that's essential. Fortunately, our needs are simple -- 
mono .aif's, filenames same as current tape labels. We're not on 
a SAN. I built a simple 16 drive Linux NAS, two RAIDs of 8 drives 
each -- one data, one backup (RAID 6). Used Linux' software RAID 
(mdadm). The beauty of that is zero vendor lock in. I can pop the 
8 drives of the backup RAID out of the machine, take them 
off-site. Stick 'em in any other Linux box, no matter what SATA 
cards used, and the RAID pops right back up, ready to use. You 
hear too many horror stories of hardware RAID cards failing, 
can't get the same card any more, so all your data's toast!  With 
gigabit ethernet on the NAS, and get an easy 70-80MBps 
throughput, and have gone over 100MBps when copying to the NAS 
from multiple machines. (I'm storing all our production video on 
these 32TB NAS boxes, too.

Lynn: Your website's info seemed a little sparse, don't get a 
good picture of what the software does. Downloaded and installed 
it, but trying to run the demo stack only results in errors. Can 
it record up to 8 audio tracks at once? If so, I'm willing to 
work a little more on getting it running....


On 2/25/11 12:57 AM, Tim Selander wrote:
> I have hundreds, maybe thousands, of cassette tapes my company wants to
> archive on hard disk. (OSX, Mac)
>
> I bought a 16 input USB audio interface and 8 cassette decks. This way I
> can record 8 tapes at a time to disk. Tested and working in a 'normal'
> sound app -- Cubase.
>
> But I have to baby-sit the machine in order to stop recording.
>
> I'd like to program LC to automate the process a bit -- stop recording
> after 60 minutes, name resulting files, move to appropriate folders, etc.
>
> I'm sure I've read on the list about people using LC/Rev to record
> audio, but can find no reference to it in the manual.
>
> Can LC record audio under script control? Can it properly select the
> Core Audio input to record from? Any pointers to documentation or sample
> code snippets appreciated!
>
> Tim Selander
> Tokyo, Japan
>