I've been asked to edit and, hopefully, improve the sound quality of the recording of a Coroner's Inquest (England). For those of you in God's Country, that's a Sheriff's Fatal Accident Inquiry.
It is recorded in (get this ) Quadraphonic, 16bit, 64kbps, 22kHz Wav. I believe they used FTR Reporter to record it. They will provide a codec for £200, which is beyond my means. The alternative, as far as I can see, is to play this in real time (in the freeware "The Record Player") and record it in my DAW software (in stereo). The inquest lasted 5 days, 8 hours a day, so.....
Anyone with any experience of this who could recommend a codec? I've tried everything that comes with dB PowerAmp, with no joy.
Many thanks.
how large is the file? i could try to convert it for you if it's small enough to let me try to download it
scb
Many many thanks for the offer but the nature of the material is confidential and I would not breach that confidence. That's why I said a little about the source.
I know I've done this before*, but am wracking my brain trying to remember how I converted the 4ch x 1 WAV to mono x 4 WAV and/or stereo x 2 WAV. I vaguely recall I used a BWF converter of some kind. (BWF and WAV are essentially the same thing.) I didn't use this one, but one option found Googling for "BWF converter":
http://www.one-n.com/bwfsplitter.html
Edit to add: Pretty sure I used the Fostex BWF converter: http://www.fostexinternational.com/docs/tech_support/bwf_manager.shtml
*The R-4 supports 4ch x 1 WAV, and I used it at some point before switching to stereo x 2 WAV.
maybe try one of these:
http://sounddevices.com/products/waveagent.htm
http://sounddevices.com/download/waveagent-1.htm
Quote from: scb on December 16, 2011, 01:50:59 PM
maybe try one of these:
http://sounddevices.com/products/waveagent.htm
http://sounddevices.com/download/waveagent-1.htm
That was my first thought for splitting a multi-channel WAV into seperate stereo or mono tracks. The strange part I don't get is the portion of the file properties I've bolded below:
Quote from: anr on December 16, 2011, 07:27:13 AM
It is recorded in Quadraphonic, 16bit, 64kbps, 22kHz Wav.
WAV files are an uncompressed format, but
64kbps would seem to indicate a lossy compression data rate. Are you sure it's actually a WAV file and not a multichannel MP3 or some other lossy format? I would think lossy compression formats would be commonly used for court reporting to keep file sizes managable.
They want you to do this (I presume not for free), but want to charge you for the codec needed? Seems weird to me.
is this the Lady Di coroners tape?
is there a way to load BWF files in Audacity? It would be quite simple to bump it down to a stereo mix in that way
Reaper is a free multitrack program, maybe it can open the files:
http://www.reaper.fm/technical.php (http://www.reaper.fm/technical.php)
says it can work with bwf files
Guys
Many thanks for all the suggestions and help.
In the end I simply played the files in The Record Player and recorded them in SoundForge.
In answer to questions,
1. Yes, in Wav format.
2. It was the family of a deceased who enlisted my help; the codec / conversion program is sold by the software house. Due to public service cutbacks, the Coroner did not have a court stenographer - they just recorded it with very poorly placed mics and there is no official transcript. An appalling state of affairs.
3. Not Lady Di. Far more important. 7 dead - 6 UK and 1 US Servicemen.
Merry Xmas all.
Quote from: anr on December 21, 2011, 09:23:04 AM
Due to public service cutbacks, the Coroner did not have a court stenographer - they just recorded it with very poorly placed mics and there is no official transcript. An appalling state of affairs.
This is shocking. I do hope that this is an isolated situation.