The Advance of Technology

Several years ago, I had many ideas for the CIRadio. Most of them never came to be due to limitations in multimedia streaming technology. Basically, I was limited to Windows Media in all instances because it was what everyone had. If my listeners did not have a program that could play the stream, then that was it - they weren't listening.

Also, to play the media files right on the web page required embedding the Windows Media player, a process which was likely to fail on the varying configurations across my client's computers. The embedded Windows Media player was clunky and archaic.

I am a big fan of the Icecast server and I would like to use Ogg streaming for everything, but the problem is that practically no one has the capability of playing Ogg files. When I brought my music library to college and set up a server so that my other three apartment-mates could listen, they were all perplexed as to why the files wouldn't play in iTunes or Windows Media Player! MP3 stream is a good second choice, but even with this WMP cannot play it (iTunes can, but back in the day when I was working on the CIRadio the world had not gone crazy and bought millions of iPods)

An alternative was to run a Java applet player - it works, but will not run on the regular old "Microsoft" Java platform. It needs the genuine one from Sun. Again, if the listener has to download something - say goodbye. They will not hear a single second of the broadcast.

So, for the past few years I have run CIRadio with m3u and wax files - playlists that are loaded into Windows Media Player, Winamp, and iTunes. Instead of playing the sound right on the web page, these fire up the whole shebang and this not only clutters the client's screen but gives them no incentive to keep my web page open.

Then comes MySpace and YouTube which use FLASH to play mp3 files right on the web page using a little Flash movie. Because nearly every web site in the world uses Flash somewhere, damned near everyone has the player. This technology had been around before the rise of MySpace and YouTube, but it was so obscure that one had to build their own player - and without buying Macromedia Flash for whatever number of hundred dollars, that was not possible.

Now, one can find pre-made flash movie players such as the one from jeroenwijering.com that I am using in the re-working of CIRadio. The author of these gems refrained from writing their name all over the thing and licensed it under a Creative Commons license which grants non-commercial use under share-alike and attribution.

The Flash Player is nice, as it is free from the cruft of Java applets and embedding. The next step: Support OPEN formats such as Ogg. Ogg plays the same on every computer, and every software developer can access the code required to support it - no matter what their financial situation. Only Adobe can make that kind of change - they control the vast world of Flash players.

The Update of CIRadio will use FLV format video and MP3 audio playing right inside the browser window, with alternative Ogg Theora and Vorbis files available for those who wish to use them. The Ogg files will be unstreamable (above the bitrate of my cable modem upload) but of higher quality than the FLVs and MP3s.

"Radioshow" 13

Right now I am here with Andrew Witmer and we are (or did) making a CIRadio Radio Show. It really did not go so well because we did not really plan it, but there are still some good things that we got out of it. For Example:

Andrew came and brought his playstation but forgot all of his games and movies at home. We were going to run and get them but decided not to later on. Right now he is playing XBox games...

At about 7:00 we decided to go down to Papa Johns and buy a pizza. We sat in the parking lot for 15 minutes in the handicapped spot which was not marked clearly so Andrew ended up parking there anyways. We left with an extra large cheese pizza, and it was eaten in about 20 minutes.

Next we finished setting up for the radio show and after a delay starting it we got started and did a few things.

Later...we will probably end up making some kind of video or something, like the last radio show.

Video and Audio Editing

I have been working on video and audio editing for the CIRadio. I am using a combination of Audacity, Windows Movie Maker, the GIMP and Fireworks. It is going well except that I have some video on VHS-C tapes (those little compact VHS tapes) and I cannot find the adapter which the tape fits in to so that it can be inserted into the VCR. The video camera will play the tapes back but I think that it is out of alignment or dirty, because the video is jumpy and there is a noise line at the bottom, even after adjustment of the tracking settings. (The tapes were recorded on a different camera than the one I am playing them back on).

It really bugs me to be using low-quality video for the capture, because VHS tapes degrade more and more after time...digital files on hard drive/CD/DVD do not. VHS tapes are also a bit obsolete.

I just started playing with Windows Movie Maker. For a free program that is bundled with the Windows XP OS, it is quite capable and can produce very nice results. On Linux mode I used a program called "KDENLive" (frontend to "Piave" but I had some problems with it and never messed with it again. The main bad thing about WMM though is that it almost forces you to use Windows Media format. I would rather do all of the editing with the video as an AVI and then convert it to MPEG-2 for archiving, not Windows Media format!

I wanted to use the song "Ryan Cabrera - On the Way Down" in the Downhill 2005 video, but I probably do not have the legal right to do so. This is most likely far from being considered "Fair Use".!

When it is all said and done, I will get the CIRadio up and running with:

Radioshow 12 Show and Videos
Downhill 2005 (camera on sled down over hill)
Downhill 2002
Radioshows 1-11
Old Videos from 2000-2001

Radio Show 12 + Videos

CIRadio Radio Show 12, along with a few videos, was made last week. I am still in the works of editing all of the radio shows for the web, so they are not yet available. The radio show needs to be edited to remove all of the "stalling" we did when no one was listening, which was a while at the beginning because we started it late. Twity helped out with this radio show, like usual.

On another note, I always find humor in the advertisments delivered by Google's AdSense system. When these ads are placed on the right pages, they can produce some odd results:

I also have created a new tutorial, Windows PC based Alarm Clock. It is a simple thing, involving making your computer act as an alarm clock (to play any music you would like. Anyone should be able to figure this out. I had to do it after we made the radio show, and it does not involve installing any special software.