The Case for Minimalist Web Pages

Every once in a while, I will ask Bill, N2FNH if he has listened to the latest edition of This Week in Amateur Radio International. Although I work on the editing and mastering of the program each week, I only get to hear it on the air occassionally since my job has me at work each Sunday afternoon when the program plays on WBCQ.

Bill is usually my sounding board for how the program is progressing, and thoughts on how we can improve.

We were having a QSO together during afternoon drive on the local W2SZ repeater located at RPI in Troy. Bill was telling me that he was having problems downloading the program from our main page at www.twiar.org and from this blog, with his portable wireless device, due to bloat. All that stuff on the right --->

For desktops and laptops, this is no problem. But there are those out there that take a minimalist approach to the internet. Bill uses a Sony Playstation Portable (PSP) for collecting podcasts, and web surfing on the road.

It was kind of funny, because at just about the same time, we both came up
with the idea of putting up a minimalist web page with just the TWIAR podcast links. I have been sitting on a second blogspot account for quite awhile now, so, I decided to do just that.

The TWIAR Labs has come up with just such a page. So now you can take your wireless device to a web page devoid of bloat and memory/time consuming html. Just the links to our International broadcast program (TWIARi) and the full version of the ham radio on the air service.

Hope this helps all those wireless device users out there. Visit the new page at www.kxkvi.blogspot.com.

By the way, does anyone remember where kxkvi is from?

News From The TWIAR Labs

Had a call from the TWIAR Labs today. I was informed that they are working on a exclusive codec that will enable us to offer our news service audio in a format ready to be fed to any D-STAR repeater via the ethernet link.

They tell me it may be ready soon, no target date was given but when the new codec is ready, TWIAR will be the first D-STAR enabled amateur news service. More details will be coming soon.

A Week At The TWIAR Studios

Here is a quick look at a week here at the TWIAR studios.

Sunday is usually a recovery day from the production process. Newsgathering (web browsing) is usually done (as it is every evening), and I sometimes actually get home from work to hear International on WBCQ. (If the propagation is good).

Monday evening usually involves downloading material from Leo. Editing begins on Leo's segment. Newsgathering continues.

Tuesday evenings activities include finishing the editing on Leo's segments (two are produced, one for International and one for the ham services). Anchor rotation schedules are reviewed, and e-mails for anchor participation are sent. Newsgathering continues.

Wednesday evening involves the production of segments for International, which usually includes, the final story edit, the closing edit with new production music beds, and the selection and "sweetening" of the music used in the program. Newsgathering for the ham service continues. Anchor e-mail responses come in. Any new anchor interviews, remote interviews and logistics are usually done on Wednesday evenings.

Thursday evening finds N2FNH uploading his popular "Random Access Thought" segments for both the broadcast and ham services. These are downloaded from our server, and master editing is done for International. News files from the previous weeks ham service are selected for the program. Incidental wave files are edited in along with PSA's and promos, and the final master is saved.

International is edited on Adobe Audition in three multi-track segments. The first segment produced is actually the last heard. the final half hour of the program is reverse assemble edited. That means the first piece placed on the file is the closing, and work proceeds backwards from the closing to the bottom of the hour. The middle segment is produced normally. Times for the middle and bottom segments are noted. The beginning of the program is produced last, multi-track, and us usually cut to time the entire program. We aim to hit 59:45 if possible.

The final master wav file is saved and then converted to MP3 and WMA files. These are tagged and then uploaded to our server for release to the world, and uploaded to WBCQ. Back up copies are burned on to archive CD.

While the program is uploading, contact is made with all anchors for reading for the ham service on Friday evening, and the newsgathering continues.

Friday evening is devoted to the ham service. All incoming news audio is downloaded (if I have to work late, I take the laptop to Penara Bread and use their open wi-fi during a work lunch hour to get a little ahead).

In the studio I fire up an old Digital 486 laptop running DOS and use an old text editor in Procomm (remember that?) to write about 20 to 26 news stories. This usually winds up being between 900 to 1200 lines.

The finished script is e-mailed to the anchors and uploaded to our server in case of e-mail failure. Meanwhile, the following segments are edited for air: Handi-Hams, KK5DO Satellite, The Ancient Amateur Archives (if needed that week), and the propagation report. Around 1am eastern Vern Jackson WA0RCR phones his convention/contesting segment in to the studio. This is recorded through our phone patch, and edited.

Saturday morning finds me downloading the files from the anchors off the server. The promo is produced and uploaded. Both the full version and the headline version are produced simultaneously. When both versions of the program are finished and saved as master wav files, they are converted to MP3, AAC, WMA, and low bit rate RealAudio. These are then tagged and uploaded to the server usually around 5pm.

The editing process usually takes most of the day. Back up archive CD's are burned for posterity.

From there, Dale our file guy in Iowa downloads and re-packages the files and uploads them to our site server for you to download, or receive via our RSS feed.

Local playout of TWIAR sometimes occurs on Saturday evenings.

REPEAT PROCESS . (and I haven't had a weekend off in 15.46 years)

Audio Software In The TWIAR Studios

Back in time, during the early days of TWIAR, all was analog. Segments from the single announcer would arrive on cassette tape. All of the needed segments were assembled onto a master open reel tape, producing the final program. Later on, we started to embrace digital as a few news anchors would send in low bit rate audio on our dial up connection. These were then
assembled with the analog cassette segments on our Revox open reel deck for local air, and for telephone line playout on the satellite. The program went completely digital around 2000.

Some folks have been asking what hardware and software we for audio production, and for final mastering of This Week in Amateur Radio International, and our two amateur news services, This Week in Amateur Radio, and This Week in Amateur Radio Headline News.

Here is a quick list of software we currently use:

Adobe Audition - This is our workhorse program. All final cuts and mastering is done on this program. Although we have versions 3.0, 2.0 and 1.5, most of the staff likes the older 1.5 version the best. You can't beat it for multi-tracking, and it runs on old computers.

Sony SoundForge 9.0 - This program is used for phase checking our broadcast program. After the rough cut is done, the final mix is pulled into SoundForge. This program features a phase meter which is useful when producing stereo programs that will air on mono radio stations. Phase cancellation is to be avoided at all costs.

We also have in-house, Steinbergs Wave-Lab (has some really cool metering), Pro Tools, Audacity, CuBase, and a couple of other editors.

All of these programs are run on various vintage PC's in the studio. The studio has four external Western Digital USB drives on the network which hold all production audio, such as production music beds, sound effects libraries, and our music library. (Our music library, which is mostly top 40 oldies, is now over 100 gig) All computers are fed into a virtual KVM system. We use Dell flat panel monitors, and nVidia, and ATI video cards. All audio D/A and A/D is done "outside the box" on M Audio Quattro 24 bit interfaces. All networked together (including our office PC) using Linksys routers. That is, when the machines feel like talking to each other.

International is produced on an old, dumpster rescued, HP LPR Netserver. Dual 450 Intels. We had to re-build this box. It has an Nvidia 6200, and USB 2.0 cards. Running XP Pro on 356 meg of memory. Yeah its a little slow. It also has an external CD/DVD Burner. The only problem with this machine is it uses all proprietary memory, and uses HP SCSI drives. We have no back up for these, plus their small, on the order of 9 gig. It has two drives.

TWIAR's ham services are produced on a box we built up a few years ago. It's on an ASUS motherboard, AMD 1.2gig processor, 526 meg of RAM, XP Pro. Nvidia video card and it uses the second M-Audio box.

Both of these audio workstations can be patched into the analog studio equipment. More on that in a future post.

On hot stand-by in the studio is another box we built up about four years ago, it too uses an ASUS mother board with an Intel 1.2 processor and about 526 ram. This system fills in when one of the systems above is sick.

Playout of the TWIAR ham service here in the Albany market is done using an old Dell 500 mhz box with an internal Creative sound blaster,and an external Creative USB audio interface. Exactly how we play out here locally will take another posting coming up in the future.

Personally, if I have to record something for the either service (I usually do the special event stations and sometimes the propagation forecast on the ham service) I use...are you ready...Cool Edit 96. Yeah..it's old, but that's habit for you.

Although you can do almost any special effect in software, we still have racks of audio gear here at the studio. More on this in a future post.

This Week in Amateur Radio International On WBCQ

As most of you know, our short wave service, This Week in Amateur Radio International, is broadcast each Sunday at 4pm eastern time, on WBCQ on their 7.415mHz transmitter. The station is located in Monticello, Maine.

<--- The map is WBCQ's 7.415mHz propagation projection.

Here is some information on the station: WBCQ broadcasts 50,000 watts on each of its four international shortwave transmitters on 5.110, 7.415, 9.330 and 15.420 MHz. Our broadcasts serve North, Central and South America and the Caribbean. WBCQ has been offering access to the airwaves since signing on the worldwide shortwave bands in 1998. WBCQ broadcasts a wide variety of content, including spiritual and religious programming, eclectic musical shows, and intriguing and entertaining live talk radio. WBCQ makes airtime available at really reasonable rates. If you are at all interested in radio, shortwave broadcasting, or just have something you would like to say on the air, give them a call. Visit them at www.wbcq.com