For more Leo and friends all week long, listen to the TWiT Netcast Network

If you can’t listen to the show live you can get the podcast version free one week after the air date. Visit the Audio Archives or, if you use iTunes 4.9 or later, click the iTunes button to receive new shows automatically.

Saturday, September 3, 2005

Show #175

 toc | toc 

I’ll be live from Alhambra on Saturday, 9/17 during the LA Department of Public Works E-Waste Roundup. Join me as I do the radio show from 11a-2p. Details at 888CleanLA.com.

Today’s news items

Katrina coverage today.

There’s an excellent Katrina wiki that contains news and other resources.

DirectNIC’s blog from the scene in New Orleans makes dramatic reading.

Katrina Relief Information for those people in Utah who want to help. Details at ksl.com.

Clorox is sponsoring help for the hurricane victims. Give victims $1 for free.

Watch out for scammers people posing as the Red Cross or other charitable organizations in email or on the web. To give it’s safest to go directly to www.networkforgood.org and pick the charity of your choice.

Web designer Katrina Blankenship has owned www.Katrina.com for some time - she’s selflessly dedicated it to hurricane relief links.

Wikipedia has an excellent Katrina page that’s updated regularly. Wikinews, too.

Stan in Pasadena writes
http://ngs.woc.noaa.gov/katrina/KATRINA0000.HTM has links to Hurricane Katrina images from NOAA. http://junkyardblog.net has a series of aerial photos (some of them evidently from the NOAA site mentioned above) of over 250 buses that could have been used to evacuate people from New Orleans, but are now useless.

DarthDemo in Surf City writes
A variety of Katrina-aftermath pictures at:
http://eyeball-series.org/kat01/katrina-01.htm
http://cryptome.org/kat02/katrina-02.htm
http://cryptome.org/kat03/katrina-03.htm

Mozilla_Fox in Long Beach writes
You can listen to live audio feed’s from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Houston AstroDome Operations, San Antonio Operations and HF Amateur Radio Nets at Hurricane Katrina Wiki Page on Winamp or realplayer on the internet.

Hurricanecity Atlantic Hurricane Tracking From this website has a audio feed is at Weather Audio Broadcast Network
American Red Cross - Preparing Communities for Emergencies and Keeping People Safe - Preparedness
VoIP Hurricane Net VoIP Hurricane Net streaming
Louisiana Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness Home
Salvation Army Team Emergency Radio Network Health and welfare Information Request Form
National Hurricane Center / Tropical Prediction Center
WX-TALK - IRLP / Skywarn - National Hurricane Center / Echolink / IRLP Weather Net

11a-Noon

Jeff in Miami, Florida - backup strategies

online - Second Copy
offline - burn to a CD by copying directly
off-site - Xdrive, dot-Mac for Mac users, or the like

Noon-1p

Josh in Quezon City, Philippines - which Internet video format for Windows?

He does an Internet TV show at www.hitweekly.com - for Mac users he uses the Quicktime H.264 video format, but Windows users have some trouble with that format since Apple hasn’t released Quicktime 7 for Windows yet. I recommend using DivX. It still requires a free download for users who don’t already have the codec, but most Windows users who watch Internet video already have it. (A good alternative is the free compatible open source XviD). DivX offers the best size vs. quality ratio, second only to H.264.

Ashley in Los Angeles - Panasonic wireless ain’t working

He has one of those cordless phones with a base station and remote units. This technology was pioneered by Siemens with the Gigaset - I had a Gigaset it was fabulously expensive and barely worked. On the other hand I’ve used Panasonic, and even the cheaper Uniden and Vtech brands and had excellent results. These cordless phones often use the 2.4Ghz band which is very crowded. If you’re getting a lot of interference you might want to try the 5Ghz phones.

1–2p

Tony in Murietta - how high should I record my audio

Ideally you record at the highest level you can without distortion. That means that the loudest sound you’ll make is at 0VU. But since audio can have a wide dynamic range (the quietest passages can be so low you hear noise), most professionals use compression on the microphones to raise the level of the quietest passages and reduce the level of the noisiest passages. This has the effect of reducing the dynamic range but makes it easier to record with out noise or distortion. I use Adobe Audition’s Effects→Amplitude→Dynamics Processing tool to compress all my podcast audio. The free Audacity has similar capabilities.

Dan in Melbourne Australia adds:

I produce a radio show in Australia. A nice level to work with is between −3 db to 0 db. That should be plenty loud enough. A nice way to boost your audio in Adobe Audition, if your audio is clean, is by using Hard Limiting, which takes your levels close to 0db without clipping. It’s exactly like compression. Sounds good!!! I find this works better than the built-in Dynamics Processing tool. If you’re looking for an external processor, Behringer makes a great range - http://www.behringer.com

I’m not a fan of Firewire or USB microphones, as in my experiences they have a very “digitized” sound. Analouge is so much better for professional audio. Some Firewire cards are good though, but the microphones are dodgy.

Tony in Murrieta adds:

I am not using a firewire/usb microphone. I am using a close mic from audio technica (about 180 bucks). The firewire device I’m using is the M-Audio Firewire 410 Mixer. This device converts my analog mic signal to digital prior to entering my PC. If you have ever tried to do this with only your PC, you get a lot of noise. With this device, you get crystal clean audio. I know from listening, that Leo uses the Sennheiser HMD 25-1 headset into a firewire board, and he has said he loves it. He records outside his PC (he has said on the air several times, and in the show notes) with a solid state device from Marantz, and then does the post in Audition. They have talked about this on tWIT.

Thanks guys for all your help, hard limiting while recording seems to work best for me. I know leo does this in post, but I like less post work.

Jay in Massachusetts - VHS to DVD

Time based correction
Panasonic will correct the video and sound when making VHS to DVD you have to get one that has the Time based correction not all players have them.

Tony in Murrieta adds:

I have a lot of experience converting VHS to DVD. I converted about 50 tapes, and it took about a year. I did not catch this part of the show, so feel free to remove this if it is out of context, but because of the audio sync problems when converting analog to digital I decided to purchase a TBC (time base corrector). This device will essentially make sure the audio stays in sync from any input (VHS, Hi8 etc.). You then simply use the TBC’s output, and there are no more sync problems. Unfortunately it took me weeks of headaches to finally figure this out, so I hope this helps. I purchased mine for a couple of hundred bucks here. but maybe check Ebay for some good deals.

Henry in Torrance - 98SE slows down periodically

Make sure you don’t restore viruses and spyware when you reformat and install. He didn’t reformat his second drive when he reinstalled Windows and it’s possible that the bad guy survived on the second drive. But since he has scanned for viruses and spyware and found nothing I suspect that something he has installed is slowing things down.

Chat Logs and Show Audio