Setting up Intro Marker.

[CharmingNathan]

Hello,

I have a feeling I already know the answer to my own question!

I posted elsewhere on this Forum asking for people's opinions on the best playout system for a new radio station, RadioDJ and S.A.M. Broadcaster being the most recommended. I am spending sometime this week experimenting with them.

As a newbie to this, I have been greatly impressed by the versatility of both pieces of software, including the ability to put an "Intro Marker" on each .mp3 so a presenter can see when the vocals start. I currently use the excellent, but limited, ZaraRadio.

My question is, as I have probably over 300 .mp3's that I would need to carry this setting out on, is there a quick way of doing so? It is probably slightly easier/quicker to do with S.A.M. than it is RadioDJ, but it's not going to make much noticeable difference.

Oh, and I think the answer is, "No they have to all be done individually, something to do over a couple of weeks or so..."?!

Please tell me I'm wrong!!!?

Many thanks.

 

[General Lighting]

Unfortunately the feature you want is notoriously difficult to do in automation, and it is often a task for manual work. It is normally easy enough to detect the difference between silence and content and remove gaps automatically but detecting vocals is a different matter. Vocalists in todays diverse world can be any gender or ethnicity and might not all sing in English; making it even difficult for a computer to pick out their contribution to a track.

Consider how the Google "content-ID" for copyright works (or doesn't) - I have an odd practice of testing streams and equipment with piratenhits and Schlager (1970s/80s style Europop music, often in German or Dutch, otherwise I confuse the test stream with my main station stream which broadcasts EDM)

If I I upload a video to Youtube to demonstrate how equipment works so much of it is misidentified as a cover version in a different language to what it should be or completely the wrong wrong tune (this is also why "copyright feds" hate DJ mixes, a cause of angst particularly to EDM DJs in the USA); I wonder if these things actually remove the vocals like some consumer karaoke equipment can and just go by the structure of the music, comparing it aganist a template...

Unfortunately I haven't had much time to work on my studio or live shows recently but my favourite genres currently are vocal trance and progressive house, and I've always had to use a cue marker to mark out the vocals manually to avoid crashing them.

I was complimented for taking this effort by a listener in Scotland, and they are as fussy as the Dutch radio enthusiasts when it comes to good quality, even for hobby stations I've got the "pretty colour display" on my DJ software and although it does distinguish between intros with just drums and a few synths and "busier" parts of the tune; it does not reliably show up if the "busier" contents are vocals or just more synths/effects.

 

[CharmingNathan]

Thanks for your informative reply, General Lighting, pretty much as I thought.

A question leading on from this though, to say this feature is important to me isn't really correct in as much as the station is entirely pre-recorded, and even when I do put a programme together, I have fairly good intuition as to when the vocals start. But when we go live with other presenters involved it will be a different story.

Having said that, I am a great believer that when one is building a project to put strong foundations in place first.

For example, I started with 60 .mp3's which I have just edited the ends off before uploading. Some said to me, "Oh you should normalise your .mp3's as well, because not all playout systems do so, and it is important to have all your output at the same level, or close to it".

It was at this point that I realised that there were also gaps between the songs, because I hadn't topped the .mp3's either. So, in effect, I had to start again, topping and tailling, and normalising the entire collection, which I have done.

The problem with the Intro Marker is that I suspect it is an 'internal' marker to the software only, so if I decided to go with S.A.M. Broadcaster, setup all the .mp3's with the Intro Marker, then changed my mind and went onto Radio Boss (which seems to be the only software with a random play facility), I would have to go through the Internal Marker's again?

As it's not as an essential feature as normalising (which I have done outside any automation software, using the default settings of Audacity), I suppose the obvious path to take is only to setup the Intro Marker's once I've finally decided which software to use?

 

[General Lighting]

with most radio playout software and DJ software it is indeed an "internal" marker although in reality what usually happens is that the markers are stored elsewhere than the MP3 / WAV / FLAC file in a separate database; and some data within the audio file is used to provide an index to the rest of hte database. It might not be completely impossible to get the data from one app to another; although could take some coding skills (although radioDJ is not open source they tend to encourage plugin devlelopment and come across as quite helpful).

Unless you want to land yourself what could work out to be a fairly advanced data conversion task I'd suggest doing this after you've standardised on software; though I reckon that there might be a way of exporting the database from any app which can do this as part of the backup procedures.