[Blizzard]

Why ? You an get 1.5TB hard drives for £55 these days, do they really need to remove 10 second clips to free up more space ? Or is that not the real reason they are getting rid of some of the sound clips on the show ?

[David]

It's probably more lack of visual space than physical space. I'd presume there are only so many buttons and pages on the screen before it starts to get a bit messy in trying to find the right cart at the right time.

Plus it also provides content for the show.

[richbrown]

I'm sure disk space really isn't an issue for the BBC.

[neilt0]

I'm sure disk space really isn't an issue for the BBC.

It was in the past. The German tech dudes administering the clip storage were remotely deleting the largest clips that were "using too much space" -- they were all Chris' clips. He went ballistic.

A PR company sent Chris a new hard drive the next day. They may have upgraded the storage now, but generally with these enterprise systems, they don't really want you to just "chuck a bigger hard drive in".

The Beeb use "VCS Dira!" for the cartwall and playout:





Chris' actual screen:

[richbrown]

Ouch! That's shocking.

[Blizzard]

Like the pics, cheers. Does Chris get a visual waveform or actual "down to the second" warning on screen as to when a singer will start singing when he talks on intros ? Like I would presume Aled or someone would have to listen to a MP3 (or WAV) and then write down the moment the singing starts, and then write that on screen for visual reference for Chris ?

[bmstinton93]

Maybe we should do this on this site.

[ededwards]

Like the pics, cheers. Does Chris get a visual waveform or actual "down to the second" warning on screen as to when a singer will start singing when he talks on intros ? Like I would presume Aled or someone would have to listen to a MP3 (or WAV) and then write down the moment the singing starts, and then write that on screen for visual reference for Chris ?

Whoever loads the music into the playout (probably someone in the music team) will check it and mark the intro and outro times, these will countdown on the screen so the DJ knows when to hit the vocal.
Good DJs back in olden times didn't have this and knew the songs well enough to know how long to talk (hence the hitting the vocal games Chris sometimes plays)
Crap DJs like Cotton aren't aware what hitting the vocal is and are unable to do this even when there's a countdown on the screen.

[newsbeat]

Disc Space: At my school we each have 700GB

[ededwards]

I'm sure disk space really isn't an issue for the BBC.

The system obviously wasn't set up with enough allocated server space, this is common at a lot of radio stations as everyone uploads stuff as WAVs and content regularly gets deleted in blocks monthly
The content system storage space is shared by the whole of BBC radio so presenters can log in and DJ from any BBC location, see diagram on page 2 of this document: http://www.sadie.com/downloads/BBC_Tape ... 2_0706.pdf

[MK Chris]

I feel a studio clocks moment coming on...

[Gaspode_The_Wonder_Dog]

I have bookmarked this for when I have trouble sleeping

[neilt0]

I have bookmarked this for when I have trouble sleeping

Hahaha!

I think Dom uses an Instant Replay for news and sports clips -- you could do all the drops with that machine, but it doesn't get much use: http://www.360systems.com/docs/prod_ir_main.html

[Johnny 1989]

I'm not surprised really if the BBC have deleted stuff from Radio 1 in the past, their archives for TV were in a right state up until very recently & due to random junkings up to the mid/late 70's there's 100's of episodes missing from their archives, including Doctor Who, Z Cars, etc.

From what I recall didn't Aled once say they were having right trouble finding stuff in the archive, when they were looking for clips for Chris' 13th anniversary show, I wouldn't be surprised if half of the stuff in the archive from 1997-2003 has been deleted by the BBC over the years.

[Blizzard]

Cheers for all the geeky info guys, I like to hear about the behind the scenes mechanics and computers they use.

Any idea why Dom and Tina re-read the exact identical news every 30 mins or so ? From what I can tell it is identical each time, even the way it is read out (so I am guessing it is read verbatim from a script), so why not just record the first news and sport they do and then just re-play that each time ?

[neilt0]

Any idea why Dom and Tina re-read the exact identical news every 30 mins or so ? From what I can tell it is identical each time, even the way it is said, so why not just record the first news and sport and then just re-play that each time ?