[Imc-radio] mini-disks

[dave berliner]

What I know about Mini-Disks is that, due to Sony's fierce attempts to 
enforce music copyrights the format became extremely hard to work with 
to actually transfer data from the minidisk player to your home 
computer.  This is because the software Sony developed to transfer 
files from it's players to your computer used a File Transfer Protocol 
that was encrypted to store copyright information.  The result has been 
that it is much more difficult to upload files from an MD player to a 
computer.

If you want to play a minidisk you have to have access to a minidisk 
player, like the ones at weft or the NetMD walkmans that cost about 
$100 at Best Buy or Circuit City.

You can transfer minidisks to your computer a few ways.

One way is to input a Minidisks just like you would a cassette tape.  
If you have a soundcard in the back of your computer you will need to 
find the input on the card and plug the line output (headphone jack) of 
a minidisk player into that.  Then you need to start some type of audio 
recording software, like soundforge, cooledit or peak and record the 
audio.  This is time consuming and if your levels are not correct it 
can sound really bad.

Another way is to buy a netmd player and download / install the file 
transfer software that comes with it and see if it works.  If you buy 
at circuit city you can take it back and they won't hassle you like 
best buy.  The problem with the Sony Software that comes with the NetMD 
players is that it requires root access to your computer to transfer 
files.  This has something to do with the copyright nazis.

At the IMC we transfer MD recordings digitally using an optical cable 
from our MD deck to our USB Soundcard and then we edit and upload files 
using soundforge.  This, once set up, is a pretty good system, its just 
time consuming

There are some alternatives to these two methods, but I would have to 
go into much more detail and do a little reading myself.  I've looked 
into an open source transfer protocol for MD players but I'm still 
trying to figure it out.  This would be a  fast free way to import MD 
audio into an open source audio editing software.

Here are a few links if you need better directions.

http://minidisc.ch/
http://www.minidisc.org


Dave




On Friday, October 1, 2004, at 03:27 PM, Rhonda Hunter wrote:

> Dave,
>
> Thanks for asking.  I am currently an airshifter at WEFT and I have 
> been recording my show on cassette tapes.  We have capability to 
> record onto mini-disks in the studio, but I have never used one 
> before.  I can find out how to do the recording in the studio from 
> another airshifter at WEFT.  But my general questions are:
>
> What sort of machine do I need to play mini-disks on? 
> Is that simply another drive on my computer? or a separate component 
> for my stereo?
> Can I transfer mini-disk information onto a cd? 
> Can you edit mini-disks? 
>
> Dave, I would be glad to come to the IMC to learn more, and I can also 
> read and learn from a website if the information is available on line.
>
> I have recently learned about the opportunities to "broadcast" or 
> stream online and I think I could use this  to transfer the show 
> digitally.  I would like to find out more about archiving my shows 
> online for playback at a later date.  I don't know much about how that 
> works yet, tho.
>
> Any information you could give me would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
> Rhonda Hunter
>
>
> At 03:18 PM 10/1/2004 -0500, you wrote:
>
> Hi Rhonda,
>
> What do you need to know about minidisks?
>
> Dave
> IMCRN
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, September 29, 2004, at 10:41 AM, Rhonda Hunter wrote:
>
> Hi!
>
> I am a new member to the IMC and I would be interested in learning more
> about mini-disks. Who would I talk with about that?
>
> Rhonda
>
>
>
> Rhonda Hunter
> C-FAR (Illinois Council on Food and Agricultural Research)
> 1101 W. Peabody Drive
> 169 NSRC, MC-637
> Urbana, IL 61801
> www.ilcfar.org
> (217) 244-4232
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
> </blockquote></x-html>
>
>
>
> Rhonda Hunter
> C-FAR (Illinois Council on Food and Agricultural Research)
> 1101 W. Peabody Drive
> 169 NSRC, MC-637
> Urbana, IL 61801
> www.ilcfar.org
> (217) 244-4232
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