BBC Three breakdown

The audio server can hold more than a shelf of minidiscs. I'm not sure that your priorities are the same as anyone else's to be honest...

The majority of channels broadcast from the BC don't have live announcers and rely on other methods to put out announcments.
After years of Minidiscs, here's not what's good:
MD's get corrupted, may as well spread marmalade on them. Bye bye all annos.
MD's get lost. Bye bye all annos.
MD's with lots of tracks on take a long time to cue up and sometimes fail to cue before needed on-air. Bye bye anno.
MD's recorded in one machine may not playback in annother. Bye bye all annos.
MD's require a paper script as it is impossible to label each track easily
MD's don't easily allow editing.

There is redundancy with the audio servers, if however the worse that could happen is a PC needs a reboot, I'd rather have that then a knackered or lost minidisc.

Andyrew, you forgot:

MD's can be put in the pocket of the announcer and taken to a pub in Soho instead of being taken to the TX area.

Not that it's ever happened...

Hence my concerns about BBC1/BBC2 continuity remaining live. Obviously I hope given the status of these two channels, only the home will change.


I've been using MDs for nine years now so I can't argue with some of the points made. MDs and mini DV tapes are prone to go missing as I know only to well.

However I've found that if MDs are corrupted, it's due to an old or knackered player. My first machine had to be exchanged because it was "erasing" pre-recorded discs, even "write protected" ones. If discs recorded on one machine don't play in another, it's usually because the playback machine is old/dodgy or you're attempting to play an MDLP disc on a standard machine. There usually isn't a problem if sharing MDs among a network of same-model players.

As regards editing, I've always found this very easy and if anything I prefer MD editing to SoundForge. The accuracy of music editing on MD is far greater than splicing tape for sure.

Like everything else, there were teething problems with MD and it was a few years before I adopted it as my standard format. But today's players/recorders are much better. Just a question of keeping the player healthy.

Hey, be careful with the 'R' word.... especially when talking about BBC Broadcast!!

That depends on how good you are at editing tape. Thankfully it's becoming a lost art. I can see the faces of media studies students now if you sat them down to edit something with a razor blade and some sticky tape.

In any case, I only know of one journalist who ever really got the knack of editing in the field on a mindisc recorder. He became known as "robohack" as a result. Minidisc is a redundant technology. Apologies for the use of that word again...

Personally I've never edited with tape and it's not something I'm in a hurry to try. Twenty or so years ago I had no idea the music around the ITV Schools clock was often cut down to fit 60 seconds. Years later I realised how painfully obvious the edit points were. My own recreations on MD turned out much smoother, even if several attempts were needed!

Strangely the last time I splice-eited tape was as a media studies student. No need for it now of course, although I'm sure I could do it if needed.

Still got my old razor blade, sticky tape and an editing block at work - comes in useful for repairing broken DV tape - which is also 3/4 inch wide

As with others I did quite a bit of splicing back when I was a media student, particularly when we ran an RSL and I produced one of the speech based programmes, so I had a lot of interview material to edit. I don't know why you're so reluctant to try it, once you get the knack it's often easier than waveform editing on screen.

I've never personally witnessed this. Around here, the penetration of MD as a portable music format as opposed to MP3 players is probably higher than average - a lot of swapping of MDs goes on - and I've yet to encounter any problems.

For basic speech editing it's often quicker than playing the whole thing into a computer and then playing it back out again onto tape. Non-linear editing on a PC is better for more complex items though. It's the same diffrence with using pen and paper and a word processor - if I'm writing a note I'll use a pen, if I'm writing a long letter or novel I'll use a WP program.

Although.... I remember helping someone edit an audio guide for an exhibition, he'd recorded it all onto tape and we were then chopping it up into bits and assembling them into one long production. Unfortunately he got mixed up and put all the bits he needed into a very large green bin instead of the off cuts

We take Ctrl-Z for granted these days

Can someone tell me why (and this is in one of the Dr Who titles in TV-Ark) BBC Choice and BBC Three's DOGS keep on disappearing/re-appearing?