@bbc.co.uk Addresses

Ahhhh - Digispot. Well, that didn't last.

I suggested several pages back Radioman be used for an overnight service.

Certainly previous Bristol system Dalet has done it on more than one occasion - I would imagine Radioman would cope with playing out hour-long chunks. Not sure how it would cope with "voice tracking" though.

To be honest, I have trouble just finding stuff in the database ...

It can be set up resonably easily (although would take a while to do it for every link), but it's just a matter of trusting the computer and network to stay up. I wouldn't trust it to play out unattended myself for a great length of time.


Tell me about it. Just today I had to find someone's pre-rec'd show for them, they were convinced it had been deleted. Maybe if users had been properly trained in actually using the system in the first place...

[/QUOTE]

Believe it or not, I've had no official training on it. For my own purposes, all I do is find the file in the database, find out where it is on the Radioman drive, and grab the s48 file out. If I need to edit beyond that I use Cool Edit.

I've not had official training either, and you should be glad about it - the training everyone got here has been so misleading it's untrue.

I just found the manual and read it all

*goes back to answering phones*

Hehe - best not continue bitching about the training, since I know someone who was involved ...

And the Radioman boss man (well, the guy who was in charge of the ER refirb) is a previous boss of mine ...

La de da

Please ask them to read the manual. Please. Pretty please.


Nice. Do you know why we've got such a mess with BBC radio playout systems, with Radioman used in most of England, Dalet (I think?) used in Scotland and VCS Dira used in London? Absolute madness.

Yes - I know. Previously Dalet was in Bristol.

Also, VCS is used for networks - all bar 6 Music, which uses Dalet!

What is VCS?

...and Cambridge.


VCS is a German company which makes broadcast and other specialist software. VCS Dira! is a playout system which has been chosen to run most national BBC radio stations (I don't know how many are running it yet?).

It actually looked quite a bit better than Radioman when I had a look at the training stuff. Anyway, if everyone had just sat down and standardised on one system I suspect they would have saved a great deal of time and money with not having to retrain staff in using the different systems.

Hmm, this is all rather offtopic, shall we make a nice broadcast software topic for geeks?

Hehe - I'm sure they won't moan.

I remember as far back as 1996 they were talking about sending GNS circuits through the IT infrastructure. At the time there wasn't any plan for a standard system across England, nor in the national stations.

I even remember some bizarre plans for 'very local' breakfast shows, where the district reporter locations could opt out and we'd be doing town-by-town breakfast. Of course, all dependant on money - which thanks to one Mr Birt we didn't have at the time.

Now TV are beginning to go through the same process with refirbs - I've heard a little about one of the systems, which is almost like Radioman on TV wheels. Mind you, I doubt everyone will get it ...

Radio Leeds used to do Breakfast with one presenter in Leeds and one in Bradford for some reason, there was very rarely a guest at the Bradford end. These days they make much more use of the Bradford studio now it's moved, breakfast seems to rotate from Leeds to Bradford with both presenters in the same place.

I think Humberside do the split locations thing but they do have a bloody big river between Hull and Grimsby

Yes, but this was the SAME programme, not two different ones.

The reason they had someone in Bradford was because Radio Leeds is actually in effect "Radio West Yorkshire", being the only BBC local station covering three cities (Leeds, Bradford & Wakefield).

By having Andrew Edwards in Bradford they were showing the people of that city that the station was also for them, not just Leeds folk. The move to the new BBC Bradford site in the museum allows them to do this much more and now I believe that nrealy 50% of output comes from those studios...