Recorded a webcast, have a question

[irishcrazy2005]

Okay, so I taped a concert that was streamed live over the internet. It was a Windows Media Player feed at 96kbps. I recorded it using TotalRecorder as a .wav at 44.1kHz and 16-bits. My question is this: should this be distributed (not here, as I think webcasts are not allowed) as FLAC files or is that overkill on something that is only originally 96kbps? Someone suggested that I just seed them as 96kbps mp3 files, but I think that would result in more quality loss due to transcoding. Am I correct here? Thanks for the help.

[U2Lynne]

I think DIME actually has an item in their FAQ that covers the format that they should be shared in. As you said, there is no reason to share them in flac format. That's like taking mp3s and sharing them in flac (you get the same quality, but in a much bigger file size).

[irishcrazy2005]

Right, but my question is that since it was a 96kbps stream recorded as a wav (can't directly save the stream), wouldn't further lossy encoding reduce the quality?

[Five]

there is a way to capture the broadcast in the original lossy format, I think that's what Lynne thought you meant.

now that it is wav you really shouldn't re-encode it to mp3 again because it will cause much more degradation in the quality (just like you thought). I would cut the wav on the sector boundaries, encode to FLAC & of course be sure to tell what it is in the .txt file.

[irishcrazy2005]

Ah, thanks for the info Five. Out of curiosity, what would I use to capture the actual original lossy format? I may or may not worry about making this recording into a FLAC show because I know that there will be an audience copy, and I was only recording this in case it might be needed for a matrix or something. Thanks again.

[Five]

you're welcome

I'm not sure how to capture it in the original format... there was a guy at STG who knew how to do it, he had a special card for it and really knew that kind of stuff... unfortunately I can't look it up now lol

His files were .mp2 as I recall... there is a prog called streambox vcr that I heard about a long time ago the I think can do this kind of thing but it is almost impossible to get now due to some lawers contacting the author. still, you might find it out there somewhere if you know the right ppl. there's also streamripper for winamp, but I believe that can only capture .wav which you already know how to do.

maybe somebody else will read this who knows the trick