User:FpmiP

Catalogue | Preserve | Amass

I am involved in the technical side of things on the website. This includes:

1. Capturing web streams and tracking down, monitoring, trading, acquiring, purchasing the best possible sources for each broadcast, often ending up combining, splicing, stitching together multiple files.
2. Decoding and encoding audio and video material while avoiding transcoding at all costs:
   1. Decoding obscure proprietary codecs used in digital television broadcasts such as Dolby E in order to make such captures accessible to the fans.
   2. Encoding raw video recordings into widely accessible formats such as AVC (H.264) and occasionally HEVC (H.265), striving to preserve maximum quality.
   3. Encoding good quality stream versions for inline playback (in this case AVC at a constant rate factor of 17-23 is used in tandem with AAC-LC or HE-AAC at 96-128 kbps), ensuring browser compatibility.
3. Helping out with PAL/NTSC digitisation and managing already digitised material - this usually involves setting or correcting the aspect ratio of the image and eliminating black bars or letterboxing present in many transfers.
4. Troubleshooting and occasionally fixing issues on the website.

Software

Here's a list of software I use for the tasks listed above:

Encoding | Decoding

• Open-source encoders/decoders: ffmpeg
• Proprietary AAC encoders: foobar2000
• Proprietary Dolby E decoders: Steinberg Nuendo 4

Audio Editing

• General editing: Audacity 2.2.2
• Equalisation: FabFilter Pro-Q 3
• Digital audio workstation: Ableton Live 11

Video Editing

• Quick lossless trimming: LosslessCut
• Frame-accurate lossless/transparent trimming: VideoReDo Professional
• Concatenating files and adding chapters: mkvtoolnix-gui

Downloading

• Capturing live streams and grabbing web files: yt-dlp - a fork of youtube-dl

Text editing

• General-purpose text editing: Notepad++
• Source code editing: Visual Studio Code