h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

SO, I’ve finally taken the plunge and sprung for a terabyte hard drive and a portable media player.

I ordered this hard drive http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000VZCEUI

And this media player http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0012YPMOC



The hard drive is on sale for a really good price. Unfortunately, I was only able to find a 32G media player. So there’s no way I’ll fit the whole music collection on there at once. (Especially if I stick any video on there) But I suppose what I can do is periodically make up a 32G playlist and then load it. It’s enough to keep me busy for a while, anyway.

Especially since I haven't even put a dent in backing up all of the cassette/ vinyl to digital files. Then again, it may be easier to copy what I do have backed up now rather than ALL of it.

And if I could just get the audio problem sorted, I could resume backing up my VHS tapes. Ever since I installed Audacity, my audio settings are all ed.

Oooh, and a friend has volunteered to help me finish cataloging the CD collection. All he asks is payment is that if he sees something he's curious about, I share a track or two.

Hooray! Gadgets

I'm going portable too: I'm modifying this here sleeping bag into a giant papoose. Although I don't know if I'll be able to get anyone to port me anywhere.

I need to back stuff up badly. I've got most of the music I've written since 98 in one computer with no back up 's about 300 gig, which wouldn't be that bad, but the file structure needs to be preserved or most of it'll be lost anyway. I need a drive cartographer, it's seriously gnarly. I've nested folders with gibberish names down to 16/17 generations in places. I have a bad habit of recording an hour's worth of twiddling, chopping it up, saving it and using two or three second long slices out of it.

What is this Audacity thing? And how/why is it messing up audio settings?

It's a program for recording & editing audio, and I've no idea except that it must have changed default settings for other programs and/or I have some sort of conflict in default settings between programs, or something.

It's a pain in my ass, though.

*deletes huge list of questions*

Would you like me to try and help?

Probably. Not sure when I'll have the time to get to it- but here's what I *do* know. When I recorded some voice stuff (for an h2g2 project) there was no sound during playback. And it appears that I have the same problem when I copy analog video and convert to digital. Unless the audio's there and I just can't hear it for some reason...

I'm sure that in order to help you'll need to know what all I have and what all the settings are... but I don't know where to start. (Back in my day, when I wanted to edit an audio track I spliced it!) But I'd certainly appreciate any input you might be offer to help sort it out.

But playback is fine just on normal programs like iTunes etc presumably? First thing to do is check the settings on your sound card or the sound properties in control panel (it's not an apple is it?) if you don't have one. What seems likely is that there is a record setting which is set to something external, wrong or disabled/muted.

What are you using to convert the video?

I have a PC with XP. Burning or playing back audio or video works with Nero. Backing up audio *only* works fine.

I use a Plextor ConvertX to convert video. The video copies fine but I can't hear audio.

One thought... I had trouble getting sound to work in Skype with my Sennheiser headphone/mic combo. It's the same headset I was using with Audacity to record the voice stuff. Might it be the headset? It didn't come with any software, though.

Can't check the sound properties till I get home from work in a couple hours- I don't leave till 3:30 or 4.

Does the sound card have different settings for different devices? If so, any idea what I should be looking for?

I doubt it's the head set...

I don't know the software so I'm a bit stuck there. I'd check that for a sound preferences section and see if anything is disabled.

Sound cards usually have a seperate volume control for each output channel and one for each different internal audio source (Cd drive etc)and, importantly, a master record channel that you can switch between the various in channels or internal channels you have. What I'm thinking is that this record channel is muted or set up wrong.



Let me know how it goes

I'm on a gadget kick right now. See my 'Tings' therad. (I mis-type 'thread' so often that I might as well make an idiosyncracy of it).

I'll check that out.

The hard drive is already out with UPS on its way to the office today. The media player is supposed to ship today or tomorrow; presumably that will come via UPS as well, so I may see it toward the end of this week, even.

Well, I've got the Zen charging up at home (oh, how I hated to leave the house with the PC still powered on...) and the hard drive is connected. Obviously, I won't be using the player just yet but I do think it'll motivate me to hurry and back up a bunch of music already.

I've decided the easiest way to approach it is to first perform a purge of unnecessary tracks on the PC. I've got heaps of stuff I normally delete from any playlists or skip over when listening to atuo-DJ/ shuffle. Might as well not bother transferring those tracks to the hard drive.

Apparently some of the tracks were "broken" when migrating from the old PC and so I'll also have to repair any of those I want to keep.

Then I can start ripping stuff from CD, cassette and vinyl.

In the meantime, I suppose I could stick some TV eps or something on there.

So now the only other issue is determining how much stuff I can jam into a 32G memory card, or if I'll need to either pick up additional cards at some point, or just wipe all the tracks every so often and replace them...

Only 32G?

For the time being, yes, I have only one 32G memory card. Buying additional cards- or adding & deleting playlists as the mood strikes me- is do-able though, so I can live without additional cards for a while.

Why, how many does your iPoo have? Not that I would buy one, but I like to know these things.

80GB.

And I still havgen't erstored the post about the Docfk I scored on Monday. (Will do so...imminently. On my Tings therad.)

Oh, as cool as it sounds... I really don't need 80G. 32G would last me a week at work. That's all I need! I'm not using it for permanent storage- just for listening to/from and at work. It'll just be easier for me to load a playlist every weekend than to fish out a dozen CDs every morning.