How much record time 512mb?

Margot123

I am going to be recording an interview of about 60 minutes for a family history project.
Not wanting to part with any cash just for this, I dug out my old Philips GoGear MP3 player.

It has a 512mb mini SD card, would this be enough to record 60 minutes of audio? If so, how much do you think I could record, just in case the interviewee rambles on?

Excuse my ignorance (and lack of memory!). Any assistance for this non-techy old timer gratefully received..........

mclaren32

Stick it on to record something now and find out?

Margot123

mclaren32 wrote: »

Stick it on to record something now and find out?

I'll take that as a 'don't know'.:rotfl:

CardinalWolsey

It depends upon what settings you use for recording. Mono 128kbps likely to be OK. Stereo 320kbps definitely not. What will you be using for the recording (assuming you're just salvaging the card from the MP3 player, and not using the MP3 player to record with)?

psychic_teabag

I think a cdrom is of the order of 650Mb, and that stores about an hour of audio in wav (uncompressed) format. So I'd think compressing it (mp3) ought to be okay.

emptybox

An hour of stereo 320 Kb/s MP3s would take up something in the order of 120 MB, so you should have plenty of space, provided it doesn't only record as WAV files.

ETA: I've just looked up, and at least some of the GoGears only record to WAV, so you'd have to check your specific model.
But I guess, as it only records in mono, you might still be OK?

This seems to suggest an hour of mono .wav should be up to 350 MB.
http://www.audiomountain.com/tech/audio-file-size.html

cranford

sd cards are as cheap as chips ebay! <£4 for a 4 or 8gb

robin58

cranford wrote: »

sd cards are as cheap as chips ebay! <£4 for a 4 or 8gb

Doesn't all ways work in upping the sd card size.

Some old equipment were not designed to take larger card due to software issues.

This is mainly due to when the equipment came out It was not expected to take larger cards. I have a compact digital point and shoot camera that will only take up to 2gb cards because of this.

Shimrod

I use a Sony voice recorder - I have just had a look at some recordings, and MP3 at a constant 192kps, 44.1Khz in stereo uses 120Mb for 1 hour 30 mins, so you've probably got at least 6 hours of recording time. Check to see if the GoGear has any quality settings you can adjust.

mr_bogle

really interesting idea, i have found about 300 relatives on ancestry.com and did a presentation for my nan, so looking to do something similar over the next few years.

if you have a decent phone (iphone etc) you might get better sound quality from this if you hang it in the air inbetween you and the interviewee, or you could buy a Lavalier mic to plug into the phone for less than £20 on amazon.

as a former sound engineer i would have been shot 10 years ago for suggesting this haha, also do the interviews in the quietest place you possibly can, preferably without solid flat walls, a lounge near curtains and a sofa would be a good domestic setting, also turn off anything in the room with fans (computers, unplug sky box from the wall etc) and put the mic somewhere it wont get touched or knocked as you wont notice this sound until you listen to the play back after the even and there are no magic buttons to rectify this to anywhere near acceptable

i would recommend recording in wav format 44,100 16 bit or 320k mp3 or higher if you have the choice, and make a loud short beep sound into the mic as a marker so you know the general places to cut beween edits (Especially in long recordings) when you are cleaning up the audio