Realrekord v.0.9
Thanassis Misaridis <tmi@loa.espci.fr>,<tmi@oersted.dtu.dk>
January 2003

PURPOSE
-------

Realrekord is a RealPlayer recorder, or
in other words allows you to convert rm files to
other formats such as wav/mp3/ogg. 
It is also a RealPlayer station database.

IMPORTANT!
----------
Please check the laws in the country you live to make sure
you are not violating any COPYRIGHTS, before you use
Realrekord!

REQUIREMENTS
------------

   o Standard OSS (/dev/dsp for sound). Test with:
     ls /dev/dsp

   o LD_PRELOAD enviromental variable and permissions for
     setuid programs on your system. Test presence with:
     strings -f -a /lib/*ld*  | fgrep LD_PRELOAD

   o sox - comes with almost all distributions. Test presence with:
     which sox

   o (optional) lame, bladeenc or oggenc
     if you want to save recordings in compressed mp3/ogg formats

   o RealPlayer :-)


DESCRIPTION:
-----------

Apart from being a recorder, Realrekord allows you to
maintain a RealPlayer station database with the following
features: 
 o Add, edit or delete stations from the database
 o Keep a list of favorite stations with custom icons
 o Simple search for a station in the database

Realrekord v0.9 comes with Radio Station Database v1.1 
(Nov.20, 2002) having 2609 radio stations.

 
The recording part of Realrekord uses vsound 0.5,
written by Erik de Castro Lopo  <erikd@zip.com.au>.
It has been slightly modified to read Realrekord configuration
settings.

Vsound "...allows you to record the output of any standard OSS
program (one that uses /dev/dsp for sound) without having to modify or
recompile the program.  It uses the same idea as the esddsp wrapper
from the Enlightened Sound Daemon (in fact, vsound is based on
esddsp).  That is, it preloads a library that intercepts calls to open
/dev/dsp, and instead returns a handle to a normal file.  It also
intercepts ioctl's on that file handle and logs them, to help convert
the audio data from its raw form.  Vsound then uses sox to convert the
raw data to the desired file format.

The upshoot of this is that instead of playing sound to the sound card
in your computer, the data is recorded to a file.  This is similar to
if you connected a loopback cable to the line in and line out jacks on
your sound card, but no DA or AD conversions take place, so quality is
not lost...." 

Recording features:
 o Save recording in user-specified location in wav format
 o Convert recordings to compressed formats - mp3, ogg
   (depending on the converters found on the system)

SAMPLING RATE NOTE:
If your recordings have wrong sampling rate,
check the "Station is Mono" checkbutton under Options.
If the sampling rate is still wrong,
open $HOME/.kde/share/config/realrekordrc
and under [Options] modify the following line:
SamplingRate=11025 
Defaults are 11025 for stereo stations and 5512 for mono stations.

CONTRIBUTE!
-----------
o Report bugs to <tmi@oersted.dtu.dk>

o If you edit the station database  file (.rdb)
  (broken links/ wrong info/ new stations), 
  send it to me to update it in the following version. 
  Your rdb file should be in
    $HOME/.kde/share/apps/realrekord/realrekord.rdb
   
o Translation file in your language (.po)


Enjoy!

Thanassis
tmi@oersted.dtu.dk
tmi@loa.espci.fr


