Ever wished Radio was more like a Podcast?

Have you heard part of a great radio show but want to listen on your terms?

• Want more than just a weekly BBC Friday Night Comedy download?
• Want to Listen Again to something more than a week old?
• Like to make podcasts of an entire Drama series to listen to on the move?
• Addicted to Radio 4 ?
• Like Radio 7 - but unable to listen again online?
  

I found this application a few years ago and as an avid Radio 4 fan still find it invaluable.

Anubis can record an entire radio station's output all day, everyday for weeks or months at a time and you can listen to it at your leisure, either on demand or use the archive to make your own podcasts of any show, not just those they want you to have.

• Not sure what you want to listen to? - Not a problem - grab it all and decide later!

Anubis is better than Sky Plus or a Tivo - they can only guess at what you might want to watch next week, or record all the episodes of a show if you tell it to.

It's better than the BBC iPlayer you can use it for any show on any radio station! You can keep it indefinitely and playback on any PC - or make CDs or MP3 postcast files to listen when you want.

Anubis let's you rewind time by weeks or months and listen to a show you only heard about weeks after it was broadcast.

Now, if you are wondering why anyone would want to listen to boring old Aunty or any other Radio broadcaster of this may not be for you. But if you think the pictures are better on radio then read on ...

What does it cost?

It's free! All you need a Windows PC with a sound card and any suitable radio source - DAB, Freeview, or Satellite any will do. If you have a machine with say a 120Gb hard disk you can keep 6 months or more of radio archive at FM quality.

How Does It Work/What do I Need Overview

Depending on the compression level you set up the Anubis Recorder creates mp3 files of about half a gigabyte a day. So a 120Gb hard disk will keep over six months of radio.
The only downside is that you need to leave this PC and radio running all day (or at least all the time you want to record).

Once you have recorded some radio the Anubis Player allows you to select a show, either by time of day, or by name from a schedule. [See picture above right.]

Radio Programmes - The Best Custom Podcasts!!

Do you enjoy quality comedy (ancient and modern) like The Goons, Round the Horne, I'm Sorry I haven't a Clue, Old Harry's Game (by national treasure Andy Hamilton), or Clare in the Community?

Or radio dramatisations from classic authors including the whole Sherlock Holmes canon, (and some of the stories Conan Doyle did not write), Agatha Christie, Cadfael (with the melodious authentically Welsh tones of Philip Madoc) or Jane Austen?

Or some more modern adapations such as The Number One Ladies Detective Agency? Two of my personal favourites are the two crime drama series Baldi (starrring David Threlfall) and McLevy with the superbly versatile cinema actor Brian Cox.



After dramatising all of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley novels the Beeb is about to broadcast all John le Carré's Smiley stories.

Maybe you prefer SciFi with stories and drama from writers like Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein or Wyndam?

Missing Doctor Who? Check out the audio adventures of Doctor Who with Paul McGann and Sheriden Smith? Including Shada - the last completed work by Douglas Adams of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fame - a marvelous mix of his trademark zany space humour and wit.

Prefer Horror - Mark Gatis filled Valentine Dyall's shoes as the Man in Black with a set of dark tales.

Surreal Comedy? Try Terry Pratchet's DiscWorld stories adapated as plays, Nebulous, The Reduced Shakespeare Company or the National Theatre of Brent.

Or how about the original series of Goodness Gracious Me, Little Britain , Mitchell and Webb, or The League of Gentlemen? Or the radio versions of Steptoe and Son or Dad's Army. Or the marvelously recreated lost Marx Brothers' Radio Shows Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel .

There is a massive weekly BBC output of Radio Drama, Audiobooks, Features and Documentaries - but typically only the latter available for download as Podcasts.

A larger selection is available for Listen Again - either online via or through the iplayer - but these options are time limited and restricted to UK only. And some programmes (especially those with music) are not available there ...

What I like about the free Anubis program is that it lets you listen again independently of the BBC iplayer, with no downloads, no restrictions on how long you keep it, and the ability to create mp3 files to play anywhere.

So if you listen to Radio drama, comedy or indeed any broadcasts that you would like to timeshift then Anubis could be for you. OK, it takes more setup than using Listen Again or clicking on an iTunes podcast link - but any audio broadcast can be made into your own custom podcast.

Most examples and detail here cover the main BBC spoken word stations (Radio 4 and Radio 7) - but you can record any audio source you can receive, and associate any schedule of programme times - or just use clock times.

(Listeners may want to acquaint themselves with the terms of the appropriate copyright acts - but timeshifting for personal use is widely regarded to be legal in most countries.)

How do I get Anubis and set it up? An Overview

You will find the progam (and more details and examples) here at the author's web site: http://www.anotherurl.com/anubis/

There are three programs you need to use (all in the download zipfile)

Anubis Recorder: this is what you set up first to record radio to your hard disk
Anubis Player: This looks at all the recorded files and finds their schedule to allow you access your archive
Anubisched: a separate Schedule Fetcher: this used to be part of the Recorder, it is now an external application.

You connect the radio to the computer and set Anubis Recorder running, after making some initial settings you can just leave it running in the background saving your radio station to its database directory.

From a DOS cmd prompt you can fetch the BBC schedule details to the same database directory using anubisched.

These two tasks can be setup to run automatically.
At any later point you can use Anubis Player to view the recorded programmes - and play or save them as mp3.

Making Custom Podcasts from FM - Broadcast PodCaps!

If you want to make podcasts of radio shows to listen to later you have several possible methods:

1) Connect your PC sound card to a regular radio and record a show as it is broadcast.

2) You could just use the BBC Listen Again iPlayer service, and listen to an audio stream over the internet - so you need a computer or internet radio device.

3) Or for a few shows download an official BBC podcast in mp3 format

4) Use your SkyPlus or Freeview+ PVR (Personal Video Recorder) to record radio - just select them from the EPG - audio recordings take a tiny size on the hard disk - but these are not exactly portable.

5) Use a program such as Radio Downloader to turn streamed audio into an mp3. See this thread for some others.

6) Use a tool like Anubis to record radio en masse - then later playback or create MP3 files of individual shows. Highest quality - and most flexible once setup.

Very worthwhile if you are radio4head (or radio7head) and if you have a PC that you leave on - say like a media PC.

(If you have a PC on running skype you can use that - but may need to add another sound card).


Update: some other useful sites and possible methods:
http://www.iplayerconverter.co.uk/ - access iplayer shows in the older RealPlayer format
There are various tools to save the audio you are listening to - eg Ask Tool Bar or Audacity the powerful Free Audio Editor and Recorder

Comments and Discussion

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