Earth Notes: Diarycast - Interview Snippets (2021-01-14)

Updated 2022-10-15.

Teasers from an interview with Ian Mundell for Imperial College's Grantham Institute #podcast #teaser

For Imperial Stories and the The World in 2050 feature.

237s "20210114" Uploaded 2021-01-14. Download stereo MP3 clip 1855kB (may not be available in data-saver/lite mode), download low-bandwidth mono MP3 clip 730kB, hi-fi stereo lossless clip 5759kB.

Transcript:

Diarycast

Hi, I'm Damon Hart-Davis, and welcome to Earth Notes' podcast on all things eco and green and efficient @Home!
14th January 2021.

So, we're under another national coronavirus lockdown in England, with a post-Christmas surge in infections and all the rest, but free virtual meetings can still happen!
Imperial College's Grantham Institute has been creating content to celebrate the success of the Grantham Institute's Accelerator Programme.
Recently Imperial College published the World in 2050, which shows how a sustainable, positive future is possible using technology being developed today.
The interview that I have lifted a couple of bits from, is for a section about Radbot and retrofitting.
How does Radbot use light to infer occupancy? I mentioned level- and edge- sensitive stuff, and a risk-based approach, and Radbot's rolling memory of room use:
[... Transcript to follow.]
What beyond Radbot I might do to fix the climate? I talked about forever tinkering, energy storage, and redeveloping my local council estate right so as to reduce fuel poverty and climate change. And how I believe in encouraging active travel:
[... Transcript to follow.]
I will add a link to the finished piece in the show notes when it's done.
There's more on my "Earth Notes" Web site at Earth.Org.UK.

Show Notes

I captured the Skype chat. That capture downloads as an MP4 video file, of which the audio is described by mediainfo as:

ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : AAC LC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity
Codec ID                                 : mp4a-40-2
Duration                                 : 33 min 4 s
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 74.9 kb/s
Maximum bit rate                         : 89.0 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 1 channel
Channel layout                           : C
Sampling rate                            : 16.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 15.625 FPS (1024 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 17.7 MiB (12%)
Language                                 : English
Encoded date                             : UTC 2021-01-14 14:02:28
Tagged date                              : UTC 2021-01-14 14:02:28

I extracted the 16ksps audio as FLAC for Audacity to work with:

ffmpeg -i Video.mp4 -vn output-audio.flac

Given that the Skype recording is 16ksps, that could be a sensible encoding rate for the whole podcast. Interestingly, the track extracted by ffmpeg is also mono, but 24-bit.

I also recorded locally in Audacity with my Blue Yeti mic, and my Zoom H1n field recorder, though those only capture my side of the audio.

In the end for clarity of the audio, I used snippets from the Blue Yeti, so I get stereo 48ksps...