Let’s review the steps I’ve worked out so far and add some I haven’t in order to get an overview of how things are coming together. 1 – Deskew Although all the photos will be orientated the same way (up? round?) they all need to be straightened out. The basic approach is to use the …
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SFX Discography Project 5
Magic Tricks? Rather unexpectedly, Magic Select does not take its foreground image untouched. Here you can see the original and Magic Selected image overlaid. I’ve moved the cropped label around to try and line it up with the original, but it’s bigger. I’ve aligned it so you can see the difference clearly. With a bit …
SFX Discography Project 4
Frustrated with OpenCV and the imperfections of the processes I was using, I decided to see how things worked out using Paint 3D and Power Automate. This was the result. To summarise, I took an initial batch of photos to test out ways of automatically cropping the label of all my BBC SFX 7″ discs. …
SFX Discography Project 3
As I explained in the last post, I’m trying to cut out a perfect outline around the label in the photographs I’ve taken. My first experiment with GrabCut was underwhelming though. The problem is that the interlocking serrations (of yes! that’s what they are called.*) were being left in. *No, I didn’t know what they …
SFX Discography Project 2
In the first part of this blog series, I described how I had photographed a small batch of BBC sound effects singles to test the photographic process. Noting some issues with lighting I will return to that later. Since the photographs were taken I decided to make a start on the processing of the images. …
SFX Discography Project 1
This post is arriving out of the blue really. I should have started this a year ago and worked up to this point. Instead, I decided that I’d made a significant step forward now and this was the time to start writing about the nuts and bolts (some of which are not metaphorical) of this …
Discographic Workshop Part 4C – Sound Effects Centre
Specially Created Commission Impossibles From time to time the BBC Sound Effects Centre (SEC) would commission sound effects for their ever-growing catalogue from their colleagues, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (RWS). In most cases, these were sounds it was not possible to capture in or outside a studio. The weather was a prime target. Being naturally …
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Q&A With Tim Worthington
Tim Worthington is a writer and podcaster responsible for a wide-ranging contribution to our appreciation of pop culture. A part of the “shadowy cabal” behind TV Cream he did much to bring an accessible and amusing overview of the lost world of British television to droves of early web users eager to see if anyone …
Death & Horror Sound Effects
It must have been a comfort to successive heads of BBC Records to see another sound effects record in the release schedule. These albums of noises were never meant to make a splash in the charts or even get mentioned in the trades, let alone the music press, but they were solid business for the …
Charity Shop Classics
In late 2019 I was invited to contribute a Listener’s Choice edition of the radio show Charity Shop Classics. I accepted with alacrity and the resulting 58 minutes (plus intro and jingles) is available here on Mixcloud (via Facebook, because WordPress’s Mixcloud embed code isn’t working). Charity Shop Classics is broadcast on All FM, a …