Read Broadcast Wave metadata

Reads the bext chunk of a wave file, the Broadcast Wave metadata written by recorders and editing software built for broadcast and by the archives that take their files. The description is a free run of text, and a sound library commonly puts the whole of its record for a recording into it, as in "Acinipe calabra; Studio recording; Italy, Sicily, Baucina (PA); Female song". A file holding no bext chunk gives an empty result rather than an error.

Usage

bext(x)

Arguments

x

Path to a wave file, a Wave object with bext metadata attached, a raw vector holding a wave file, or a bext object

Value

A bext object, which is a named list of fields

Details

Fields are named as the specification names them. The date and time are also reported together as datetime; the file says nothing about which timezone they were written in, so they are read in the timezone of the session. A time written in no layout the specification allows leaves the date at midnight, which is what a file that left the time empty already gave, rather than taking the date down with it.

References

European Broadcasting Union (2011). Specification of the Broadcast Wave Format: a format for audio data files in broadcasting. EBU Tech 3285. https://tech.ebu.ch/publications/tech3285

See also

readMetadata() reads this and every other metadata format a file carries at once, and ixml() reads the iXML chunk that a recorder writing this format often writes beside it.

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
m <- bext("recording.wav")
m[["Description"]]
} # }