Date And Time Stamp On Winradio G31DDC Playback

Are you among those who hoped that Winradio would equip their G31DDC recordings with date and time stamp? So that you could see the time and date on playback, and not having to guess? So that you could move the file to another hard drive or folder without the created time/date being lost? Well, you know that it never happened, and probably never will happen

The solution is surprisingly simple, although it involves a bit manual labour on the keyboard. The key is the G33 software, which can play back G31 recordings.

The G31 has a frequency stamp (Insert freq) which keeps track of the center frequency. The G33 on the other hand has a date, time and frequency stamp (Insert FDT). The frequency bit is identical on the two. What separates them is the date and time bit. So I thought: What if I inserted the date and time info manually to the G31 file, and played it back with G33 software?

Worth a try wasn't it, so I changed the original file which was Rec-0.657MHz.ddc to Rec-0.657MHz_11-10-08_16'23'00.ddc, opened the G33 software and pressed Play. Smooth as silk. I then tested two linked G31 files and changed the file names according to G33 syntax and played them back. Smooth as silk. (The time displayed in the playback bar is UTC, i.e. local time - 2 hours)

Of course: If you have a lot of files, it will take some time to change the file names. And linked files may take longer than separate files, because linked G31 files use the -$001.ddc syntax while G33 files use -^001.ddc syntax. But the linked files will have the same date and time stamp as the first file. If you have made a habit of writing down when a file starts, the time should be fairly accurate. And if you haven't made that habit, now is the time.

A word of caution: Always, always, always back up the files you want to change. G33DDC software is available here.