No more than 0.5 to 1 second of silence at the beginning of the recording!
If we require no more than 1 second and no less than 0.5 seconds of silence, the instructions should say something like "between 0.5 and 1 second", because a duration of less than 0.5 seconds is not "more than 0.5 to 1 second". If we only require that there be no more than 1 second of silence, there's no reason to mention another number. I'm not sure about the intended meaning myself.
I agree that it's oddly worded. I think the intended meaning is between 0.5 and 1 second. That's what I do and it's what I look for when PLing. The wording of it is what is automatically generated in the first post of each project, and of course, it is possible for the BC to change that wording when they post. But it has to be a manual change for each project.
I'm not entirely sure what it would take to change what is generated across the board, but my understanding is that that code was set quite some time ago, and that it would not be an easy fix. Demanding enough that we'd probably only do it if there were other, and more major, fixes to be made at the same time. I'm sure another admin will correct me if I'm wrong on that count.
After these two responses, I won't be too shy to confess that I've interpreted it both ways. As a PL, I've read it like Phil, and haven't insisted on changes when the silence is under 0.5 seconds. As a reader, I quickly learned some some PLs interpret it like Devorah, and figured that it would take me less cumulative time to fit my starting silence in the 0.5-1 second range before uploading than to fix it whenever I'm asked to do it by the PL.
DACSoft wrote: ↑June 14th, 2020, 1:14 pm
The real question is ... does it matter? As a PL, I can't tell the difference while listening if the beginning silence is .01 or .05 or 1.0 second(s).
(BTW, I interpreted it the same as Devorah.)
I'm a bit surprised at this rule as commercial CD's and radio broadcast recordings often have anything between 1 and 4 seconds silence at the beginning of a track. The five seconds at the end of a track (used to be ten?) for LV I understand is to cope with old playback systems, but not sure about the reason.
Keeping the beginning silence to no more than a range of 0.5-1 sec was meant to keep the wait time before the next section starts to play from becoming excessively long since we are adding 5 sec to the end of each section.
We originally were adding 5 sec for recordings under 30 min and 10 sec for recordings over 30 min. At some point, we decided that 5 sec was enough regardless of length of recording. There was a time when some mp3 players (RealPlayer in particular) would cut off the end of a track and so the extra seconds at the end were added to prevent any of the actual recording getting truncated on playback.
Is this still necessary? Maybe yes, maybe no, but the requirement is written into the code for all the templates. It could be changed, but it would take a bit of time and effort to locate all these bits in the code and change it in each instance that it appears. At present only our sysadmin has access to make the actual changes to the code.
Kazbek wrote: ↑June 14th, 2020, 5:50 pm
Thanks for all the responses! Any objection if I change the wording to "No more than 1 second..." when I launch new projects?
Michael
Fine with me although I prefer "less than 1 second" because it's easier for my mind to grasp that. Either way seems to get the job done.
I know that it would be nice for PLing to be able to measure everything to several decimal places but that's not really what PLing is about, it's about the things that are essential like the bitrate etc and the rest is more about things sounding right so .4999 secs and 1.0001secs would be OK.
annise wrote: ↑June 14th, 2020, 7:43 pm
I know that it would be nice for PLing to be able to measure everything to several decimal places but that's not really what PLing is about, it's about the things that are essential like the bitrate etc and the rest is more about things sounding right so .4999 secs and 1.0001secs would be OK.
Anne
Yes, this makes sense as I'm sure some of my 5 secs is nearer 6 secs, but I think never less than 5 secs, and it seems always to be OK, and no one has mentioned it. I'm more fussy about the 0.5 to 1 sec at the start though.
When I play an LV book through my phone on my car radio, it is common for the first second or two to get lost. I don't know if it is a bluetooth issue or my car's radio (my phone usually plays the track from the start). I've not pursued it because I don't care, but there it is. A data point.
