Time to Finish a recording?

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JamesJenkins
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Post by JamesJenkins »

How long does it take to finish a recording? I mean actual time recording and editing not break time. I have not actually timed it, but I estimate this how long it is taking me. I usually start my recording early in the day when their is less background noise.


I am a new volunteer with no acting, or audio editing experience. I spent a few days just learning how LibriVox and Audacity work.

On my second through fourth submissions, I find each finished minute takes about 10+ minutes of work to produce.

Record the work, 3 times finished length.
* For a 30 minute finished story, the initial recording will be about 60 minutes
* With another 30 minutes spent pausing the recording to look up (and practice) pronunciation and/or waiting for background noise to pass
* Export a copy and name it XXXX_V1

First edit 4-5 times finished length.
* There is an hour of recording for 30 minutes finished, it takes more then twice that long to edit out the pauses, and errors.
* I don't do any re-recording at this time, unless it is really bad. In my Initial recording I tried to get a good audio for everything I know I errored on
* Export a copy and name it XXXX_V2

I apply noise reduction at this point, which only takes a minute. It is now later in the day, and any new recording will have a different background noise profile.

Proof Listen with Spouse and final edits. 3 times finished length. ( I wear head phones, she listens via speaker)
* There are always long pauses that did not get edited out in the first edit
* There are mouse clicks and subtle background noises I missed
* There are words or sentences that she wants replaced. I usually re-record the entire sentence twice, let her pick one, apply noise reduction, and then copy and paste into file
* Export a copy and name it XXXX_V3

I apply ReplayGain Export a copy and name it XXXX_V4 Final testing with checker,

If all is good; final export with file name that will be submitted.

I suspect that as I get more recording experience each finished minute, might get down to 4 or 5 minutes to produce.

How long does it take others to get a recording to submit?

Anything you do different to get a better product in more reasonable time?
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philchenevert
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Post by philchenevert »

James, I am very impressed with your persistence and dedication to an excellent final product. :thumbs: And with your ability to synthesize and tabulate what you have done. This bodes well for your fast progress. Most of those starting here, well me actually, just jumped in, hammered away, made tons of mistakes, got discouraged at the poor recordings but submitted them anyway and then slowly learned how to do this recording and editing stuff. The feedback and help from others is what kept me going until then. I'm not an analytical type of guy, more of a 'wheeee - lets jump in easily discouraged' type of guy.

So you are doing great. My actual time now after thousands of sections is about 2.5 to 1; meaning It akes me about 25 minutes to produce 10 minutes of MP3 file. I record, with lots of corrections, repeats, coughs, and stops and starts, into one file using Audacity. Later when I am feeling like it, I noise clean it a bit, start at the beginning of a file and work my way through it making sure it is a final product before moving on. All pauses sound right, inflections is good, pacing OK, etc. At the end I export it and upload it for prooflistening. 'Dat's it. My files are far from perfect but acceptable.
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mightyfelix
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Post by mightyfelix »

And I, for one, am impressed that your spouse is getting involved, willingly, it seems! My husband tolerates my audiobook stuff, and reluctantly remains quiet when I need to record. But if I asked him to proof listen for me, I think I'd never be done! :lol: He's even more if a perfectionist than I am. :roll:
KevinS
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Post by KevinS »

DSPL: Dedicated Spouse Proof Listener
DACSoft
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Post by DACSoft »

How long does it take others to get a recording to submit?
I'm sure you'll get responses that are all over the place, some less than yours, others more. A lot depends on the content of the section itself. For example, I do better (quicker) with narrative content, than with a lot of dialog or dialect, since I make less mistakes with the former. I make a lot of mistake in general, and am working on reducing the number of them. :oops:

Also, I'm probably the biggest outlier toward the longest time end of the spectrum (I am somewhat of a perfectionist). As an example, here is how long it took me (actual activity time only; no breaks, no elapsed time) for my last solo. I could probably be called a glutton for statistics (accounting is my background), keeping information on each section I record.

A 30-chapter juvie project, whose ending recording length was 310 minutes (just over 5 hours), with a lot of dialog/dialect:

--Text Preparation (breaking the text into separate chapter files, adding intro, outro, filename, and other information) - 95 minutes
--Recording - 765 minutes
--Analysis* (e.g. high level proof-listen to see if I need to scrap the recording and re-record the chapter, amplification, compression, low pass filter, noise removal, etc. as necessary) - 810 minutes
--Editing (fixing or re-recording content problems, heavy breathing, adjusting pauses, etc.. before and after comments from the DPL) - 7,885 minutes
--Uploading to LibriVox - 155 minutes

--Total time - 9,710 minutes (or 31 minutes per minute of final recording)

And this is about 50% less time than when I first started recording (roughly 200 sections ago). So compared to me, you are doing fantastic! One would need to listen to my recordings to determine for themselves if the final result is worth the effort I put in. To me it is, and best of all is that I enjoy what I do. :D

* One reason this phase is as long as it is, is because I save off an .mp3 after each change I make, to analyze its effect on volume levels. :roll: :)

FWIW,
Don (DACSoft)
Bringing the Baseball Joe series to audio!

In Progress:
The Arrival of Jimpson; Baseball Joe in the World Series
Next up:
Two College Friends; Baseball Joe Around the World
KevinS
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Post by KevinS »

I speak very quickly and never make mistakes, so my recordings take 75% less time to record than to listen to them.

I'm also a great liar.
philchenevert
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Post by philchenevert »

KevinS wrote: December 4th, 2020, 3:09 pm I speak very quickly and never make mistakes, so my recordings take 75% less time to record than to listen to them.

I'm also a great liar.
I can vouch for the fact that Kevin never makes mistakes. It is amazing but true! Here is a video of him tap dancing while recording Image
Peruvian owls always hunt in pairs because they are inca hoots.
89 Decibels? Easy Peasy ! https://youtu.be/aSKR55RDVpk
KevinS
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Post by KevinS »

philchenevert wrote: December 4th, 2020, 4:56 pm
KevinS wrote: December 4th, 2020, 3:09 pm I speak very quickly and never make mistakes, so my recordings take 75% less time to record than to listen to them.

I'm also a great liar.
I can vouch for the fact that Kevin never makes mistakes. It is amazing but true! Here is a video of him tap dancing while recording
Hahah! I'm glad you didn't air the big finish!
ToddHW
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Post by ToddHW »

I have been here a while. I still record about 50% more than the final section length - 30 minutes for a 20 minute final file.

It takes me roughly twice the file length to go through and listen and edit and fix. So 60 minutes post-recording time for that 30 minutes recording to get 20 minutes final. (I don't pre-read nor really listen to myself as I record - I am concentrating on reading correctly, adding in the right voices, noticing stumbles to repeat sentence, etc, so this is also when I get to hear and enjoy the story for the first time.)

So that means 90 minutes to get 20. 4-5 minutes to produce 1 minute.

Note that I use the same "4-5 to 1" estimate for making a play: given all the PL'd parts (including my own, produced as above), I go 2x the final length of the play to assemble all the submitted parts together, and then another 2x to play through and adjust all the volumes and gaps between characters to make everything smooth. That 2nd 2x is also when I get to listen and enjoy everything.

Thanks, Todd
adrianstephens
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Post by adrianstephens »

I'm still a relative newbie. For most texts, I probably record 15 minutes for 10 minutes of finished audio. I don't ever stop the recording, so if I need to practice pronunciation this is included. It takes me about 15 minutes to edit (starting at the end), starting with noise reduction, then editing mistakes and removing the occasional horrible death-rattle breath or click. Then I truncate silences, compress and apply replay gain. If I make a handful of mistakes as reported by our wonderful PLs, then it can take another 10 minutes to find the place in the recording and text, listen to surrounding text to identify what voice I'm using, record several goes at the replacement, apply audio treatment, cut and paste it in and adjust volume to context.

Some texts are a lot more difficult - for example if I have to read something with Latin in it, each word gets said about 5 times to get it to a point where I think the pronunciation is OK. I suspect a true Latin Scholar would disagree on the OK-ness, but that's OK too.

I am truly impressed by the attention to detail and dedication of those on this post. If anything, I err on the side of quantity, not quality.
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...
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Part 16: Case Study 2 (Dramatic Reading) https://youtu.be/GBIAd469vnM
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