What's the best way to keep track of total minutes uploaded?

[CannedFrootloops]

Last year, I made a resolution to record 100 hours for Librivox. To make a short story short: I didn't do it. Such are the ways of New Year's Resolutions. But I want to take up a similar resolution (though far less ambitious). What is the way that I can keep track of my uploads? I'd also like to account for total time spent recording. Thank you all in advance.

[annise]

Make a spreadsheet - we don't have any idea of how long you spend so you would need a spreadsheet for that so adding your finished recording time to another column would be easy.

Anne

[CannedFrootloops]

Make a spreadsheet - we don't have any idea of how long you spend so you would need a spreadsheet for that so adding your finished recording time to another column would be easy.

Anne

Thank you!

[ChrisGreaves]

Last year, I made a resolution to record 100 hours for Librivox...

Hi CannedFruitLoops.
I believe that New year's resolutions are bound to fail, by definition:-
http://www.chrisgreaves.com//Greaves/Admin/Domains/Business/Business%20Development/1123_NewYearsResolutions.htm

Now the Good news: I keep track of my hours using (Windows) Notepad.exe; the process is semi-automatic, like the time-card stamp machine at the factory door.
A Notepad.exe text file with ".LOG" in the first line will time-stamp a new line each time the text file is opened.
The accumulated file (sample below) can be fed into a spreadsheet at any time and a summary produced.

The best use for me was when my telephone rang; I would click on the icon to open the file before answering the phone. Thus the start-time of the phone call was recorded. If the call was a quick note "Can't meet you for lunch - sorry" I would hang up the phone, close the file without saving, and get back to my billable work. But if the call was longer, I could hang up the phone, type in the commentary, and use the <F5> function key to "clock on" again on my client's billable project.
I have a MSWord macro to summarize the text file by client and project.
Cheers
Chris

Code: Select all

.LOG 
9:30 PM 11/01/2021 mike technical testing search engines
1:08 PM 11/01/2021

5:04 AM 11/02/2021 mike technical set up loop for evaluating SEs
5:35 AM 11/02/2021

7:09 AM 11/02/2021 mike technical manually loading data for ten test cases

8:11 AM 11/02/2021
9:32 AM 11/02/2021 mike technical coding for ten test cases

11:03 AM 11/02/2021

[CannedFrootloops]

Last year, I made a resolution to record 100 hours for Librivox...

Hi CannedFruitLoops.
I believe that New year's resolutions are bound to fail, by definition:-
http://www.chrisgreaves.com//Greaves/Admin/Domains/Business/Business%20Development/1123_NewYearsResolutions.htm

Now the Good news: I keep track of my hours using (Windows) Notepad.exe; the process is semi-automatic, like the time-card stamp machine at the factory door.
A Notepad.exe text file with ".LOG" in the first line will time-stamp a new line each time the text file is opened.
The accumulated file (sample below) can be fed into a spreadsheet at any time and a summary produced.

The best use for me was when my telephone rang; I would click on the icon to open the file before answering the phone. Thus the start-time of the phone call was recorded. If the call was a quick note "Can't meet you for lunch - sorry" I would hang up the phone, close the file without saving, and get back to my billable work. But if the call was longer, I could hang up the phone, type in the commentary, and use the <F5> function key to "clock on" again on my client's billable project.
I have a MSWord macro to summarize the text file by client and project.
Cheers
Chris

Code: Select all

.LOG 
9:30 PM 11/01/2021 mike technical testing search engines
1:08 PM 11/01/2021

5:04 AM 11/02/2021 mike technical set up loop for evaluating SEs
5:35 AM 11/02/2021

7:09 AM 11/02/2021 mike technical manually loading data for ten test cases

8:11 AM 11/02/2021
9:32 AM 11/02/2021 mike technical coding for ten test cases

11:03 AM 11/02/2021

Thank you for your reflection on New Years. That's a very valuable point. And thank you for sharing with me your system. That's cool!

[knotyouraveragejo]

If you just want to see the total length of your finished recordings, and you have a Windows PC here's an easy method:

Put all the finished mp3 files (or folders containing them) in a single folder.

Open File Explorer and navigate to the aforementioned folder.
Click on View and Details, then Open Detail Pane

In the Search Box, enter mp3 and click the arrow to perform the search
Select All, (making sure first that no folders are selected) then click show more details in the Detail Pane

The length displayed will be the total runtime of all the mp3 files in the folder.

[ChrisGreaves]

If you just want to see the total length of your finished recordings, and you have a Windows PC here's an easy method:

... and here is another easy method, using as an example WinAmp player, but possibly applicable on the player of your choice on the platform of your choice:
In Winamp, I drag a collection of files to the player, and the PlayList editor displays the total run-time in the bottom-right-hand corner of the editor pane.

This option is possibly available in whatever media player you use to listen to audio, and is independent of the bit-rate of each track.
Cheers
Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

Thank you for your reflection on New Years. That's a very valuable point. And thank you for sharing with me your system. That's cool!

Don't thank me. Thank the person who told me about the feature!
Also: In Notepad, the <F5> function key inserts the time-stamp at the text cursor
Cheers
Chris

[ChristopherW]

Also: In Notepad, the <F5> function key inserts the time-stamp at the text cursor

And for those who use vim, here's a way to do the same. Add these to your .vimrc file in your home directory:

Code: Select all

imap <F5>  <C-R>=strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S%z")<CR>
nmap <F5> i<C-R>=strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S%z")<CR><Esc>

(I prefer ISO 8601 date/time formats, but it can be adjusted to taste.)

[ChrisGreaves]

Thank you for your reflection on New Years. That's a very valuable point. And thank you for sharing with me your system. That's cool!

I had reason to examine the Magic Windows for my recent projects and collected my data in a workbook which can be downloaded from http://www.chrisgreaves.com/Downloads/Status_20220202.xls
In that workbook I made an assumption that it took me three times the final length of a track to Record that track; a ratio of 3:1, and a 1:1 ratio for Proof Listening. Then I realized that the 30-minute tracks on the Bach project had each taken me a complete morning, a ratio of much more than 3:1.

So I used my Notepad.exe Billing data (separate from LibriVox data) to tally up elapsed time spent directly on recording and proof-listening. It came to an astonishing 73 hours of elapsed time to deliver 6h:43m of recordings and 3h:14m of proof listening.

That delivers a ratio of 7:1

I expect that ratio to come down over time, but Oh! the power gained by a simple recording device.
Cheers
Chris

[ChristopherW]

I had reason to examine the Magic Windows for my recent projects and collected my data in a workbook which can be downloaded from http://www.chrisgreaves.com/Downloads/Status_20220202.xls
In that workbook I made an assumption that it took me three times the final length of a track to Record that track; a ratio of 3:1, and a 1:1 ratio for Proof Listening. Then I realized that the 30-minute tracks on the Bach project had each taken me a complete morning, a ratio of much more than 3:1.

So I used my Notepad.exe Billing data (separate from LibriVox data) to tally up elapsed time spent directly on recording and proof-listening. It came to an astonishing 73 hours of elapsed time to deliver 6h:43m of recordings and 3h:14m of proof listening.

That delivers a ratio of 7:1

I expect that ratio to come down over time, but Oh! the power gained by a simple recording device.
Cheers
Chris

I've seen discussions in this board about production ratios in the past. 7:1 isn't all that bad. Some were down to maybe 3:1 and others were 10:1 or higher.

How long does it usually take someone to produce 1 finished hour of an Audiobook? suggests 6.2:1 is typical.

[annise]

It always does depend on the text too - 3 would be about the minimum for most straightforward texts. But the minute there are words you would not normally say and ideas which need to be carefully presented it takes longer.

Anne

[holyonfire]

Last year, I made a resolution to record 100 hours for Librivox. To make a short story short: I didn't do it. Such are the ways of New Year's Resolutions. But I want to take up a similar resolution (though far less ambitious). What is the way that I can keep track of my uploads? I'd also like to account for total time spent recording. Thank you all in advance.

In case it helps for the time tracking bit, the free version of MyHours (https://myhours.com/) has been very helpful for me with timing how long specific tasks take. I've also liked being able to group the tasks under projects, so that I know how long an overall project took me, with its component tasks.

[ChrisGreaves]

In that workbook I made an assumption that it took me three times the final length of a track to Record that track; a ratio of 3:1, and a 1:1 ratio for Proof Listening.

In this post I have reported an edit:read ratio of 2.45 over 234,000 words read in a single project; the production rate is about 1,800 words per hour.
I am not tracking PL time for the project.
Cheers
Chris

[lortizsouza]

For tracking my own project time, I've actually been using a basic spreadsheet. It's pretty straightforward – I just enter the date, the time I start and stop, and any quick notes about what I did. It's been a really simple way to see how much I'm getting done over time. This is the solution if you are on a budget. You can find a bunch of tutorials and guides on how to build a time tracker in Google spreadsheets on YouTube.

These days, I am using a time tracker from these productivity tracking tools - all it's automated, and it sends me weekly and monthly reports of the time spent and rates of productivity and efficiency.