How long?

tanzaku · Post by **tanzaku** » January 23rd, 2007, 7:11 am

I'm pretty new here and just getting into the groove having done only 6 recordings. I've measured and determined that my average for reading, editing, saving, ID3-ing, and uploading is about 1,100 words per hour. That is to say, I can complete about a 2,200 word text from start to finish in just 2 hours of my time.

I'm curious if this is average, slow, fast, or about what I should expect for future projects. This might be a useful thing to know when contemplating a given project and balancing against "real life" demands. I don't know about you guys, but I'm time-management challenged, and any tool I can find to help is a blessing!

Brooks

Post by **hugh** » January 23rd, 2007, 7:24 am

my rule of thumb is 10 pages = 20 mins or recorded audio = 1 hr of work.

but I should better define what "10 pages" means, so I'll monitor my next projects.

GordMackenzie · Post by **GordMackenzie** » January 23rd, 2007, 8:52 am

Generally, on a good day, I appear to read about 6,000 words per hour (including gaffs and re-takes).

That hour of recording time generally results in about 45-50 minutes of final edited audio (with errors and gaffs removed).

For each hour that I read it takes about 2.5 hours to edit.

So 2,200 words would be about 25 minutes of recording time, plus 62 minutes of editing or perhaps 87 minutes total. And then add a few minutes for tagging and uploading.

So, your time of 2 hours for 2,200 words is a little bit longer than my estimates ... but my reading time and editing seem to depend on the text itself (complexity, density, etc.) and on the condition of my voice and state of mind (some days I can barely go a paragraph without some blunder!).

The numbers I've given are "good day" averages only. On "bad days" it feels like I'll NEVER get finished with a recording!

djaquay · Post by **djaquay** » January 23rd, 2007, 2:30 pm

Hopefully not too OT from the "how long?" question, but how do we all feel about breaking a recording of a chapter up between two recording sessions? I'm wanting to play around with voices, and I'm thinking it may take longer than I'll have in one session...

Dave

kristin · Post by **kristin** » January 23rd, 2007, 2:45 pm

I prefer to do it in one go just for consistency but sometimes a chapter is just so long or I'm having an off day. Then I will record in multiple sessions and hope that it sounds close enough. For example last night I recorded parts 1 and 2 of the first chapter of my solo project which took about 50 minutes (significantly shorter when edited, under 30) which is about as long as my voice comfortably holds up with constant talking so I plan to record part 3 today. It will all be one file when finished and hopefully not too noticeable.

kri · Post by **kri** » January 23rd, 2007, 3:23 pm

djaquay wrote:Hopefully not too OT from the "how long?" question, but how do we all feel about breaking a recording of a chapter up between two recording sessions? I'm wanting to play around with voices, and I'm thinking it may take longer than I'll have in one session...

Dave

If you need to split them up into sections, feel free to do so. I recommend doing a test recording first during the second session, to see if you can more effectively match up the sound.

MisterSam · Post by **MisterSam** » January 23rd, 2007, 5:37 pm

Well, from my experience so far that is much much faster than I do it.

I tend to read through everything twice or more before I read it with the recording. So I know whats coming and stress each word correctly. I'm a total perfectionist basically.

ceastman · Post by **ceastman** » January 23rd, 2007, 9:54 pm

Generally, I only have about 10-20 minutes at a time to *do* recording (I usually record in the mornings, when my husband's in the shower), so my recordings are necessarily split between multiple sessions. You can sometimes tell when I've changed sessions, but I think (I hope!) it's not *that* noticeable.

-Catharine