VO-BB - 19 YEARS OLD!

[WillMWatt]

Hello everyone

Bit of an odd question, and not sure where I should post it, so here I am in the 'gear' section!

I am using adobe audition to edit together a long-form narration project which has clips from me and another narrator. We get paid, individually, PFH, but our dialogue is interspersed throughout each section or chapter and ends up looking like this:



As you can see, there's a fair bit of overlap for each clip, and all these little sections are from a single master file for each narrator, which includes alternate/bad takes, dead air, yawns, etc.

The client has asked me to tot-up how much is owed for each narrator. My question is this:

Is there a button I can press, or a function that I can use, that will magically snap all of the clips in a single track back to back so that I can simply select the block of clips to get my total for each chapter/section? I can do it manually by moving each clip, but I think I'd rather stab myself in the eye with a pencil. These are long chapters, and there's a lot of different clips.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance.

[todd ellis]

not that i know of. you COULD mute one track - save the remaining track as a new file then go back into the editor & chop out the spaces ... probably not much of a time-saver, though. i'm not sure what you're thinking - but this is definitely billable time.

what if you calculated how fast you were speaking (wpm) and multiplied that by the number of words?

this is another reason i charge per word - not finished time - too many variables.
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"i know philip banks": todd ellis
who's/on/1st?

[Jason Huggins]

Try this. Start by selecting all the clips on one track, right click and then hit Create Unique Copy. This will create a file for each clip as it is in your multitrack session (but won't include any dead space from cuts).

Then select all of the files you just created and add them to the batch process window. Use batch process (with NONE as the process but check Export and set up the export settings) to save them all as an mp3 onto your harddrive somewhere.

THEN go into waveform mode and hit File, Open Append, To New... select all of the files you just saved and they will be squished together into one file. Then the display will show you the total time of the file.

Do that for both and you should have a run time for each person.

[todd ellis]

that actually works - i'm not sure it would be faster --- but it works.
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"i know philip banks": todd ellis
who's/on/1st?

[Eddie Eagle]

Another manual method is to close the gap on spaces of the top or each of the tracks and then Audition will show a total time without having to make separate files.

[RJ McNicol]

Another possiblity is to Select (Hilite) the tracks, or locked groups you want then from Multitrack menu select Bounce to New Track and anything selected or grouped will make a new file on a lower track. That might help in showing the time and you could edit and tweak that bounced track for a total time?

[Bish]

It's an interesting problem... and I'm sure one of the manipulations mentioned will work just fine. However, how critical is the count? Do you need to be so techno-centric to find the answer?

I'm sure you have scripts broken out into parts. If you have an editable format, you should quickly be able to find out the number of words for each narrator. That easily translates into a percentage. Simply take the overall production time and apportion appropriately. It may not be perfect to the minute, but it should be workably close.

I know it's not what you asked, but that's how I'd approach the problem.
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Bish a.k.a. Bish
Smoke me a kipper... I'll be back for breakfast.
I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls.

[todd ellis]

i was told there would be no math.
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"i know philip banks": todd ellis
who's/on/1st?

[Jason Huggins]

There is one other way to do that, and it might be easier.

Mute one track.

Click Multitrack, Mix Down Session to New File, Entire File...

Then in Waveform mode, go to Effects, Diagnostics, Delete Silence...

Then scan the file in the Diagnostics window and click Delete All

This will run all your audio right up next to each other...however it will remove all of your natural pauses as well and that will cut down on the total run time of the audio. If you have 6 hours of audio, that would probably result in quite a loss. That CAN be recalculated though. After doing both, you can just get a percentage of your audio and the other narrator's audio and then apply that to the total run time before doing any processing.

I don't know if that would help at all...but it's fun to find solutions

[WillMWatt]

Thanks everyone!

Jason - your first option seems to be the best.

Some of the others don't quite help as they either remove all the natural pauses, or involve tedious time calculating percentages (although that was another option I had thought of, Bish!).

Eddie - your method is exactly what I want to avoid. I was hoping I'd be able to work out the total time without having to spend hours dragging clips around the multitrack manually. The total file length is around 8 hours, so this is very much a time-saving exercise.

I'll let you all know what I end up doing!

[Quicksilver]

The diagnostics window is one of my favorite time savers.

You can tweak it to just shorten silence. Mix down the individual tracks and use that to suck all the pauses out.