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Standards vary. DT, IIRC, is [INAUDIBLE] for everything. I've got a client that uses (inaudible). I've got another client which uses [indistinct]. The last one actually makes a distinction, it's either (inaudible): can't be heard or (unintelligible): audible but can't be understood. Drives me batshit when I have work for three different clients, like I did today.
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Feb 12, 2013 08:38
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kazmeyer posted:Standards vary. DT, IIRC, is [INAUDIBLE] for everything. I've got a client that uses (inaudible). I've got another client which uses [indistinct]. The last one actually makes a distinction, it's either (inaudible): can't be heard or (unintelligible): audible but can't be understood. [INAUDIBLE] makes sense for a group like DT. It sound less like a personal opinion/personal 'slight' than the other variations, so it's understandable that it's used. 'Less judgmental.' By comparison, I can understand why [INDISTINCT] is used less. I'd say what I used to use for captioning elsewhere, but contractual obligations and all that. [UNINTELLIGIBLE] could make it sound like you think someone's stupid. It's a smarter move on the part of the company to use [INAUDIBLE] because that's more likely to be 'the medium is to blame' rather than 'hey rear end in a top hat quit talking like you have the microphone up to your neck and put it up to your loving piehole already.' ...even if that's what some of us would like to say.
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Feb 12, 2013 15:18
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An Old Boot posted:[INAUDIBLE] makes sense for a group like DT. It sound less like a personal opinion/personal 'slight' than the other variations, so it's understandable that it's used. 'Less judgmental.' Agreed...also there needs to be a button so I can shock people who record their podcasts with the sound activation setting. Seriously guy, screw you! It didn't save you any money, you were still recording dead air, you just weren't transmitting it to your webinar clients and it made it choppy as gently caress!
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Feb 13, 2013 20:27
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For the people who have been contracted with DT lately, how long did it take for them to contact you after sending off your W9 and NDA? Its been a couple of days and just wondering if that's normal.
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Feb 15, 2013 02:28
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jabro posted:For the people who have been contracted with DT lately, how long did it take for them to contact you after sending off your W9 and NDA? Its been a couple of days and just wondering if that's normal. I got mine the next day, but my roommate just recently has been waiting for four days for her notice.
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Feb 15, 2013 05:43
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To be fair they have had a LOT of work through lately and the actual team is pretty small, when I joined in November it took a couple of weeks to get things sorted out. And I didn't even have a W9 to sort out, so. (Canadagoon)
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Feb 15, 2013 21:08
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Oh, man. Last night was one of those nights that either makes you give up transcribing altogether or set a personal rule about what kind of tapes you'll do for what kind of pay scale. Suffice to say after doing a tape for an "I Love the '80s"-style show consisting of a comedy duo constantly talking over each other and finishing each others' sentences verbatim for a per-minute rate, I'm never again doing multiple speakers unless the client pays by the page or by the hour.
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Feb 15, 2013 21:18
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Ugh Mediapiston is closing. That site is how I have been making a living for the past 6 months, gently caress. Textbroker pays poo poo and Writers Access never has enough work. It says they are encouraging people to work for Odesk instead, anyone have luck with that site? Will it be easy to keep making a full time living at 40 hours a week there like Mediapiston was? Edit: By that I mean content writing, and at MP I was making about $100 a day for 8-9 articles which would take me 5 hours or so. Would have to up that to 30 articles to make that much from Textbroker, which there isn't enough time in the day to do plus 90% of the stuff I see on Textbroker has instructions that make no goddamn sense at all. Freeze_Dried_Chives fucked around with this message at 03:32 on Feb 16, 2013 |
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Feb 16, 2013 03:25
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Does anyone have experience working with Fancy Hands? I see them around a lot, but haven't seen a lot of feedback.
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Feb 16, 2013 03:47
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Dabbo posted:Does anyone have experience working with Fancy Hands? I see them around a lot, but haven't seen a lot of feedback. They are a legit company, but I have no idea what it would be like working for them.
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Feb 16, 2013 04:02
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Dabbo posted:Does anyone have experience working with Fancy Hands? I see them around a lot, but haven't seen a lot of feedback. I got $5 from there to draft some guys fantasy football team. I check there every once awhile to see if they have something easy to do real quick. A lot of people want you to check Craigslist for apartments for some reason. Find the ones that only want 3 or 4 apts. and you can make $4+ for 10 minutes of work. Making appointments for people are quick and easy, too.
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Feb 16, 2013 04:10
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Freeze_Dried_Chives posted:Ugh Mediapiston is closing. That site is how I have been making a living for the past 6 months, gently caress. Textbroker pays poo poo and Writers Access never has enough work. It says they are encouraging people to work for Odesk instead, anyone have luck with that site? Will it be easy to keep making a full time living at 40 hours a week there like Mediapiston was? This is why I try to hammer it into people's heads to never, ever, EVER try to get a full-time living off a single freelancing gig. The only way to do this and not set yourself up for disaster is to juggle multiple clients. It can be a pain in the rear end trying to make time for three transcription clients, a writing gig, and a search engine job without any of them being particularly neglected (in my example), but if any one of those clients drops off the radar for me I can quickly make up the slack with others. And I'm still considering adding to the roster.
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Feb 16, 2013 04:10
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kazmeyer posted:This is why I try to hammer it into people's heads to never, ever, EVER try to get a full-time living off a single freelancing gig. The only way to do this and not set yourself up for disaster is to juggle multiple clients. It can be a pain in the rear end trying to make time for three transcription clients, a writing gig, and a search engine job without any of them being particularly neglected (in my example), but if any one of those clients drops off the radar for me I can quickly make up the slack with others. And I'm still considering adding to the roster. Yea it was pretty stupid to start relying on only one site like that. I tried doing equal work for all the writing sites when I started, but it started seeming like a waste of time to do something on Textbroker for $3 when I could do the same amount of work there and get $15. The only other writing sites I know of are Writers Access and Textbroker, are there any other good ones out there? I suppose I'll be giving Odesk a shot now since it seems to be replacing Mediapiston.
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Feb 16, 2013 05:54
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Freeze_Dried_Chives posted:Yea it was pretty stupid to start relying on only one site like that. I tried doing equal work for all the writing sites when I started, but it started seeming like a waste of time to do something on Textbroker for $3 when I could do the same amount of work there and get $15. It's easy to get into that kind of a trap, and yeah, I don't mean you should take jobs that are clearly not worth your time. I consider my gigs by approximately how much they pay me per hour of effort, and most of the ones I keep going are in the same range. If I find a new one that's pretty lucrative, I ease off on whatever's paying me the least, in order to keep my average moving up. Unfortunately, general content mill sites are on the decline, thanks to the changes in Google's ranking system. A page written by somebody without actual experience in the field isn't very valuable nowadays, which is why most of the sites which are still around are demanding a resume to match whatever field you're writing in. I'm not really sure what the best ones are anymore.
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Feb 16, 2013 06:05
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Um...I think my pedal just broke...hmmm...I have a spare, but it's the same model, an Infiniti that I got "free" with my medical transcription course...maybe I just have lead feet? IS this normal? Maybe six months of use? I mean I don't think I've ever even killed a mouse. Can someone recommend a nice robust pedal?
Slightly Used Cake fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Feb 16, 2013 |
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Feb 16, 2013 18:50
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Was it a USB-1 or a USB-2? (The 1 has separate switches for FF/REW, where the 2 has them sort of integrated into the main body of the pedal.) I've been using the same USB-1 since 2007 or so and haven't had any issues with it, other than it getting a bit squeaky.
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Feb 16, 2013 20:33
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Yeah it seems to be working again, weird, and I can't actually say, USB1 I think. Seems like it just had a bit of a fit with my software. Threw me off because all of a sudden InqScribe was not accepting input from my play button. Seems to be okay now, fingers crossed. I think it's just the week I'm having.
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Feb 16, 2013 21:19
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I've got a lot of free time, infinite capacity for boredom, and audio studio equipment so DT looks like it wouldn't be too hard for some extra cash. My god the demo audio is terrible. Was it recorded on the runway of an active airport? I've managed to get away with only two or three [INAUDIBLE]s but what do I do with the part at the end where the interviewer is making them high-five and stuff? It's not really a question. Luigi Thirty fucked around with this message at 02:29 on Feb 17, 2013 |
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Feb 16, 2013 21:26
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jabro posted:I got $5 from there to draft some guys fantasy football team. I check there every once awhile to see if they have something easy to do real quick. A lot of people want you to check Craigslist for apartments for some reason. Find the ones that only want 3 or 4 apts. and you can make $4+ for 10 minutes of work. Making appointments for people are quick and easy, too. I must be missing this but where do you sign up to do work? Careers just shows dev jobs.
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Feb 17, 2013 02:39
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Slightly Used Cake posted:Yeah it seems to be working again, weird, and I can't actually say, USB1 I think. Seems like it just had a bit of a fit with my software. Threw me off because all of a sudden InqScribe was not accepting input from my play button. Seems to be okay now, fingers crossed. I think it's just the week I'm having. I have noticed on rare occasions that I get some kind of a conflict between my USB peripherals; sometimes I'll reboot and either the mouse or keyboard doesn't accept input, and in rare cases the pedal has stopped working. Usually unplugging and replugging the offending peripheral sorts it out. (I have assloads of USB stuff connected, though.) Luigi Thirty posted:I've got a lot of free time, infinite capacity for boredom, and audio studio equipment so DT looks like it wouldn't be too hard for some extra cash. Question, in terms of tapes, is a flexible term. Generally speaking you want to record anything that's a response to a direct question, the subject volunteering relevant information, or any scene with dialogue staged for the camera. You'll eventually develop an extremely fine sense of what's on-camera and what's not, but when you're starting out, more is better. Basically, you want them saying "You didn't need to record this part" rather than "you should have recorded this part," dig? If there's any dialogue associated with the high-fiving I'd definitely get it down. (You may also eventually get jobs which require B-Roll logging, which is basically just noting what's happening on screen, but IIRC that's not included in their test.) (And it may seem easy, but there's a reason I tell everyone to do a half-hour of Henry Rollins or something before trying out. This job can seriously, seriously drive you bugshit and it only takes one horrendous tape to make you snap. If you make it six months without saying "gently caress it I'll go flip burgers this is bullshit" you've beaten the odds.)
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Feb 17, 2013 03:34
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MasterControl posted:I must be missing this but where do you sign up to do work? Careers just shows dev jobs. Its the link right below that says become an assistant. Says they aren't hiring though and to check back later.
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Feb 17, 2013 03:36
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jabro posted:Its the link right below that says become an assistant. Says they aren't hiring though and to check back later. I was on my mobile so maybe it was that, or that I just suck at looking. Either way thanks for the update on it.
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Feb 17, 2013 04:07
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Luigi Thirty posted:I've got a lot of free time, infinite capacity for boredom, and audio studio equipment so DT looks like it wouldn't be too hard for some extra cash. I started taking the test, ended up with a similar amount of [INAUDIBLE], but same question about the end, they are just going back and forth outside of the interview. There really arent questions being asked, just the two people who are being interviewd going back and forth about nothing really. I was thinking about just doing the [NON-INTERVIEW], but wasnt sure.
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Feb 19, 2013 03:50
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Record everything.
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Feb 19, 2013 03:53
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Indeed, they'd rather you recorded too much and they have to take some bits out then you record too little and then it takes more time to go back and re-do. And in the context of working, you'd be expected to do that bit as it's set up and lead ins, don't worry, the real stuff is NEVER that cheezy, the job is awesome, this last week I have been laughing my rear end off at the assignments, you'll love it, good luck with your test.  And if you enjoy men talking about cars as a thing, you'll definitely enjoy it.
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Feb 19, 2013 03:57
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Kaz and the DT crowd, how much can you say about what it actually is you're transcribing? I imagine some stuff (like your high end media work Kaz) is under NDA, but is everything similarly tightly controlled?
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Feb 19, 2013 04:09
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Technically speaking it's all under NDA -- the contract you sign for DT has non-disclosure clauses in it, unless they've changed it. Now, the NDA game. First of all, in the vast majority of cases, the NDA isn't going to be a big deal. Nobody's going to give a poo poo about you telling a friend "yeah I worked on this show about a head shop" or "man you need to watch Black Gold two weeks from now, it's a really good episode." Revealing pertinent details or revealing anything that happened behind the scenes, however, you've got to use some common sense. For instance, I've done a lot of work for Food Network, and I feel generally comfortable describing the various TV chefs' "real life" personalities as opposed to their on-camera personas. (Robert Irvine is a really nice and humble guy, Giada de Laurentiis is way more down to earth than she seems in her show, Tyler Florence is a perfectionist and won't let a line go unless he feels like he delivered it properly, and Marc Summers is somehow more hyper when the cameras aren't on him. And Alton Brown is precisely the same person on camera as off, which relieved me greatly to learn.) But if one were to discuss some personal anecdote off-camera, I'd never even think of revealing that kind of information publicly. I have gotten to work on reality TV show competitions where I found out the ending weeks before anyone else, and of course that kind of stuff is embargoed (and that's where you can really get into the poo poo). Basically, it's common sense. Dropping specific details about unaired shows publicly is a no-no. Really general stuff you can pretty much skate on. Then there's clients like X. I would love to tell you who X is, because you would recognize his or her name immediately. I worked on a project for X that the vast majority of you have seen or will see, but if I were to tell you the name of that project or reveal X's name, he or she would legally be able to shoot me in the face with a rifle. I think. All I know is that's one NDA I'm not about to test, because I want to do more work for X. (Generally speaking, your editor or assigner or whatever will let you know when you need to take special care for a client. I had to sign a separate NDA to work for Oprah's network for instance -- I can say I've done work for OWN, and can talk about shows once they air, but that's about it. In X's case, I can't reveal anything, and I even had to agree to sign the NDA before I knew who X was.) kazmeyer fucked around with this message at 05:01 on Feb 19, 2013 |
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Feb 19, 2013 04:48
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kazmeyer posted:(In X's case, I can't reveal anything, and I even had to agree to sign the NDA before I knew who X was.) They take the FMV sequences for Charles Barkley's Shut Up and Jam Gaiden 2 very seriously.
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Feb 19, 2013 05:43
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Kaz,can I ask a few non-creepy questions? How long have you been doing the transcribing? Do you plan on doing it for an extended time? Is it your only gig? (do you do search stuff on top?)
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Feb 19, 2013 05:58
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Sure. I've been transcribing since 2007, and honestly, it's a good enough gig that I'll stick with it until something else takes up more of my time. When you first start out it's a lot of drudge work, but trust me, once you get a lot of experience and good rep under your belt it becomes much nicer. (PROTIP: If anyone ever mentions the words "as broadcast" to you, tell them you want to know more. That's the kind of work you want to do. Some of it is really, really lovely -- DT has some AB formats that I'd rather get a colonoscopy than do -- but AB is where transcription moves from grunt work to a good job.) As for other gigs, I try and spread out as much as possible. Freelancing is all about irons in the fire, you always want to have more irons than you have time to tend. I've got three transcription clients, plus a couple past clients I could probably return to if I was hurting. I've got a writing gig, and I've got a search engine gig. But I'm still moving; I'm considering going to the local community college and taking the hell out of some Spanish courses as I've seen translation jobs going for frankly ludicrous rates, and I'm considering taking a locksmithing course or three. Not that I really want to be a Pop-A-Lock guy, it just seems like an interesting skillset to me and it wouldn't hurt to have one blue-collar job I could actually do well if it came down to it. Monkey bang on keyboard is probably a job I can pick up through any temp agency if I really had to, but I get bored easily. Ultimately, though, I want the word under my name on my business card to be "WRITER" -- that's what I enjoy doing, and I'm apparently halfway decent at it. The endgame is way more likely self-publishing through Amazon than it is NYT bestseller, but eventually I want to get the bulk of my income from my own words I've stacked together rather than words I've stacked together for other people. In the end, I can describe my career goals (and what keeps me freelancing) simply: If I never have to wear a tie or punch a clock again in my lifetime, I'll die a happy man. kazmeyer fucked around with this message at 07:21 on Feb 19, 2013 |
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Feb 19, 2013 06:14
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Gotta love those interviews where you can write [non-interview] and sit back and relax for ten minutes.
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Feb 19, 2013 13:58
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kazmeyer posted:Sure. I've been transcribing since 2007, and honestly, it's a good enough gig that I'll stick with it until something else takes up more of my time. When you first start out it's a lot of drudge work, but trust me, once you get a lot of experience and good rep under your belt it becomes much nicer. (PROTIP: If anyone ever mentions the words "as broadcast" to you, tell them you want to know more. That's the kind of work you want to do. Some of it is really, really lovely -- DT has some AB formats that I'd rather get a colonoscopy than do -- but AB is where transcription moves from grunt work to a good job.) Dang, you sure do have a lot of things in the pipeline. I'll second that keep on moving thing, freelancers are a moving target sometimes. I've got a few clients I bounce around with but I'm always having to search (why is why this thread was a godsend for me). Is the writing gig from this thread or part of that rotica thread?
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Feb 19, 2013 15:48
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One more random transcription question. I was looking over what I wrote down for the test today, noticed that after about a minute into my transcription that all my timecodes are now off by 4 seconds consistently throughout it. Is there something that could have caused this? I havent changed any settings on Realplayer AFAIK.
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Feb 19, 2013 18:21
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MasterControl posted:Dang, you sure do have a lot of things in the pipeline. I'll second that keep on moving thing, freelancers are a moving target sometimes. I've got a few clients I bounce around with but I'm always having to search (why is why this thread was a godsend for me). It's because I learned my lesson. I started freelancing full-time with a writing gig I picked up off the forums here that dried up on me. Then I got into transcription full-time with a client that eventually left me holding about $1500 in unpaid invoices. Both times it was a disaster financially, and if I hadn't stumbled into another job fairly quickly I'd have been screwed. After that, I got greedy with work, and started making a habit of trolling Craigslist for new gigs every couple of days. More = better than. Neither, it's something I picked up on the side, and they got mauled by Google's algorithm changes so it's very intermittent. The only reason I've still got it is apparently I got pretty good at writing the bland, tasteless five-paragraph articles that make good Web writing. (By God, though, the self-published erotica numbers are tempting. Just not sure I can put together that kind of story and make it compelling. Will probably give it a try at some point, just to see.)dms666 posted:One more random transcription question. I was looking over what I wrote down for the test today, noticed that after about a minute into my transcription that all my timecodes are now off by 4 seconds consistently throughout it. Is there something that could have caused this? I havent changed any settings on Realplayer AFAIK. It may be a frame rate issue. I think most tapes usually run at 29.97DF, but you may encounter 29.97 or 30FPS on occasion. Your timecoding software probably defaults to 30FPS. I can't remember the free program DT recommends, but there should be a place where you can adjust it. It may take some tinkering, but you should be able to get it to match the tape speed to prevent time code drift. (Unfortunately, I ditched the free stuff before I got to DT, so I'm kind of crap for technical advice.)
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Feb 19, 2013 20:24
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Take a look at the tape and check your time codes, watch them closely, I just did a couple where they were constantly shutting the tape off and starting up again, not necessarily declaring, a few times it's such a quick off and on that if you're not glued to th screen you wouldn't notice, like if there was a noise and they thought it was going to keep going but then it stopped. Also, yes it can just stright up be a framerate issue, most Food Network stuff for instance comes in at 29.75 or whatever, but I did one the other day that actually came in at 23 and I was like the gently caress? InqScribe will usually prompt you about it and ask if you want to use the media frame rate. Seems obvious, but it still asks. And I always double check because the first time I instructed it to do so it hadn't taken and I had to go through and correct. Now, I have signed on with a new company, Fox Transcription, they pay poorly, $0.50 is standard with an extra $.05 a minute for timestamping, and $0.10 for full verbatim as they normally operate on a clean verbatim basis. The audio is somewhat terrible, but they do pay weekly, via paypal, have a fairly large base of transcribers, and instead of the mailing out of assignments like I've seen so far, they operate a job log style system. So the work if just sitting there and you claim it. The audio quality isn't necessarily awesome, but it's an option out there if you're good and just want to pick up some work. Their test consists of two files, their formatting is really easy, and the fact that there is just always work sitting there, even if it's not the greatest I think is the good selling point. So yeah, another option for you guys, but I'll update on it a bit more when I've done a bit more and hopefully gotten a first payout Monday.
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Feb 19, 2013 20:52
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Oh, man, you're bringing back nightmares. I remember one client that insisted on editing out the questions, so the timecode jumped with every single answer. I had to basically enter them by hand. But the worst was this one dipshit who would pause the TC every time they cut, but keep the tape rolling. Then he'd occasionally forget to unpause it. So I'd have transcripts that looked like: [18:30:29] R: [words] [18:30:29] R: [more words] [18:30:29] R: [even more words] [18:31:02] R: (finally) The good thing about Inqscribe is that if it's a .mov file and you tell it to use the video framerate, sometimes it'll even pick up the time code offset so you don't have to monkey with it at all.
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Feb 19, 2013 21:58
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kazmeyer posted:It may be a frame rate issue. I think most tapes usually run at 29.97DF, but you may encounter 29.97 or 30FPS on occasion. Your timecoding software probably defaults to 30FPS. I can't remember the free program DT recommends, but there should be a place where you can adjust it. It may take some tinkering, but you should be able to get it to match the tape speed to prevent time code drift. (Unfortunately, I ditched the free stuff before I got to DT, so I'm kind of crap for technical advice.) I think I figured it out, I accidentally kicked out my headphone from the jack and noticed the timing went off by 4 seconds, restarted the video and it was fine. So I guess if they unplug at all for whatever reason, I have to reload RealPlayer and the file. Finally finished fixing it all, transcribed all of the parts I thought were [NON-INTERVIEW] as recommended to be safe.
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Feb 19, 2013 22:07
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Another DTer checking in. Loving to so far. My speeds are improving and I'm getting even more annoyed with how some people talk. I really like DT, they've treated me great so far. Thanks Kaz for mentioning them.
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Feb 21, 2013 07:40
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Does anyone following this thread still regularly do surveys? In 2011 I earned quite a bit doing surveys. Due to my poor salary I have been looking to them again to supplement my grocery money. I am really only having success with Opinion Outpost, Valued Opinions, and GlobalTestMarket. Have any other survey companies popped up in the past few years?
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Feb 21, 2013 10:51
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I don't do them regularly, but I cashed out $20 in amazon credit the other day from Opinion Outpost. Survey Savvy is the other one I did, but they haven't had one I qualify for in like six months, so whatever. I haven't tried the others, but if you want to give a quick rundown or a link or something I can spruce up that section of the OP.
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Feb 22, 2013 01:37
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