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Slightly Used Cake posted:This has literally been a week of "The client needs this thing right the gently caress now gah!" I don't think there's really been a lot of stuff for the newbies. It's been a lot of rush and weird formats. I had a file with a guy who sounded just like Michael Caine doing a business deal with another guy who sounded a little like Andy Dick.
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May 13, 2013 05:13
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AuntBuck posted:I had a file with a guy who sounded just like Michael Caine doing a business deal with another guy who sounded a little like Andy Dick. I would watch the hell out of that!
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May 13, 2013 23:42
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Sonata posted:This is true of Focus Forward as well. I applied two weeks ago and have yet to hear back. Haven't heard back from DT either except for an email earlier this week telling me to wait some more. Keep your chin up, I finally heard back from Rev after... well, after just a week, but it seemed like longer! You'll probably hear back soon from yours as well. So if anyone is interested, Rev seems to be the place to go if no other outfit will take you due to your location, even if you're not a native english speaker as long as you do well on your test transcriptions. Cheers! Labradoodle fucked around with this message at 00:24 on May 15, 2013 |
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May 15, 2013 00:22
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Ah yes, I love interviews with silly/chatty people that feel the need to strike up a conversation about coffee or whatever in between questions. Just tag that mess as non-interview and kick back for a minute or so. Kaz, thank you for bringing transcription into my life. At first I really thought I was going to hate it, but I actually look forward to working each day!
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May 16, 2013 18:29
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Edit: Nothing to see here.
Labradoodle fucked around with this message at 18:18 on May 18, 2013 |
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May 17, 2013 06:21
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If an assignment is asking for BITC, how do I get inqscribe to insert that into my transcript? Or do I have to do it manually? And how accurate do they expect the time codes to be? I mean down to the second? Is there something you could do to have the program automatically insert the time code every 30 seconds into your transcript?
blueblaze fucked around with this message at 21:39 on May 18, 2013 |
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May 18, 2013 21:36
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You can use an F key to insert the time in InqScribe whenever hit. Also, if they don't want the frames, then you need to check that off too. You can control the format of the time and whether or not frames is included by clicking on the "Transcript Settings" link on the upper right-hand side. For quick insertion of the time code, go to Edit, then select Edit Snippets. This is where you can program what key you want to hit to insert the time, and any other shortcut type things too.
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May 18, 2013 21:53
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Generally speaking you want the timecodes to be as accurate as possible, although they usually won't quibble if you're within a second. Time codes dropped at the beginning of an answer need to be extremely accurate, while 30-second codes when someone's talking aren't quite as important. You can't just insert codes every 30, because dropping them in the middle of a sentence or word would look bad, so just place a manual one around the 30 second mark whenever there's a break.
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May 19, 2013 08:47
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And use the little screen whee you loaded up your file, there's a drop down that offers a start at a custom time code, just hack the BITC in there, and watch out for jump cuts. In an entirely different note, I had to throw an assignment back today because in the middle of a huge shitstorm I had it chucked at me and was told "it's just a simple ABS" it was not, descriptions of every scene change, three column formatting, but not tabled, and it just broke my brain. Someone tell me...how does that look when I am just typing it so I don't have to spend the next six years manually moving every bit of it, as I had to do with my first, very simple ABS. I feel like an rear end for letting my client down, and I'm sure there's some way to do it that it simple and easy...but I just couldn't I took one look at it and went "ohgodohgodohgodohgod!" which to be fair, is a much less than helpful stance. I'm now working on a dialogue list format, which seems like a good bridge but...god...technical scene description, and really one bit of the sample was like "aerial view of the Appalachians" How the gently caress am I supposed to know what kind of mountain that is? It's a mountain, that's all! Gah!
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May 20, 2013 21:31
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Generally, when it comes to ABSes, they don't need ridiculous specifics. "Aerial view of mountains" would suffice unless it specifically showed that they were the Appalachians (at least for any sane client). Unfortunately, the non-tabled ABS (the one with all the shot changes DT occasionally throws) is my kryptonite. I have never, ever been able to get those to format correctly, to the point where I had a blow-up with DT over the fact that I couldn't get it to work right. What I normally do with a tabled ABS is do a tab-delimited text file in Inqscribe, import it into an Excel file, then paste the result into the Word template. What I actually type ends up looking like: 01:01:30[tab]CU - Mike[tab]MIKE;I can't believe you just said that. Importing it into Excel puts everything into its own cell, and then I find/replace the semicolons for carriage returns (or colons or whatever they want the formatting to be) in the final document. Unfortunately pasting that into the non-tabled sample they use screws things nine ways to Sunday, and I'd literally have to go through and correct every single cell by hand. At which point it becomes really, truly not-worth-it territory even if they paid better. This is an important point, though. Getting into ABS work, it's easy to get stars in your eyes because of the crazy per-minute or per job prices they offer, but seriously, take your time and consider each job. Sometimes, even if they offer to pay through the nose, it's just not worth it. I've turned down ABS work that would've paid a ton just because when I honestly appraised it it was going to be a two- or three-day job to get all the fiddly poo poo they wanted right.
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May 20, 2013 22:52
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Ah, thanks Kaz, yeah it was only $.150, and from the sample, it was oddly specific. I'm glad I put it back. I guess it's one of those things that I think a lot of us newbies are having trouble with where it's like, should I feel bad for turning down this job? It's hard to know the etiquette.
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May 20, 2013 23:33
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The question of "is this worth my time" is a tricky one, and it's an issue I still struggle with sometimes. In the beginning, since I was trying to do this full-time, I'd take drat near anything. And that meant I did a lot of jobs that, if I'm being honest, ended up paying me garbage for the amount of work I had to put into them. Now, however, I've gotten to the point where on any given day I have more things I can do than I have time for, and that leads to situations where a client offers me work that frankly isn't worth it compared to something else I could be doing. Now, fortunately, most of my clients work on an on-demand system -- they email me when they need transcribers, or I email them when I've got a hole in my schedule. If a client says "Hey, I've got this job, multi-speaker audio, pays X" I can judge whether or not I want to chase that based on what I figure I'm going to make per-hour (compared to other things I could be doing). If the rate doesn't seem good, I can just pass on it. They all know I have multiple clients, so if I say I'm already booked for the day it's no big deal. Now, with DT's system, it gets tricky, because you have to request work ahead of time. I know that works better for them, but it's a pain in the rear end for us. It's ultimately one of the reasons I dropped them, just because I'd love to be able to pick up work on the fly, but I can't commit to X hours per week at the lowest per-minute rate of all my clients. If I've committed to 90 minutes at .66/minute and all of a sudden a $2/min job or a $75 ABS episode falls into my lap, I either have to work my rear end off or I have to turn down the better job. Now, where I wouldn't have qualms about turning down a job is if I'd asked for a set amount, assuming single-speaker talking head video, and I get something else. Doing 90 minutes of single-speaker is vastly different than doing 90 minutes of multi-speaker business meetings, and I have absolutely no problem throwing stuff back and saying, "I won't be able to get this in by the deadline with my other commitments." It's important that you kick stuff back as early as possible, though, so they can find somebody else to cover it. So try to make a habit of downloading any files as soon as you get the link and scanning through them to find any potential problems. Ultimately, they will get annoyed with you if you just cherrypick the easy, lucrative work and kick everything else back, and they'll try to guilt-trip you into taking garbage work if they're slammed. But ultimately they also understand that everything you do is a financial calculation, and if it's not worth your time it's just not worth your time. I try to make a point to take at least a little crap work now and again to maintain good relations with my clients, but if it really comes down to it, I'll have the "this job doesn't pay enough for the amount of work it requires" discussion. I hate doing it, and it's always uncomfortable, but it's your bills and your finances that come first.
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May 20, 2013 23:56
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Actually to be honest, I like the lower paying stuff I've been getting more lately, it tends to be more variety...also the more expensive one was a bunch of drunk hill billies in the woods, all of whom had to be identified, on a show I don't watch, and they all had beards, huge beards! With very similar patterning! And then a very picky format on top of that.
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May 21, 2013 00:39
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If I am to choose between appen butler hill or Lionbridge, which direction do I go? I am torn.
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May 21, 2013 17:02
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Slightly Used Cake posted:Actually to be honest, I like the lower paying stuff I've been getting more lately, it tends to be more variety... There's been a couple low-paying ones floating around that should have been much higher, so don't bank on that always being the case. I got a $.65/min one recently that made me hate every minute of it because of the pay rate/difficulty disparity. If there's not enough people on the job to complain about the lack of quality, it appears as though they won't be as quick to offer a raise. quote:also the more expensive one was a bunch of drunk hill billies in the woods, all of whom had to be identified, on a show I don't watch, and they all had beards, huge beards! With very similar patterning! And then a very picky format on top of that. That might be getting just a tad bit specific but it might only be because i was on that one too  .In general, I've found it a lot easier to be really open about what files were egregiously difficult for their pay rate, and which ones I've been more willing to do in spite of the difficulty factor. It seems like they've got enough people on board for the most part that they can kick it to someone else more easily, but I only ever let that happen if I happen to catch the job request early in the day, and the deadline isn't  DO IT BY MORNING HOLY poo poo , since that's invariably going to make them scramble.So, basically, just be realistic about it. If you're new-ish to DT, and you download a file that you are seriously ugh about, and have gotten enough jobs done for them that you're starting to establish a good reputation, don't turn it down outright, just ask if they can line someone else up, and say that you're capable of doing it if it doesn't look like there are any takers. It's true that they'll try to get you to do it anyway, but sometimes someone like me will shoot them an email saying 'hey I didn't sign up for the schedule, but I'm available tonight' and they'll have a taker they can pass it off to without difficulty. I'm not sure if that's been anyone else's experience, but it's certainly been mine. That having been said: I am very close to turning down every job that makes it sound like someone is literally sitting on their recorder and wiggling around at random intervals.
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May 22, 2013 05:15
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You guys don't use macros for ABS's?
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May 22, 2013 07:30
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Jedi Knight Luigi posted:You guys don't use macros for ABS's? Like what?
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May 22, 2013 12:49
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There are macros?!? And yes, I thought about the specificity, but then I realized, drunk hillbillies with beards in the woods could describe like three shows currently on right now. And that's just the ones we see up here, I don't even know what network that particular gem is going to. Enjoy it, I took one look at that format and it made my eyes bleed. Bleh. But yes I know what you mean, there have been some disparities and I'm getting disheartened. I know they need to stay competitive, but really, for the amount of work, including typing on screen content, which is not bad in some files, but in others holy god! And then some are a terrible movie that's three years old and already released, why am I working on this? Why?
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May 22, 2013 14:59
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Well, I work for a captioning company, and when work is slow, we do ABSs. We have some in-house Microsoft Word macros that take our files and automatically format them for pasting into another Microsoft Word template document--single column, three column grid, whatever--and boom, a 22 minute 3-column show takes between 3-4 hours. I guess I have no idea how difficult it might be to write a macro for this kind of usage. I just do as I'm told; I don't know how that black magic works.
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May 22, 2013 17:04
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I use Inqscribe, which spits out a plaintext file at the end. All I have to do is put tabs between the fields and importing the result into Excel formats everything for me, then I just c/p back into the template. Doesn't take much time. (I figure I do a 22-minute three-column show in 90-120 minutes, less if it's well edited and not a talk-type show. One pass for the timecodes and audio which takes the most time, then one basically in real-time for the video stuff. I've said it before, but my favorite ABS is Inside the Actor's Studio, because the director of that show is a god drat Vulcan.) A lot of ABS work is for secondary markets. They want a script of the final episode or production to shop around and figure out where cuts have to go for this country or that country. I did an entire season of The Biggest Loser that was two years old once for international syndication. kazmeyer fucked around with this message at 18:04 on May 22, 2013 |
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May 22, 2013 18:01
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Joined textbroker and had my sample rated at 3 stars. Am I poo poo out of luck or can I improve my rating with time?
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May 23, 2013 23:13
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You can improve. Focus on learning the AP style with emphasis on comma usage. Read the Textbroker blog (linked at the bottom of their site) and the FAQ (Which you can only find while logged out, for some dumb reason) and see what their specific requirements are. Write as much as you can, even though the three-star assignments suck balls. Pay attention to editor comments. Also, join teams. There's a huge number of them, many of which are inactive and plenty that require 4+ star writers. Teams often have better assignments (and always better pay) than 3-star assignments. It's a lot of work to apply to all of them, but it's worth it. More is better, because sometimes a team will go weeks without posting anything new.
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May 24, 2013 00:23
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What's the actual name for the type of transcription, usually legal, where you are copying handwriting into type?
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May 24, 2013 03:22
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Copytyping, also, why do you hate yourself? Don't do that! Run, while you still can!
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May 24, 2013 06:05
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Really? I've only done one assignment like that and I actually really enjoyed it and want to do more! Is my brain just broken, or did I get lucky with that one?
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May 24, 2013 12:44
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Yeah you might've been lucky, if the pay is good, it all depends who you're working for. I had a project off DT a couple weeks ago and it was $1 for the page you were working off of, and according to the sample to agree to the project, fine. Most of my pages wound up being two lines of text crammed onto every line, and everything was text speak, and the subject matter made me want to stab people to boot. I mean, to be fair, I took the project because it was a legal one and I genuinely wanted to do some good work there. If you can be fast about it, then it's good, I found I wasn't able to get the work done in a satisfactorily quick manner for me.
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May 24, 2013 16:05
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The OP mentioned headphones and pedals for transcription, but is there a particular brand of each that I should be looking at? I mean ideally I want to spend as little money as possible getting into it since I have no idea if it's something that I will be able to do as a sustainable career. Also, for anyone that has used oDesk, is it worth it? It seems a bit different from the others (sounds like it pays by hour rather than by word for writing projects?) and the whole "take screenshots of my desktop" thing is kind of making me leery, but I'm not sure if it just sounds worse than it is. And for the About.com writing, is it really as serious as the site indicates in terms of qualifications? Do they really expect a guide writer to have like a degree, experience, publication history, and acclaim within their field to write some internet articles on movies or video games, etc.? It says their "ideal" candidate, which is fair enough I guess, but how does that translate into their actual expectations for an applicant? Honey Badger fucked around with this message at 22:59 on May 26, 2013 |
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May 26, 2013 22:56
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Technically, no. There aren't a lot of manufacturers of USB pedals, though, and the Infinity USB series is probably the best you're going to get at around $50. As for headphones, any set of closed cans will get you started; I think I paid $20 for my Sonys.
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May 27, 2013 01:11
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Honey Badger posted:The OP mentioned headphones and pedals for transcription, but is there a particular brand of each that I should be looking at? I mean ideally I want to spend as little money as possible getting into it since I have no idea if it's something that I will be able to do as a sustainable career. For headphones I used a cheap pair of Sennheiser HD201 for ages, until I accidentally broke them: http://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-HD201-Lightweight-Over-Ear-Headphones/dp/B0007XJSQC/ Now I have a pair of these Panasonics which I think are a little better quality: http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-RP-HTX7-Stereo-Headphones-Black/dp/B001BEAI4W/ I also have a pair of AudioTechnica ATH-M30 which work fine, but I found them to be uncomfortable to wear for hours at a time: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00007E7C8/ref=cm_cr_ryp_prd_ttl_sol_0 I would just reiterate get closed cans, and look for low bass and comfort if you're shopping around. High bass tends to pump up background noise (that's what I notice anyway).
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May 27, 2013 02:46
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Not sure if anyone would have any possible solutions to this, but LB is of no help. Starting about a month ago, when I get most SxS tasks and 1-2 specific EXP tasks, they will not submit. Usually it hangs on the "sending to rater hub" after I hit submit, then just stays on the task page. Then after anywhere from 1-30 minutes of trying to submit it will go through. LB had me try another ISP, which everything worked fine on. I then decided to try my laptop at home instead of my PC and everything worked fine. I then formatted my PC thinking I might of had some random problem, but it still persists. No idea if SxS's use a different submitting process than EXP's/RR or what is going on, LB isn't helping at all with the issue though. It is just so much easier for me to work on my PC vs the laptop.
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May 29, 2013 15:54
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Horray for 6am emails telling me my time codes are off. I transcribed an hour long mp3 file in InqScribe and at the end the TC was off by 15 or 20 seconds. So I went through with Windows Media Player and manually fixed an hour worth of TCs. At least this job let me do them in one minute increments so it only took about 25 minutes. Anyone else have problems with InqScribe and time codes?
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May 30, 2013 12:56
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Time code problems usually comes from one of two things -- either a cut in the tape, or you set the framerate wrong and the TC drifted (although for an hour tape the drift should only be a few seconds, unless the framerate was something really weird). Are you saying they were all off by 15-20 seconds, or they started off fine and then were off by 15-20 at the end?
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May 30, 2013 14:46
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I used running time. Yeah, it started off fine and drifted significantly at the end. It was just an audio file too so I dunno.
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May 30, 2013 15:00
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Were they expecting you to use a specific software? I know I find differences when I use InqScribe for files that are supposed to be for Transcriber, but nothing that significant.
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May 30, 2013 16:35
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Anyone else having a poo poo week? I've got two clients loving up payments (one apparently intentionally at this point), another client getting whiny about my not devoting 40 hours a week to them, and an editor kicking back a 500-word article and asking me to add about 3,000 words worth of information to it. At this point, I'm considering just saying gently caress it and writing smut.
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Jun 8, 2013 04:18
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kazmeyer posted:Anyone else having a poo poo week? Yes. EDIT: it was taken care of, hurray Old Boot fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Jun 8, 2013 |
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Jun 8, 2013 07:22
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I hate the projects where you get like ten different files and they are all 2 or 3 minutes long and have to be transcribed in different documents.
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Jun 8, 2013 15:15
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I haven't been having a bad time, but I did have an article sent back for revisions 4 times. It's mostly my fault though, I'm used to everyone I work for having a 3% revision rate so I didn't check beforehand to see this guy had a 117% revision rate. I gotta say, writing $100 worth of articles for Candy Crush Saga last month was pretty sweet and easy.
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Jun 8, 2013 15:34
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If I got "fired" from DT would they tell me, or just stop sending me assignments? Recently I turned down two assignments in two separate emails and I guess they didn't receive one of the emails, because they emailed me a couple days later saying "where is this assignment, it's past the deadline, you need to send it to us right now." I responded really politely and apologetically and told them that I had turned down that assignment and they said that they never got an email from me, and seemed skeptical that I'd ever even sent one. Then they gave me poo poo because I was "just now telling them" and it was way too late for them to reassign it, etc. This was like a week ago and I haven't heard from them since. Is there a chance they cut me off?
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Jun 8, 2013 18:04
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You could always resend the email with the headers to prove when it went out, couldn't you?
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Jun 8, 2013 18:12
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