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Jedi Knight Luigi posted:Say whaaaa? I thought Collegiate was free and Universal was paid. That's what I thought too, but last night instead of just giving me "Click to continue!" ads now it's giving me "Get your free trial that will eventually become a paid subscription to even see if this is a word!" ones.
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Aug 30, 2014 22:59
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Shima Honnou posted:That's what I thought too, but last night instead of just giving me "Click to continue!" ads now it's giving me "Get your free trial that will eventually become a paid subscription to even see if this is a word!" ones. Why not use the multitudes of free alternatives?
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Aug 31, 2014 05:44
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App13 posted:Why not use the multitudes of free alternatives? One of my clients requires the use of the M-W spelling exclusively when possible. JKL I blame you for this!
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Aug 31, 2014 06:31
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Do you have to use the website? You could probably pick up a used copy of their Collegiate dictionary for a few bucks.
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Aug 31, 2014 06:48
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If it becomes a pressing issue in the future I'll just pay the $25 a year for a subscription. Now, if IMDB makes it a subscription for me to get character name spellings, then I fuckin' riot. Shima Honnou fucked around with this message at 16:33 on Aug 31, 2014 |
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Aug 31, 2014 07:06
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Shima Honnou posted:If it becomes a pressing issue in the future I'll just pay the $25 a year for a subscription. Rabble, rabble rabble!
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Aug 31, 2014 19:01
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Nothing like an interview were the interviewee throws a tantrum and starts yelling and knocking poo poo over in the background. Thanks for the free cash in the guise of [NON-INTERVIEW], massive adult baby!
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Sep 1, 2014 05:49
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On the flipside, interviewing 12 year olds about technology is ridiculous. And having the mom who much pip in on everything and then LAUGH OBNOXIOUSLY over most of her child's answers. Like interview the lady or don't, but god make her shut up!
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Sep 2, 2014 00:39
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Shima Honnou posted:If it becomes a pressing issue in the future I'll just pay the $25 a year for a subscription. Hm, I didn't know they did that to people repeatedly searching Collegiate. Not that a half-hour episode can't knock out that subscription, but still. And yeah, if IMDB goes pay, you'll definitely hear some shots fired, and I'll be first on the frontlines.
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Sep 2, 2014 20:52
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So Lionbridge has sent me all the materials to move onto the next stage, which is the stage before their exam. How hard is the exam? They recommend 10 hours to study, is it really that intense? I'm a pretty good test-taker and not afraid of hard work, but wow! Any tips?
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Sep 3, 2014 01:51
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district 12 posted:So Lionbridge has sent me all the materials to move onto the next stage, which is the stage before their exam. How hard is the exam? They recommend 10 hours to study, is it really that intense? I'm a pretty good test-taker and not afraid of hard work, but wow! Any tips? I took the test a few years ago so please keep that in mind, but if it's still a two-part test, there will be one easy multiple choice bit about the guidelines. Make sure you ace this; they're not very forgiving on wrong answers here. It's not difficult, just give yourself time to read through the guidelines. For the other part you'll actually be rating some sites and I believe there's some more leeway there, just do your best to follow the guidelines. You'd be surprised at how many people don't do this.
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Sep 4, 2014 02:18
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To add to this, if it's the same basic test that Leapforce used, all the answers to the multiple choice (and a lot of the examples for the practical test) are in the guidelines. They may have different site names but the scenarios are the same. Take your time and look them up, even if you think you're sure.
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Sep 4, 2014 05:53
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So...Dragon sounds amazing and I'm considering trying it out but before I shell out the money I needed to know, I live with noisy rear end people who watch super loud TV, how easy is it to cause Dragon fits, is it all in the mic? What's the deal basically? Please, convert me, my poor hands need a break!
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Sep 4, 2014 17:37
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Slightly Used Cake posted:So...Dragon sounds amazing and I'm considering trying it out but before I shell out the money I needed to know, I live with noisy rear end people who watch super loud TV, how easy is it to cause Dragon fits, is it all in the mic? What's the deal basically? Please, convert me, my poor hands need a break! I have an amazing mic that the people I play games with claim can makes a fan 10 feet away sound like a wind tunnel and people in the other room perfectly audible to them, and Dragon basically needs me to hold that up to my mouth (I usually keep it clipped to the top of my monitor) to read what I'm saying. One thing I will say, though, those fuckers need to stop sending me e-mails every single day. Yeah, I get it, I know Dragon 13 is apparently ultra badass or whatever, stop reminding me please!
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Sep 4, 2014 18:32
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Shima Honnou posted:I have an amazing mic that the people I play games with claim can makes a fan 10 feet away sound like a wind tunnel and people in the other room perfectly audible to them, and Dragon basically needs me to hold that up to my mouth (I usually keep it clipped to the top of my monitor) to read what I'm saying. That was the other thing. There's quite a few versions it seems, so is there any reason to go for the badass version? And also, this is just me failing at life. I'm going to be upgrading my PC finally, can I transfer my licenses to my new machine? Common sense says yes, but of course, alas... It only ocurred to me because I realized I've probably spent about $300 or something on software to make life easier and I didn't want to drop another chunk only to have to do it again in a month.
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Sep 4, 2014 18:42
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Slightly Used Cake posted:That was the other thing. There's quite a few versions it seems, so is there any reason to go for the badass version? And also, this is just me failing at life. I'm going to be upgrading my PC finally, can I transfer my licenses to my new machine? Common sense says yes, but of course, alas... It only ocurred to me because I realized I've probably spent about $300 or something on software to make life easier and I didn't want to drop another chunk only to have to do it again in a month. I'd spring for the newest one. Supposedly, if all these e-mails are to be believed, Dragon 13 is like 15% more accurate without any training, which is a pretty big deal considering I still can't get it all that accurate even after training. It just does not like my voice whatsoever.
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Sep 4, 2014 22:41
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I have been watching from a distance for a while and finally decided to give a few of these ideas a go since the local job market sucks and sitting at home doing nothing also sucks. I threw out a few applications at different freelance writing sites and heard back from textbroker today: 4 star rating. Good enough, I will give it a try if I can find any requests not involving e-vaping. For anyone who has used this site, what are the clients like? How likely is an article to get approved or rejected?
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Sep 5, 2014 04:20
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darkwolf220 posted:I have been watching from a distance for a while and finally decided to give a few of these ideas a go since the local job market sucks and sitting at home doing nothing also sucks. I threw out a few applications at different freelance writing sites and heard back from textbroker today: 4 star rating. Good enough, I will give it a try if I can find any requests not involving e-vaping. How long did it take you to hear back from Text Broker? I mainly write at Writers Domain, but am looking to expand to more sites after WD just cut their pay by 12.5%-25% per article. I heard that Text Broker is more lenient about stupid revision requests, unlike WD.
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Sep 5, 2014 04:56
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EDIT: ^^^ TB is probably still a pay cut from WD's lower rates. I don't know what the lower rates are offhand but TB's four-star is only 1.4 cents/word. I've written a hair over 1,000 4-star articles through TB and it's occasionally a crapshoot. I've only had one rejected, ever. Going off memory, I probably had something like a 20-30% revision rate. Clients cannot reject an article without first submitting a revision request. If you feel the request is too much and you don't want to risk a rejection, you can drop the article with no penalty beyond wasting your time. The client could blacklist you, I guess, but any client wanting that much work for such low pay is probably not worth working for anyway. A lot of clients will barely pay attention to you. You won't get a revision and your assignment will go to the autoaccept deadline, they won't review you and they probably won't respond to messages you try to send. It's kind of a fire and forget assignment situation. Some clients will accept quickly and may or may not leave reviews. Some will send minor revision requests and may actually be decent to work with. Teams tend to be more communicative, particularly the managed teams that have TB editors running them. It's a good idea to apply to active teams because some good assignments hide in there.
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Sep 5, 2014 04:59
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^^ Thanks for the infoAstro7x posted:How long did it take you to hear back from Text Broker? No time at all really. I wrote my sample piece late Monday night, got a request for a photo ID the next day, got the approval today. The only thing that put me off was that my initial rating was not in the acceptance email. Sometimes the email filters out pictures but I scoured it and could not find one. I had to log in to find out I was 4 star.
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Sep 5, 2014 05:31
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Zorblack posted:Hey kids! Are you tired of endless timestamped full verbatim cell phone recorded interviews taking place entirely within a rustling hedge during a hurricane and involving two screaming men who have filled their mouths entirely with peanut butter all for the excruciatingly low rate of 14 nickels per minute? Would you rather deal with (mostly) broadcast ready material and get paid 50% more nickels per minute (that adds up quickly)? Then get off your lazy, metaphorical backside and pm JKL! Learn to use commas and get paid more! It's a sweet deal. Is anyone here familiar with transcription companies that operate in Europe or hire Europeans?
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Sep 5, 2014 17:33
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Did my transcription test with DT last night. What I can say for sure: I got every word, partial word, uh, um, ah. I now hate Alton Brown. If all of them are like that and I do not significantly improve, I will make no money. Maybe I was being too anal about this clip or maybe this clip was literally the worst (how could this even go on TV?). Near the end I was starting to move a little quicker, but still very slowly.
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Sep 5, 2014 18:58
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darkwolf220 posted:Did my transcription test with DT last night. What I can say for sure: I got every word, partial word, uh, um, ah. I now hate Alton Brown. If all of them are like that and I do not significantly improve, I will make no money. Maybe I was being too anal about this clip or maybe this clip was literally the worst (how could this even go on TV?). Near the end I was starting to move a little quicker, but still very slowly. Most things I've gotten from DT have been nowhere near that level of awful, and you will improve with time.
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Sep 5, 2014 19:12
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UZworm posted:Most things I've gotten from DT have been nowhere near that level of awful, and you will improve with time. I am glad. If I get the gig, any tips? Do you transcribe first and fix the formatting after (ie put in time codes now but add the file name during review, use abreviatons for speaker names and go back and fill in the whole name later?) I found (after I transcribed, while I was reviewing  ) that things become a lot easier to take in if it is slowed down to half speed. Pretty sure I could have cut my time in half if I did this to begin with.
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Sep 5, 2014 19:27
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I just started a month ago. I tried a few different things, but found what works best for me is to do the time codes on the first pass, and either skip (if one person) or abbreviate the names. I also tend to abbreviate any other tags that appear a bunch. Then I skim through it without audio, fix any typos, add names/tags/whatevers, and listen to it once more to make sure the dialogue is correct. When I first started I slowed the audio down too, but only for a week or two. Don't worry, that first 6 minute test file tends to take most of us a good chunk of the day, I know it did me. Most audio is much easier.
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Sep 5, 2014 20:12
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darkwolf220 posted:I am glad. If I get the gig, any tips? Do you transcribe first and fix the formatting after (ie put in time codes now but add the file name during review, use abreviatons for speaker names and go back and fill in the whole name later?) I found (after I transcribed, while I was reviewing Get Inqscribe, use shortcuts, avoid insanity...mostly.
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Sep 5, 2014 20:37
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darkwolf220 posted:Did my transcription test with DT last night. What I can say for sure: I got every word, partial word, uh, um, ah. I now hate Alton Brown. If all of them are like that and I do not significantly improve, I will make no money. Maybe I was being too anal about this clip or maybe this clip was literally the worst (how could this even go on TV?). Near the end I was starting to move a little quicker, but still very slowly. Don't worry, if you get the job you'll come to realize that just about everyone who gets anywhere near a mic is a braying jackass and you'll slowly come to either hate everybody or you'll come to enjoy it for the unique perspective on people that you can get. It gets better though. If you take to it well enough there's actually upward mobility here. I started doing gruntwork on crappy reality TV talking head segments and corporate reviews, and now I'm doing closed captioning on whatever the gently caress needs done! It's an easier job with higher pay. And there are even higher tiers than that. darkwolf220 posted:I am glad. If I get the gig, any tips? Do you transcribe first and fix the formatting after (ie put in time codes now but add the file name during review, use abreviatons for speaker names and go back and fill in the whole name later?) I found (after I transcribed, while I was reviewing I find it easier to work the formatting as I go, unless a file is easy enough that I can revoice it (Which is not often the case, but is sometimes). What I'll usually do is work the first few minutes of a DT file and then I'll skip ahead to the end and start working backwards (This is easiest in a timecoded file, which most DT work is). So I'll do the last minute or two and then rewind and link up to there and just keep going backwards until I've hit the start of the file. For some reason it's a shitload less boring that way. counterfeitsaint posted:Most audio is much easier. Keyword most. Word from the wise, if I were any one of you newer dudes to the job, I would reject any file that is a phone call. Trust me on that. Not worth the time and effort, just sight-unseen reject it unless there's something about it that makes it easy (The last phone call I did was half in Spanish, which they allowed me to transcribe just as [SPEAKS SPANISH] so it was generally easier but still suffered from insane amounts of quality loss over time to the point that I had trouble understanding the dude who was speaking English at the end). Shima Honnou fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Sep 5, 2014 |
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Sep 5, 2014 21:15
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I've got multiple clients, so what I do is develop a pretty generic template for formatting that I can then use find/replace to adjust to the various requirements of my different gigs. I always use Q:<tab> and A:<tab> for speakers (A1: A2: A3: if necessary, or M: F: etc. for male and female speakers to keep track) and then go back and change those to the names or whatever the client uses later. I generally do everything in a single pass, with the occasional exception of certain types of as-broadcast work where I'll do TCs and dialogue and then go back through and do the visual stuff. Sometimes my notations and system get pretty arcane. This is basically what I was typing for my last ABS gig as I went: code: In the end, though, there's no "right" way. Everybody here has different techniques; just figure out what works best for you. You'll pretty quickly learn the ropes. And yeah, when you first start out, you're really slow. Part of it's over-caution, part of it's the lovely test file. Once you've gotten a few under your belt and get confident in your transcription abilities you'll speed way up. kazmeyer fucked around with this message at 21:45 on Sep 5, 2014 |
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Sep 5, 2014 21:34
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AuntBuck posted:I took the test a few years ago so please keep that in mind, but if it's still a two-part test, there will be one easy multiple choice bit about the guidelines. Make sure you ace this; they're not very forgiving on wrong answers here. It's not difficult, just give yourself time to read through the guidelines. For the other part you'll actually be rating some sites and I believe there's some more leeway there, just do your best to follow the guidelines. You'd be surprised at how many people don't do this. Nighthand posted:To add to this, if it's the same basic test that Leapforce used, all the answers to the multiple choice (and a lot of the examples for the practical test) are in the guidelines. They may have different site names but the scenarios are the same. Take your time and look them up, even if you think you're sure. Thank you for those tips! I will be very careful when going through the test, for sure, and pay close attention to the guidelines.
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Sep 6, 2014 04:52
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Here's what I do so I don't end up making $5/hr. This strategy gets me 15-20 minutes of audio an hour, sometimes more depending on the file. I'm also typing like a madman of course. Copy/paste file name plus timecode template. Example: ALTONBROWNSUCKS [00: -Now I just need to ctrl-v and add minutes and seconds each time I need a tc. Takes like half a second. If using InqScribe you can assign two shortcuts. Go to Window - Show Snippets - Edit I usually just use one shortcut that includes the interviewee name, colon, and two spaces afterward. All I need to do is hit the F5 shortcut key and type the interviewee response. If using ExpressScribe I don't know if you can do macros in there but I do the ctrl-v timecode thing which obviously takes up my only copy/paste ability. To get around this I abbreviate the interviewee name with like a T: or something. After exporting to Word I run a search for all T: and replace with their real name. If you have multiple interviewees be careful with your abbreviations and be aware of any instances in your document where the abbreviation coincidentally shows up.
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Sep 7, 2014 03:56
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Or you can set Inqscribe to insert a timecode with something like the ~ key; use non-standard brackets like <> and then you can go back through at the end and insert the filename before the time codes with find/replace. And then you can just batch convert them back to straight brackets at the end. The only issue with Inqscribe's built in timecoding is you have to make sure you're matching the framerate of the video. Sometimes it'll detect it automatically and you're golden, but otherwise you have to fiddle with it until you get it right. Get it wrong and your timecodes will drift about one second every 8-10 minutes or so, which can be a pain to clean up.
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Sep 7, 2014 04:25
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Slightly Used Cake posted:So...Dragon sounds amazing and I'm considering trying it out but before I shell out the money I needed to know, I live with noisy rear end people who watch super loud TV, how easy is it to cause Dragon fits, is it all in the mic? What's the deal basically? Please, convert me, my poor hands need a break! I'm actually using a decent cardioid recording mic that I got with the idea of getting into voice-over work. It's an Audio Technica ATR-2100 USB on a cheap 10-15 dollar standard telescoping microphone stand. I've done just a little bit of official training, and Dragon has been extremely good to me with occasional corrections (that it then remembers and uses to calibrate future material). The advantage of this kind of set-up is that a dynamic cardioid mic like this is specifically a great choice for getting really clean audio in a noisy, box-like room, and I think it's one of the reasons I can revoice everything without as much of an issue as Shima.
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Sep 7, 2014 04:43
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Spartan421 posted:Here's what I do so I don't end up making $5/hr. This strategy gets me 15-20 minutes of audio an hour, sometimes more depending on the file. I'm also typing like a madman of course. I do a version of this except filled out with the minute timecodes, so 00:10: 00:11: 00:12: That way, all I have to do is note the seconds and then copy/paste the whole timecode in front of it, and it serves as a convenient way to measure out chunks of work since I can see how much I've got sitting around.
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Sep 7, 2014 05:23
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I just keep an eye on the time code and make sure to verify, especially with MP3s the actual file length usually with VLC or quicktime. This only become an issue with files specifically mean for transcriber because they often go wibbly wobbly somewhere around the middle.
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Sep 7, 2014 06:17
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Thanks for all the great tips. I am hoping I hear back from DT soon. If I land the gig, a pedal will be in the mail the same day. I will ask for recommendations if I pass 
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Sep 7, 2014 19:43
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I am looking for a tool for my transcriber wife. We have the following audio setup. Proprietary audio format -> Proprietary poo poo software -> USB headset. She wants this: Same proprietary audio -> Same poo poo software -> Graphic Equalizer -> Headset Basically something that will launder the sound, allowing to kill a frequency that is buzzing in the background. Bonus points for optional clipping of loud noises which come from nowhere. (Someone literally drops the microphone... Ouch!) I cannot edit the sound files, sadly. More channels than you can believe... Any suggestions? Software and hardware methods are both a possibility, but the output audio must be very high quality. Budget is 300$, but the cheaper the better.
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Sep 10, 2014 05:51
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I do fine with a $30 Soundblaster card. I'm pretty sure it has an equalizer but I never use it. Since she's on USB though, you'd have to swap the audio wires from the motherboard to the sound card.
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Sep 10, 2014 06:33
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My pedal came in yesterday, making this the best paying job I've held in terms of hourly wage when I'm typing full bore. Thanks for all the advice, 'scription goons. Thanks also JKL. Hope I don't end up sucking at this, 'cause it's pretty fun.
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Sep 12, 2014 08:15
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It really is impressive what a difference that thing makes for your speed. I think I've run into one or maybe two people who insisted on not getting a pedal, and who said they were just fine using keyboard shortcuts and the like to control payback. I'm still convinced they're Martians.
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Sep 12, 2014 08:54
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I hope Hell is a real place and I hope any person who sits there going "Mm-hmm. Uh-huh. Yes. Okay. Yeah." every 2 seconds while someone else is talking gets a special place in the deepest and most painful part of it. Shut the gently caress up and let the person you're supposed to be interviewing loving talk!
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Sep 14, 2014 04:06
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