Remove Silence help

[bcorkery]

I'm recording 150 street folks to each read 325 voice prompts to test voice recognition software.

After recording, I use remove silence and scan the files for errant blank files from mouth noises etc. and delete them. After that I remove the unused files from the edit list, I rename the remaining regions so they're sequentially named and then make those regions into files.

The client would like .5 second heads and tails on each file. No problem with the tails using the 500 ms release time but the head is triggered by the sound. If I use the 500 ms soft edge at the top, the beginning of the file is quiet and seems to ramp up.

Is there a time saving way to add a .5 second head to each file?

On another note, occasionally a when doing the renaming trick, an errant file will pop up out of order. Example: it'll go from 135 to 211 and then to 136. Has this happened to anyone else? If so, what is causing this?

Thanks Sawyers!

[Bob L]

Bill,

You can create the .5 sec head by adjusting the hot track gate when you do the remove silence... it defaults to settings as mentioned on the menu under the remove silence option... turn on the track gate and match the settings, but use a .5 attack time and it will create a .5 head before the trigger.

Not sure what could be causing the renaming issue... never seen that before.

Bob L

[Sean McCoy]

I've done some audiobook recording in SAW where head and tail times are very specific, and the only way I know of to deal with the head space is to create a .5s blank file and snap it to the head of every region before exporting. This is a practical method when adding them individually while doing the necessary editing and exporting as yougo, but wouldn't be particularly fun with 325 files at once, and would make it impossible to simply export the regions. For me, this would be a job for Sound Forge's Batch Converter.

[bcorkery]

Thanks. I'll try the .5 attack. I always thought it acted like compression and didn't start until .003 or the like after the audio triggered.

This may save me a lot o' work.

Sean. I'll try this before scripting a batch conversion in Sound Forge.

As always, thanks for the insight!

[Dave Labrecque]

Thanks. I'll try the .5 attack. I always thought it acted like compression and didn't start until .003 or the like after the audio triggered.

This may save me a lot o' work.

Sean. I'll try this before scripting a batch conversion in Sound Forge.

As always, thanks for the insight!

+1 for Sound Forge's batch converter. It's really pretty simple to add a custom-length silence at the start of each file.

I just tried Bob's suggestion in SAW. Seems to work pretty nicely, assuming you have clean audio between blurbs. I've never used this before, so didn't know you could set the "attack" to a negative value like that. Very nice. The help file doesn't make it clear, though (at least not what I could find) that using the gate settings to redefine the remove silence parameters (attack, release, threshold) works for the attack setting by entering the negative of the desired setting, i.e., for a -0.500 sec setting, you simply dial up 0.500, which, of course, is all that you can dial up on a traditional gate, which the channel strip gate is designed to emulate. Pretty slick.

[Sean McCoy]

Thanks. I'll try the .5 attack. I always thought it acted like compression and didn't start until .003 or the like after the audio triggered.

This may save me a lot o' work.

Sean. I'll try this before scripting a batch conversion in Sound Forge.

As always, thanks for the insight!
Not surprised at all that Bob has built in a function that will get you close to what you need! If there's a little leeway in your .5s silence requirement, I'll bet this will work. But in 25 years I've had mixed results with using gates and/or silence removal, so I tend to play it conservative and do most of that manually. I'll be surprised if remove silence can get you exactly .5s in every file (as the SF batch conversion can), but I could be wrong! Let us know how it works.

[Dave Labrecque]

Not surprised at all that Bob has built in a function that will get you close to what you need! If there's a little leeway in your .5s silence requirement, I'll bet this will work. But in 25 years I've had mixed results with using gates and/or silence removal, so I tend to play it conservative and do most of that manually. I'll be surprised if remove silence can get you exactly .5s in every file (as the SF batch conversion can), but I could be wrong! Let us know how it works.

If I reason this right, the SAW's feature should work as well as Sound Forge's, assuming the same prep work is done (manually editing the desired audio first). After the prep work, defining the core regions in SAW, you could build all regions to a single, continuous track (or layer), then apply the remove silence function to add the pre- and post-silence. The threshold, of course, would need to be dialed to just above -inf. on the remove silence function.

[Ian Alexander]

I use SawStudio's Remove Silence function all the time to create files with .25 second heads and 1 second tails or .5 seconds on each end. The trick is to edit very tightly on Track 1, leaving 2 seconds of blank track between chunks. Then mixdown to hot track 2. Then remove silence on track 2, presetting the heads and tails with the gate controls. (Not using the gate, just using the numbers from it. It's a right click on the track label area. Or you can use the remove silence function in the Levelizer.) Then delete unused regions, rename the regions on track 2, and export to sound files. Done. With EXACTLY .5 heads and tails.

I can get more specific with details. Let me know if you need that.

[Ian Alexander]

I've never had the rename function misbehave in any way. Hope you sort that out.

[bcorkery]

It's working like a charm. What I'm doing is editing as I record the folks by backing up the the previous phrase and punching in after playing it back. This way all the good takes are lined up on one track.

I adjust the gate and use a .300 attack and then a .200 soft edge so nothing from the previous take gets in there.

On the other issue, I might have been taxing the system by using a number of recordings in one session. Now I'm using each recording as a separate edl. This seems to be helping but last night I noticed one of the errant regions happened just after one of the punch ins. I didn't notice that on others though. I'll try to dig deeper as they show up ... hopefully they won't with my new approach.

Thanks for all the help!

[bcorkery]

OK, I have the remove silence humming along.
I still having a lot of trouble getting the rename regions working properly.
For example, everything looks great in the regions list, 1-138. On the time line, it'll show something like 1-70, fine then a 113 and pick up again at 71. The content of 113 is what 71 should be.

So I delete 113, drag 70's boundary and manipulate region 70 xxx and rename again. What happened tonight is I was fixing regions down stream when another errant region popped up around 50.

Originally had the file on one track, punching in periodically while recording the voice prompts. Some of the prompts are too close together so I use the space between them at the tail of the preceding region and the head of the subsequent region. I also have a .200ms soft edge on when renaming the region.

I wouldn't expect these things could affect the renaming, would it? I'm about to head home and experiment.

Any light on this would save me some serious time on this very involved project.

Thanks!

[bcorkery]

Just tried renaming the regions without the soft edge and it's still acting up.
I'm on my way home to try it on another machine.

[bcorkery]

I got home and worked worked on this project on my Win7, non tweaked laptop. The first pass went well.

But now, with the next recording, the region list shows the 1000 files above the 8 and 9 hundred files. So when I renumber the regions, 001 comes from somewhere in the middle of the recording and what should be the content of 001 is around 135.

This is on a totally different machine and I'm getting more renaming weirdness.

What did I break? :confused:

[bcorkery]

I had to highlight the regions 813-999 and rename them first to get them above the 1000 numbered regions, then rename them all to get it to work properly.

Weird stuff going on here. :(

[Bob L]

Can you give me some sort of easy way to setup a test that will duplicate the renaming issue so I can then possibly chase down what might be happening.

Bob L

[bcorkery]

I'll try to duplicate it and send you the offending files.
Thanks Bob.

[Bob L]

Not sure if I need the files... just the layout that causes the issue.

Bob L

[bcorkery]

I just sent it over to you. I'm having the same issue on my office machine.
The individual, (ita) files worked OK for this round but the Basic files keep getting shuffled around.

I hope you can put your thumb on this as I have 300 of these to do, 150 basic and 150 individual projects.

Thanks Bob.

[Bob L]

Ok... I am trying to understand exactly the procedure you are trying to accomplish here.

The Regions view rename will go down the list of selected regions and rename in sequential order... but realize the list is alphabetical... no reference to the order of regions on a specific track.

So the 350 regions in your list renamed perfectly down the list... but that has no relation to the order they may appear on the track.

I am not sure what final result you are looking for.

I am imagining this sequence of events... correct me if I am wrong...

You record the person reading a list of phrases on a track... you then remove silence between phrases... you then possibly edit out certain bad takes... you then want to rename the remaining in order as they appear on the track...

If that is so... realize that when you edit out the bad takes... you must do so from the regions view... if you delete them directly from the track, the regions are still in the list and will be part of the rename procedure... removing them from the regions view will then create the sequential rename that I think you are looking for.

Bob L

[Ian Alexander]

Ok... I am trying to understand exactly the procedure you are trying to accomplish here.

The Regions view rename will go down the list of selected regions and rename in sequential order... but realize the list is alphabetical... no reference to the order of regions on a specific track.

So the 350 regions in your list renamed perfectly down the list... but that has no relation to the order they may appear on the track.

I am not sure what final result you are looking for.

I am imagining this sequence of events... correct me if I am wrong...

You record the person reading a list of phrases on a track... you then remove silence between phrases... you then possibly edit out certain bad takes... you then want to rename the remaining in order as they appear on the track...

If that is so... realize that when you edit out the bad takes... you must do so from the regions view... if you delete them directly from the track, the regions are still in the list and will be part of the rename procedure... removing them from the regions view will then create the sequential rename that I think you are looking for.

Bob L
I, too, edit out bad takes and leave about 2 seconds between good takes on the MT, then mix to track 2, then use the Remove Silence feature to create one region per segment. (Without a careful re-read, I still don't understand what the gate and soft edge are doing for you.) This results in the good takes being named in sort/alpha order.

Re: Getting rid of bad take regions
Unless you need to keep the bad or alt takes for possible future use, the Clear Unused Regions command on the Regions menu does this in one step.

[Dave Labrecque]

I still don't understand what the gate and soft edge are doing for you.

Ian -- The gate attack setting is simply the way the remove silence function gets the value in seconds for the amount of additional time to leave in front of the desired audio.

[bcorkery]

y ultimate goal is to get the regions in sequential order on the timeline so the resulting wave files or in that order.

As I record I punch in so I don't have to go back and edit. I remove silence from the time line delete any regions created by mouth noise etc. Then, from regions list I choose clear unused regions. Next, I select in the regions list the ones I want to rename and hit enter.

I noticed this morning that a lot of the bus place to regions came up with renames they were out of sync.

[bcorkery]

sorry I'm in Tallahassee trying to do this from my phone.

[bcorkery]

I would simply like to rename the regions in the order they show up on the time line.

[andy cross]

My post here:
http://www.sawstudiouser.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14877&page=4

suggests a means of doing this.

[bcorkery]

Thanks Andy. I remember that thread. I did try the "mix to hot track" method and still got some errant regions and can't for the life of me figure out why I'm still getting some non sequential region names.

Unfortunately, I'm not in the studio again until Tuesday and seem to be spending more time repairing the regions than I figured I would when I took this job.

For example, I'll get 001-099 and then 132 and then It'll pick up at 100 again. :confused:

I'm trying to limp along when I have a little time with some copied sessions to my laptop. But can't spend too much time with it while I'm away.I'll have more time to experiment once I'm back in San Diego.

[Bob L]

Bill... if you record all in one track chunk... then use the remove silence function... all region names should be sequential... then if you edit out the bad takes by deleting the regions from the Regions view... or if you delete from the MT, then use the Clear unused regions after that... that should still leave you with sequential regions on the timeline and in the same alphabetical order in the regions view... provided you do not move anything on the timeline to a different order... then the rename should work fine... the out of sequence names, I believe come from the fact that you have left-over regions that mess up the alphabetical order in the regions view, and therefore those extra regions get named sequentially with the rename function.

Bob L

[bcorkery]

It's very strange. I get out of order regions along the timeline even when process the edited regions to one wave, remove silence and auto rename the regions. It's especially bad with regions along the MT time line are butt-spliced.

When I use the originally recorded files that were punched in while recording, sometimes, but not always, I'll get out of sync files at the top of the region list with the "@" in the new region name. These are usually at the punch-in point and help me know some of the regions I need to fix.

Saw is getting most of the regions right but it's taking way more time than it should to get though this process.

[Dave Labrecque]

Could this be what's happening?

This is a screenshot just before file renaming. Notice how the sequence in the MT is fine, but in the Regions View, when it gets past 99, the alphanumeric sort puts 1001 before 101. In fact in this case it puts several higher-number regions before 101. It's because it sees each digit discretely, rather than the full multi-digit number that's actually being expressed.

So... when you rename the regions in this order, they will necessarily be renamed out of order.

A work-around, then, would be to keep each session to the number of regions that would keep all region names at 999 or less. Probably not what you were looking for, though.

[Dave Labrecque]

An approach that might work for you is to not do the renaming in SAW, but do all your editing, then delete unused regions, then export all the regions as sound files. Then use something like Bulk Rename Utility (http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Download.php) (the one I use) to rename these files as you like. It's free, and seems pretty powerful.

[bcorkery]

That might be what's happening. So instead of processing to the hot track and have all those high number regions, I'm processing to a new file and starting from scratch with each recording so the region numbers stay under 1000.

It seems to be working much better.

I guess a full day of recording with punch-ins and all gets the region count up there. At first I thought you could go by what's on the timeline regardless of where the regions were taken from.

Lessons learned:
1 - mixdown to a single file.
2 - start a fresh edl

The project is moving along at a much nicer clip now.

Thanks everybody for your input and patience with this.

[UpTilDawn]

That might be what's happening. So instead of processing to the hot track and have all those high number regions, I'm processing to a new file and starting from scratch with each recording so the region numbers stay under 1000.

It seems to be working much better.

I guess a full day of recording with punch-ins and all gets the region count up there. At first I thought you could go by what's on the timeline regardless of where the regions were taken from.

Lessons learned:
1 - mixdown to a single file.
2 - start a fresh edl

The project is moving along at a much nicer clip now.

Thanks everybody for your input and patience with this.

Couldn't you also avoid some of this jumbling number order by always starting your number sequences with four places? - 0001, 0002, etc. - This seems to be SAW's default numbering system - as opposed to three place numbers - 001, 002, etc.

Maybe I should have quoted Dave on this instead, since it seems to relate more directly to his comment....

[Dave Labrecque]

Couldn't you also avoid some of this jumbling number order by always starting your number sequences with four places? - 0001, 0002, etc. - This seems to be SAW's default numbering system - as opposed to three place numbers - 001, 002, etc.

Maybe I should have quoted Dave on this instead, since it seems to relate more directly to his comment....

SAW defaults to three places with its auto-naming. Not sure how you'd force it to four.

Hmmm... I realize now that I didn't have it quite right. SAW doesn't look at individual digits (no problem going from 009 to 010 or from 099 to 100), but it does seem to not be able to recognize numbers above 999 as being larger than 999.

[cgrafx]

SAW defaults to three places with its auto-naming. Not sure how you'd force it to four.

Hmmm... I realize now that I didn't have it quite right. SAW doesn't look at individual digits (no problem going from 009 to 010 or from 099 to 100), but it does seem to not be able to recognize numbers above 999 as being larger than 999.

The issue with digits wouldn't be going from 009 to 010 but from 09 to 010 or from 99 to 100 where the place holder is absent.

Its a question of actually processing the value of the number rather than treating it simply as text.

EDIT: I should note that this is not a SAW problem but a file system problem, as the base file system doesn't deal with actual number values either. You'd have to write special code to parse each filename, strip the digits and convert to an actual integer in order to make that work.

[UpTilDawn]

SAW defaults to three places with its auto-naming. Not sure how you'd force it to four.

Hmmm... I realize now that I didn't have it quite right. SAW doesn't look at individual digits (no problem going from 009 to 010 or from 099 to 100), but it does seem to not be able to recognize numbers above 999 as being larger than 999.

Well, okay, maybe it defaults to three places, but it certainly has no problem displaying four places when necessary. If you go into the renaming knowing that there will be more than a thousand regions, then starting your numbering order with 0001 would make a lot of sense - That's what I was seeing.

[bcorkery]

Once you use a name "Region" every time you edit that region it gives a suffix number. If your project already has 999 existing regions, you'll get "Region {1000} and, in the regions list, it'll be stacked above 999.

[Dave Labrecque]

The issue with digits wouldn't be going from 009 to 010 but from 09 to 010 or from 99 to 100 where the place holder is absent.

Its a question of actually processing the value of the number rather than treating it simply as text.

EDIT: I should note that this is not a SAW problem but a file system problem, as the base file system doesn't deal with actual number values either. You'd have to write special code to parse each filename, strip the digits and convert to an actual integer in order to make that work.

Well said. Apologies for my novice explanation of how it appears to work. Next... please write code that will fix the problem. ;)

[Dave Labrecque]

Well, okay, maybe it defaults to three places, but it certainly has no problem displaying four places when necessary. If you go into the renaming knowing that there will be more than a thousand regions, then starting your numbering order with 0001 would make a lot of sense - That's what I was seeing.

But how would you start your numbering order with 0001, as you say, in such a way that SAW will respect that and continue to follow it as it continues to name new regions? I don't believe that's possible. SAW auto-names new regions with three places until four are needed regardless. In fact, if you start with a region containing "0001", SAW ignores it in terms of new numbers and appends its own three-digit number after that, such that all regions created thereafter from that first region contain "0001" in their names.

[UpTilDawn]

But how would you start your numbering order with 0001, as you say, in such a way that SAW will respect that and continue to follow it as it continues to name new regions? I don't believe that's possible. SAW auto-names new regions with three places until four are needed regardless. In fact, if you start with a region containing "0001", SAW ignores it in terms of new numbers and appends its own three-digit number after that, such that all regions created thereafter from that first region contain "0001" in their names.

You're right and I forgot about that, until you guys started pointing it out.

___

[bcorkery]

I do believe there is an issue with exceeding 1000 regions when auto naming. SAW seems to behaving when I'm renaming 2 to 3 hundred regions. But at a certain point, it starts acting "funny".

Last night I mistakenly pulled 2 mixed session files into one edl. The first one renamed the regions correctly. The 2nd one named the regions 001, 137, 138, 139 and then 002 through 136 were in order.

The content of the regions were in the correct order along the time line but not the numbering.

The odd part is that I removed the existing 137-138 regions, dragged 001 to the right, split those regions and ran rename regions again and this time, it worked fine.

[Dave Labrecque]

I do believe there is an issue with exceeding 1000 regions when auto naming. SAW seems to behaving when I'm renaming 2 to 3 hundred regions. But at a certain point, it starts acting "funny".

Bill, I'm pretty sure that the "certain point" is when Regions View orders the regions once the first four-digit-numbered region has been auto-created. All bets are off for any rename regions operations that you run after that. (Note that you can go over a thousand regions before the silence is stripped out, leaving you post-silence-strip with only a few hundred regions who's number suffixes skip some numbers and break the 999 mark.)

I've never run into these issues because I always use BFG (in combination with Bulk Rename Utility, as I've mentioned, if needed) for high-file-count-output projects. The downside is that you have to define each region zone manually, but that can go pretty quickly. In your case, though, with this project, it probably wouldn't be worth the extra time -- assuming you can work around this renaming problem.

And it appears that you can, so long as you avoid the 999-to-1000 "crossover point" during renaming operations. Avoid that point at which both three-digit- and four-digit-suffixed regions appear in the Regions View at the same time, because that's when the out-of-order thing happens. So, heck, why not just blow past that "crossover point" altogether?

How's this: Dave's work-around for a problem-free no-region-limit (within reason) renaming experience in SAW...

1) Remove silence from as much as you need to along the timeline in order to create regions numbering over 999.
2) Delete all regions from the session.
3) Bring your sound file(s) back into SAW's MT and do the remove silence thing again. (this time, the region numbering will start with a four-digit number, and all is right with the world)
4) Rename regions at will.

My guess is that this will keep out of rename trouble for up to 9000 regions (but I suppose only half that for sessions involving remove silence operations). :) Of course, you can always create a base session that starts counting with five digits (hmmm... will SAW count that high?). Either way, might be a good idea to create a template after you create the first base session. ;)

[bcorkery]

Very interesting concept.

I don't know how much more of this I'm going to do because I've paid about 45 speakers to come in to record and still haven't seen dollar 1 from the Korean company who promised a down payment was being transferred but since the deadline was looming I should begin right away. :o

[cgrafx]

Very interesting concept.

I don't know how much more of this I'm going to do because I've paid about 45 speakers to come in to record and still haven't seen dollar 1 from the Korean company who promised a down payment was being transferred but since the deadline was looming I should begin right away. :o

Foreign company.... I would insist on cash or bank transfer.

Credit cards are extremely easy to contest and you'll be hit with exchange rates. Its also almost impossible to sue out of the country.

If its so important, they can show you by paying up front. Get your down payment portion before you do anymore work and don't provide final product without final payment.

We ran into a problem with a Canadian company (and they are almost a part of the USA). We got paid with a credit card, ended up with less than we expected due to exchange rate charges and then the charges got contested. It took almost six months to finally get it sorted out.

[Dave Labrecque]

Very interesting concept.

I don't know how much more of this I'm going to do because I've paid about 45 speakers to come in to record and still haven't seen dollar 1 from the Korean company who promised a down payment was being transferred but since the deadline was looming I should begin right away. :o

Oh, man. Yeah, I'd hold off till they buck up.

[Ian Alexander]

Ian -- The gate attack setting is simply the way the remove silence function gets the value in seconds for the amount of additional time to leave in front of the desired audio.

Yep, which adds the heads and tails Bill was looking for. But only after mixing to another hot track, which will make the regions come out in order.

I'll assume the soft edge is used to finesse the "on the street" bg noise?

For adding a leading zero to "3 digit" exported file names, look into 1-4a Rename. Very powerful ways of bulk editing filenames.

http://www.1-4a.com/rename/

[Dave Labrecque]

Yep, which adds the heads and tails Bill was looking for. But only after mixing to another hot track, which will make the regions come out in order.

I'll assume the soft edge is used to finesse the "on the street" bg noise?

For adding a leading zero to "3 digit" exported file names, look into 1-4a Rename. Very powerful ways of bulk editing filenames.

http://www.1-4a.com/rename/

Hey, this whole gate-settings-for-silence-removal thing goes deeper than I thought. It apparently really is using the dynamics module for silence stripping. To wit -- I was getting some wacky results when doing some experimentation last week in my efforts to help Bill. Turns out it was because of the default key hi/low-pass settings I have in there to make de-essing quicker to set up. Whoda thunk it?

[bcorkery]

How's this: Dave's work-around for a problem-free no-region-limit (within reason) renaming experience in SAW...

1) Remove silence from as much as you need to along the timeline in order to create regions numbering over 999.
2) Delete all regions from the session.
3) Bring your sound file(s) back into SAW's MT and do the remove silence thing again. (this time, the region numbering will start with a four-digit number, and all is right with the world)
4) Rename regions at will.

I've adopted doing each in its own edl to avoid the 1000 region mark. I'll give this a shot once I have some breathing room.

Thanks Dave!

[Ian Alexander]

Dave's work-around for a problem-free no-region-limit (within reason) renaming experience in SAW...

1) Remove silence from as much as you need to along the timeline in order to create regions numbering over 999.
2) Delete all regions from the session.
3) Bring your sound file(s) back into SAW's MT and do the remove silence thing again. (this time, the region numbering will start with a four-digit number, and all is right with the world)
4) Rename regions at will.


I'm missing something here, Dave. Don't you need a step 1a) Mixdown to a new soundfile or just to a handy nearby hot track? If not, what soundfile are you bringing back into the MT?

[Dave Labrecque]

I've adopted doing each in its own edl to avoid the 1000 region mark. I'll give this a shot once I have some breathing room.

Thanks Dave!

In sessions with all regions numbered below, or all regions numbered above, 1000 -- you oughta be fine. It's having regions numbered on both sides of 1000 that manifests the issue. I presume the same thing happens on both sides of 10,000, too.

Good luck. Let us know how you do.

[Dave Labrecque]

I'm missing something here, Dave. Don't you need a step 1a) Mixdown to a new soundfile or just to a handy nearby hot track? If not, what soundfile are you bringing back into the MT?

Steps 1 and 2 are simply meant to ratchet SAW's default region numbering past 999. After that, you can do whatever you want, and regions will be created and displayed in the correct order in the Regions View, since all regions created from this point forward (the next 9000, anyway) will all have a four-digit number in the name.

But I guess you're right: if you're bringing more than one sound file into the MT to start your left-to-right editing and/or silence removal, unless the sound files are named (or, perhaps, renamed) such that they are placed in alphabetical order on the time line, the Regions View will at some point display the newly created regions out of chronological order.

So... you should either initially create, or later rename, the files so that they are alphabetically ordered along the timeline in the MT OR do a buildmix so that the file/region you're cutting up in the MT is a single entity.

Good catch.

[bcorkery]

I'm finished with this project and wanted to report back.

I've been paid 2 of the 3 payments, that's good and I'm confident they're good for the final.

As I recorded each of the 150 people, I edited on the fly. Each time I stopped for a mistake, I played back the previous file and continued recording the computer prompts from there. I then processed to another file and opened it in a new EDL. It was easy to set the gate parameters to remove silence. By making an individual EDL for each speaker I never went over the 1000 region mark and all was well.

Thank you all for your valuable input and for taking the time to help!

[Dave Labrecque]

I'm finished with this project and wanted to report back.

I've been paid 2 of the 3 payments, that's good and I'm confident they're good for the final.

As I recorded each of the 150 people, I edited on the fly. Each time I stopped for a mistake, I played back the previous file and continued recording the computer prompts from there. I then processed to another file and opened it in a new EDL. It was easy to set the gate parameters to remove silence. By making an individual EDL for each speaker I never went over the 1000 region mark and all was well.

Thank you all for your valuable input and for taking the time to help!

Glad you found a work flow strategy that worked for you, Bill. And gladder that you're getting paid! :cool:

[bcorkery]

Me too & ME TOO!
Thanks Dave.