TaggMusic/audio/video software | Fonts &c | Time calculators | Search | Misc apps | Archived
— Musical and other symbol fonts, etc.
Musescore: recommended notation software. This software does virtually the same things as Finale or Sibelius at a minuscule fraction of the cost (It’s basically free). It was more than adequate for the hundreds of music examples I had to do for Everyday Tonality II (Tagg, 2018).
HOWEVER: avoid Musescore’s subscription racket: the ‘perks’ are in my view more like a punishment. I’d willingly have donated to the development of the excellent software but was put right off by their subscription scam and their lack of support which, once again, I’d’ve been happy to pay for if it had existed. But it doesn’t.
[1] 
—> 
—>Word. How to export a MuseScore notation file via image format (here using Photoshop) into a standard text file (explanatory video 
either on Vimeo or 
on this site).
[2] How to export a Finale notation file via image format into a standard text file (PDF instructions).
[3] How to make a short extract from a video into a loopable file using Sony Vegas 12 (2017-10-19) [1:49] 6-step instructions.
[4] How to download Vimeo files to a PC (2017-10-15) [1:17] 4-step video instructions using Dickson of Dock Green as example. See also Vimeo Help Centre.
[5] Wikihow: 6 Safe Ways to Convert/Download YouTube files to MP3.
[6] Making a usable music file out of a sealed streaming package (YouTube, Spotify, etc.).
— MP3 Book Helper (more info) — OR MP3 Book Helper (download direct). An old but excellent, practical and reliable app that lets you archive, document, catalogue and organise your MP3 files. No nonsense. No images. It just works. No signing up or logging in, no cookie What a relief!
Some old, really useful routines that do their job efficiently without parading in clouds of image and ‘design’ (yuck!).
DVD Decrypter (download)
— more info —
How to get your mobile phone to ring without using Alexa or Bluetooth.
|
Calculator (1) |
Simple + and – |
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Calculator (2) |
+ and edit up to 12 durations. Shows total, subtotals, averages, maximum and minimum durations, etc. Very useful |
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Conversion .com (1) |
+, —; shows also hours in decimal values |
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Conversion .com (2) |
Convert multiples of 1 single time unit (incuding decimals) to any other (>=days - <=ms) (e.g. 125.1 mins = 7,506 seconds) |
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Calculator |
Simple +, -, x, . No hours. Very neat and useful even if a bit restricted. Definitely worth downloading. |
How
to calculate Music and Moving Image durations
Length of each cue
Use any of the routines, except OnlineConversion (2), listed in the table above and subtract the cue’s start time from its end time. For example, using TimeCalc.exe, enter first the end timing of the cue ( e.g. 61:20 for 01:01:20), then hit the subtract button, then the cue’s start timing (e.g. 58:55) and make note of the answer (the cue lasts 2:25).
Hint: keep Time Calculator running while you call up other time calculation routines.
Add up durations of all cues
Use Time Math Calculator (2) to enter each duration (see previous step) as you go. When you’ve entered your durations correctly (you can edit all twelve before you go on to the next twelve or before you finish), you’ll need to note down the result so that, assuming your film contains more than 12 cues, you can add up all those sets of twelve to the final total of music durations in the whole movie
Try also TC.EXE. It time percentages and more...
Percentage of film containing music
Divide the total amount of music in the movie (see previous two steps) by the total duration of the whole film (easy to find by playing your DVD with its time display [OSD] on and running right to the and of the disc). Then you multiply the result of that division by 100. How do you do all that? Let’s say your film’s total running time is 02:04:55 (124m 55s) and that you’ve calculated the total duration of all music cues as 0:55:01 (55m 01s). You'll first need to convert both timings into seconds.[1] Using any normal calculator, multiply the number of minutes, as an integer, by 60. The 124 minutes of 02:04:55 = 7440 seconds. Add the remaining seconds, in this case 55, and you will know that the film is 7495 seconds long.
[2] Do exactly the same sort of calculatioin for the total length of all music cues. In our case, 55 minutes x 60 = 3300 seconds, plus one (the music cues totalled 55:01), i.e. the film contained 3301 seconds of music.
[3] Divide the number of seconds occupied by music (3301) by the number of seconds in the entire film (7495). The result is 0.4402935. Multiply that amount by 100 (0.4402935. x 100) and you will know that music is heard during 44% of the film.
MP3 Book Helper
——— easily manage MP3s
— View input screen
— Download MP3 Helper
If you have to keep a lot of MP3 files on your computer, or if you rip CDs, etc., etc., MP3 Book Helper is, I think, a great tool. One particularly useful feature is, for me at least, that I can export MP3 tags (any version) to a database (or database-compatible format). If you do any sort of music archiving on your computer, even if you just need to keep track of what you have, this software is FREE! Why not contribute a few € to this good cause?
— How to restore Google Calendar Sync on an Android smartphone (2018-03-24)
- Symptoms: all events suddenly disappear from the Google Calendar app on on your smartphone but remain in tact on your laptop/computer; standard sync procedures have no effect.
- Remedy: add a new event to your smartphone’s apparently empty Google Calendar app.
All seemingly lost calendar events should re-appear.
— How to fix the Mozilla Firefox VCRUNTIME reinstallation problem on a Windows 10 machine. [2020-12-12]
-
Symptoms: your newly re-installed Firefox app does not load the URLs/TABs you tell it to and you get the error message “VCRUNTIME140.dll” (and/or VCRUNTIME140_1.dll) “is missing from your computer” (or similar).
- Remedy: find VCRUNTIME140.dll and/or VCRUNTIME140_1.dll elsewhere on your computer and copy it/them to whichever folder Firefox is installed in (e.g. to C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox).
— Running FoxPro v2.0 in Windows Vista
— Miscellaneous audio- and video software
