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 TimeCalc running while you call up other time calculation routines.

Add up durations of all cues

Percentage of film containing music

Use TC.EXE. It does the trick right away!

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.

I've already saved much more time using this software (SmartCaps) than it took to research its existence and install it. If ever you type upper and lower case letters rOUND tHE wRONG wAY, this software is definitely worth buying. It doesn't cost much. You can set it to make whatever sound you like when the CapsLock go on and off. Same goes for NumLock on and off. You can also choose a sound for every time you hit the Insert key and opt for showing icons, on the desktop or taskbar, showing whether CapsOn and/or NumLock are on or off. I can even make the keys "click" when CapsLock is on. yOU DON'T HAVE TO WATCH THE SCREEN TO AVOID SEEING A SENTENCE LIKE THIS! Costs very little and worth every penny.

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This is really useful. You can get rid of unnecessary keyboards, mice, cables and free up USB ports occupied by wireless receivers. All you need is:[1] computers that can ‘see’ each other (are networked — see here on how to do that — a pain in the butt!); [2] a piece of free software called Synergy. You can link up PCs or MACs or PCs and MACs, all with machines running Unix, Linux, etc., etc. The picture shows my setup: trying to drag the mouse left out of the desktop monitor or right out of the XP laptop does nothing. Out of the top right half of the desktop monitor goes to the top left of the XP laptop and vice versa. Bottom right out of the desktop and bottom left out of the XP laptop go to the Vista laptop and vice versa. You can download the program Synergy from here. There's only one confusing bit: that's when you have to fill in which movements off one edge of one monitor go through which part of which edge of another monitor. For example, you will be asked to fill in lines like this:

[0] to [100] % of the [left/right/top/bottom] of [computer name choice] goes to [0] to [100]% of [computer name choice]

Are you as confused as I was? OK. My three computers have their own names on my home network. So, my six mouse movement values are filled in as follows:

[0] to [50] % of the [right] of [Desktop] goes to [0] to [50]% of [XPlaptop]
[0] to [50] % of the [left] of [XPlaptop goes to [0] to [50]% of [Desktop]
[51] to [100] % of the [right] of [Desktop] goes to [0] to [100]% of [VistaLaptop]
[0] to [100] % of the [left] of [VistaLaptop] goes to [51] to [100]% of [Desktop]
[51] to [100] % of the [left] of [XPlaptop] goes to [0] to [100]% of [VistaLaptop]
[0] to [100] % of the [right] of [VistaLaptop] goes to [51] to [100]% of [XPlaptop]

Sometimes teaching popular music, film music and so on is an utter pain. One common reason for the pain is copyright legislation (see here). One copyright-based drag in my job is downloading music examples, free or for money, from the internet (I tend to use SpiralFrog mainly) only to discover that they are digitally protected and therefore uneditable (i.e. unchangeable, unmodifiable) and therefore impossible to abbreviate into extracts correctly faded in and out, impossible to use in conjunction with moving images, impossible to subject to manipulation of any sort for analysis purposes, etc. There is thankfully, however, a software solution but it does cost money ($40 US in 2008). It removes digital protection and writes the complete audio file to an editable format of your own choice. That's definitely worth the money in my line of work. Go to the Daniusoft Media Converter Pro product site if you want to try or buy this useful product.

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