How much time used per speaker

Special Interest Groups Podcasting
1

Hello all.

This might have a very easy answer but I really can’t find a way to do it in Audacity. I record a three-ender podcast via Discord (using Craig) and I want to know how long does each host speak for during an episode. I have three tracks, one per each host, and I want to be able to measure the time each host is active (i.e. non-silent) so that I can get an average of how much I should, as a moderator, tell the others to shut the hell up :slight_smile:
I tried Sound Finder and the labels are set to the proper locations:
Screenshot_13.png
but I feel there’s gotta be a better way to measure the amount of time between those same labels.

Thanks in advance, people!

2

How about exporting the labels (https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/file_menu_export.html#export_labels)
Then import the label text file into a spreadsheet and total them up?

3

Alternatively, if the gaps between when they are talking is reasonably quiet, you could use “Truncate Silence” (https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/truncate_silence.html) to delete the parts when they are not speaking, and see how long the remaining audio is.

4

didn’t know you could export labels, that would work fine! I also thought about truncating silence but I thought there might be a one-button answer :slight_smile:

in any case, you solved my problem, thanks! :slight_smile:

5

thanks a lot, steve, the export labels idea worked like a charm! I had already thought of truncating the silence using the same params as the ones used in Sound Finder, but this is even better because I can use a spreadsheet to analyze the data.
now I just have to find a way to automate this, although I can’t export the labels using chains. but I’ll find a way :slight_smile:
thanks again!!!

6

I liked the idea of using a spreadsheet as I wrote that suggestion, because of other interesting analysis that could be done.

I think Truncate Silence would have been quicker (but less interesting :wink:) and could be done like this:

  1. Apply Truncate Silence with:
    Threshold (dB) = what you used with Sound Finder
    Duration = “Minimum duration” in Sound Finder
    Action = “Truncate Detected Silence”
    Truncate to = 0

  2. Look in the “Selection Toolbar” to find the new length.

  3. “Ctrl + Z” to undo the truncation.

Which version of Audacity?
What operating system?

7

my bad, I was using 2.2, just updated to 2.3 and it’s there.
Screenshot_14.png
this sequence works, just have to export the labels afterwards and there’s a space between the labels of each track. open in excel and voilá. but I’m still going to create a small program in c# to parse the file and automate this further :slight_smile:

8

Try this plug-in (requires Audacity 2.3.0 or later) for exporting the labels. Unlike the usual “Export Labels”, this can be used in batch processing.

Installation instructions: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/installing_effect_generator_and_analyzer_plug_ins.html
export-labels2.ny (948 Bytes)
The above should work in Audacity 2.3.0 and early 2.3.1 alpha, but one of the new scripting commands has just been updated, so for Audacity 2.3.1 after today, a slightly different version is required:
export-labels.ny (1014 Bytes)