Hi Everyone

The league is desperately short of people to do comms.

At the moment, Gray and I do about 15 races each, but that leaves Martin with about 50 races each week.

There is going to come a time when a number of races will not have any comms.

If I can do comms, anyone can do comms. I get the horse names wrong, the trainers names wrong, but any comms, no matter the standard is better than no comms at all. I am surprised people can understand what I say due to my strong accent.


PLEASE, PLEASE give comms a go.


You can start with just two or three races and see how you get on. I have not checked with Gray or Martin but I am sure if you did a Demo and sent it to Gray or Martin, they would give you feedback.

If you need help with the computer stuff, let me know and I will help. The program I use to record the comms is called Audacity. It is free to download.
There are a number of beginners guides to using Audacity on YouTube. Here is an example.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzJ2VyYkmaA&list=PLlKpQrBME6xKm9iJlVHWbJd_xAvtAQy6W&index=3


You don't need a fancy computer\laptop. You don't have to pay\buy anything, the free version of Dropbox will work fine. You just download a copy of the video file to your laptop, press the record button on Audacity, play the video of the race and start talking. Most laptops have a built-in microphone, so you don't need any extra equipment. Once you have finished commentating on a race, you upload the sound file to dropbox.


Jim

If someone wants to send me a random race file I shall see if the mic on my old laptop is up to the task, but I cannot do that many.

Josh

Sorry Josh

Totally missed this message.

I have pm'd you to check your email address before sending you stuff.

Jim

Hey All,

I used to help out with this once upon a time. If I'm being honest I really don't have the time to commit but I could possibly see if I could squeeze maybe 10 in for the flat each week. I used audacity before, I have a headset so as long as I have no probs downloading the software I could potentially help out.

It would all depend on the timings and when the races are run, I have limited spare time at the weekends so I'd probably need to try and squeeze some in on my lunch break Monday's when WFH or Sunday where time allows.

Is there a deadline on when comms need to be done by for each day, I'm imagining something along the lines of Comms done by Saturday PM for Monday/Sunday PM for Tuesday/Monday PM for Wednesday?

Happy to help out, but as I said, time is extremely limited so would need to see how the structure works currently before committing.

Best Regards,

Nick

Hello Nick, anything you can do would be a help. A few day 1 on Sunday would be good znd/or day 2 or 3 on Monday. Just let me know when you are free so we don't all end up doing the same ones.

Hey Martin, I would suggest I could possibly do the final 10 races each week? That would then give me until as late as possible to potentially do it.

I don't have access to the dropbox anymore, so I will need access and could possibly do a test run this week.

If I can get on the dropbox, I'll download audacity and do a test run at some point and then I'll let you know if I can commit to any, do you have a group somewhere, where you arrange who is doing what races etc?

Send me a E-mail Nick grayham37athotmaildotcom I will send a invite to the E-mail you use.

Gray

Done, thanks.

That sounds good, especially as the bonus races kick in from next week.

At the moment I just do as many day 2 and day 3 flat races as I can manage and then email Martin with what I have done.

If Nick and Josh are going to be able to run races as well, maybe we need some kind of group chat to keep each other informed about what we are doing.

I use WhatsApp to keep in touch with distant relatives and friends but do not have a facebook or twitter or any type of account.

Jim

Just as a quick caveat, I won't be able to race run, just do Comms! I only really have the time and the equipment for Comms as I'm playing on a Steam Deck, if I do Comms it's fine as I can do it on my work laptop.

Sent you Two Invites Nick.

Gray

Thanks Gray, I can access one, but for the "Races" folder it's saying I don't have enough space, seems like the folder is 10GB but only get 2GB on the free Dropbox.

Anyway around this without having to subscribe for a plan?

Hi Nick

What happens with dropbox is everytime someone adds a file to dropbox it automatically tries to add the file to the dropbox folder on your computer.

The dropbox on the internet and the dropbox on your computer are "synched"

The way around this is to use the settings on your computer dropbox to "un-synch" the races folder.

I still use windows 10 so if you are using win 11 it may look different. Here is how I do it. You will probably know most of this stuff but just in case, I will go step by step.

Near the bottom right of the screen there should be a little up arrow type symbol, press it and a bunch of little icons is displayed, press the dropbox icon.

When the dropbox window opens, select the top right symbol, it is usually your initials.

You should now see a list of options, select preferences

Now you can select the sync option

With this option you can un-sync all of dropbox or just individual folders. Once a folder is un-synched, you can only access it via the web.


Just a suggestion on how I would do this once the folder is un-synched.
Goto the dropbox website, manually download the race you wish to commentate on, then when finished, manually upload the sound file to the races folder. You can then delete the completed race video and download another race video.


Hope this helps. If you have any problems, get back to me.


This just may have been what I was doing but when I watched the first few races on youtube with my commentary, the commentary did not allows totally sync with the race video. What I do now is I downloaded a free video editor called Openshot and I now put the video and sound file into Openshot. I don't change anything using Openshot, I just watch the race with the sound added, it lets me check if the two files are synched. What I sometimes have to do is use Audacity to slightly tweak my commentary so both files are synched.


Jim

Thanks Jim,

I've managed to find a free trial for a month, so I've signed up to that quickly so I can access the folder and test. During the trial I'll try and do what you've done above so once the free trial ends I can continue.

I'll drop you and Martin a note, I'll try to do a test today if I get time.