Gordon Lightfoot Forums - View Single Post - Total running time of Lightfoot entire song catalogue

johnfowles · 02-10-2009, 04:28 PM

John your thread subject is
Total running time of Lightfoot entire song catalogue
which is on a par with my ongoing attempt to define precisely what that catalogue comprises.
You have now reduced your ambition to:-
"The total for all recordings of GL would also be interesting. I was originally just thinking about the more easily calculated "released" songs from GL's albums. There's 20 ...isn't there"
Yes well John there are certainly various levels of complexity in this project and the one I started earler viz
So just how many songs has Gordon Written and/or Recorded???
at:-
url=http://www.corfid.com/vbb/showthread.php?]t=18830&highlight=recorded[click here[/url]
I have found that this is actually quite difficult to definitively quantify
I am going to assume that the object of this exercise is to determine if you could accomodate the entire basic catalogues of Gordtunes on your ipod or mp3 player,or say a number of standard 700MB blank CD-R
But to keep things really simple I can certainly concentrate as you now suggest on the total time of what Gord usually refers to as his 20 so called "original albums"
which in reality whether he likes it or not must be 21 since the 18 unreleased "rarities" on the Songbook Boxset are in my opinion definitely the 21st.I have therefore now completed my spreadsheet for just those 21. plus a stray on Gord's Gold 2
Note that for the TRT of each album I took the easy way out and simply recorded the indicated "CD" time as displayed in a boom box type CD player, except for the first 4 United Artist albums,
where the relevant CDs I had readily to hand were the Bear Family double album on a single CD pair:-
Lightfoot!/TWIF and DSMMN/BHOE
I have now completed my Pocket Excel spreadsheet as promised, and then opened it in Excel 2000 to amend the formula in one field (because Pocket Excel does not have a "rounddown" function). I then saved the spreadsheet firstly as a text file, which proved hopeless as the columns become corrupted or non existant, then as a web page and at first I mistakenly thought that I had discovered that on the resulting HTML web page the formulae are all preserved hence the web page is in fact a fully functional spreadsheet in its own right. A most useful feature that I would like to have utilised in other projects online
When I found that this was purely the misleading way the filename is displayed after saving as a web page at the top,of an Excel program screen ,I refused to be beaten and a quick google revealed a number of programs (some free or shareware) that promise to do just that
Whatever my basic table is now viewable at:-
[SIZE=2]http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/lightfoot/song_lists/basic_time.htm]click here
and having got the basic spreadsheet format sucessfully setup I will attempt to finish the the job I started as long ago as April 2008. BRB I don't think!!
I will be successively adding other albums etc to build up my complete list comparing as I go to the existing song list pages by Wayne, Valerie,Spike and also Mende Joveski's list plus supplements
the basic total as you will see is 13 hours 39 minutes 21 seconds (or 49161 seconds) so that 11 hours guess was a tad off Mr Stinson!!
Here is a tip
There is far too much to fit as full CD Player playable audio files on a standard 80 minute blank CD-R, or even an 8.5GB double layer DVD+/-R come to that, but compressed to mp3 it might be possible to fit onto a few CD-Rs as data disks or depending on what model/capacity you have onto an Ipod or any mp3m player etc,, or indeed your hard drive
The total size of such an mp3 set will of course depend on the sampling bitrate as file size is directly proportional to the bitrate
For example to get "high quality" mp3s as I have defined/discussed at:-
http"//www.johnfowles.org.uk/mp3_quality/
I recommended using a highish bitrate of 192KBPS (KiloBits Per Second) as a compromise between perceived sound quality and file size
(a wav file as in effect used on CDs is very much higher at 1411KBPS).
Now for any given bitrate the file size obeys the following easy formula, (where 1 byte =8 bits and 1 MB=1024 KB just to confuse the issue!!)
File size in Megabytes=
time in seconds x bitrate in KBPS= kilobits/8 = file size in KiloBytes/1024= file size in Megabytes
hence for our basic list of 49161 seconds the space required at 192KBPS=
49161x192/8/1024=1152.21 MB
and since there are 1024 MB in 1 Gigabyte
then if you have a 4GB Ipod you could load up very much more than these basic albums.
Woohoo!!

02-10-2009, 04:28 PM	#11
johnfowles Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: New Jersey U.S.A. ex UK and Canada Posts: 4,846	Re: Total running time of Lightfoot entire song catalogue John your thread subject is Total running time of Lightfoot entire song catalogue which is on a par with my ongoing attempt to define precisely what that catalogue comprises. You have now reduced your ambition to:- "The total for all recordings of GL would also be interesting. I was originally just thinking about the more easily calculated "released" songs from GL's albums. There's 20 ...isn't there" Yes well John there are certainly various levels of complexity in this project and the one I started earler viz So just how many songs has Gordon Written and/or Recorded??? at:- url=http://www.corfid.com/vbb/showthread.php?]t=18830&highlight=recorded[click here[/url] I have found that this is actually quite difficult to definitively quantify I am going to assume that the object of this exercise is to determine if you could accomodate the entire basic catalogues of Gordtunes on your ipod or mp3 player,or say a number of standard 700MB blank CD-R But to keep things really simple I can certainly concentrate as you now suggest on the total time of what Gord usually refers to as his 20 so called "original albums" which in reality whether he likes it or not must be 21 since the 18 unreleased "rarities" on the Songbook Boxset are in my opinion definitely the 21st.I have therefore now completed my spreadsheet for just those 21. plus a stray on Gord's Gold 2 Note that for the TRT of each album I took the easy way out and simply recorded the indicated "CD" time as displayed in a boom box type CD player, except for the first 4 United Artist albums, where the relevant CDs I had readily to hand were the Bear Family double album on a single CD pair:- Lightfoot!/TWIF and DSMMN/BHOE I have now completed my Pocket Excel spreadsheet as promised, and then opened it in Excel 2000 to amend the formula in one field (because Pocket Excel does not have a "rounddown" function). I then saved the spreadsheet firstly as a text file, which proved hopeless as the columns become corrupted or non existant, then as a web page and at first I mistakenly thought that I had discovered that on the resulting HTML web page the formulae are all preserved hence the web page is in fact a fully functional spreadsheet in its own right. A most useful feature that I would like to have utilised in other projects online When I found that this was purely the misleading way the filename is displayed after saving as a web page at the top,of an Excel program screen ,I refused to be beaten and a quick google revealed a number of programs (some free or shareware) that promise to do just that Whatever my basic table is now viewable at:- [SIZE=2]http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/lightfoot/song_lists/basic_time.htm]click here and having got the basic spreadsheet format sucessfully setup I will attempt to finish the the job I started as long ago as April 2008. BRB I don't think!! I will be successively adding other albums etc to build up my complete list comparing as I go to the existing song list pages by Wayne, Valerie,Spike and also Mende Joveski's list plus supplements the basic total as you will see is 13 hours 39 minutes 21 seconds (or 49161 seconds) so that 11 hours guess was a tad off Mr Stinson!! Here is a tip There is far too much to fit as full CD Player playable audio files on a standard 80 minute blank CD-R, or even an 8.5GB double layer DVD+/-R come to that, but compressed to mp3 it might be possible to fit onto a few CD-Rs as data disks or depending on what model/capacity you have onto an Ipod or any mp3m player etc,, or indeed your hard drive The total size of such an mp3 set will of course depend on the sampling bitrate as file size is directly proportional to the bitrate For example to get "high quality" mp3s as I have defined/discussed at:- http"//www.johnfowles.org.uk/mp3_quality/ I recommended using a highish bitrate of 192KBPS (KiloBits Per Second) as a compromise between perceived sound quality and file size (a wav file as in effect used on CDs is very much higher at 1411KBPS). Now for any given bitrate the file size obeys the following easy formula, (where 1 byte =8 bits and 1 MB=1024 KB just to confuse the issue!!) File size in Megabytes= time in seconds x bitrate in KBPS= kilobits/8 = file size in KiloBytes/1024= file size in Megabytes hence for our basic list of 49161 seconds the space required at 192KBPS= 49161x192/8/1024=1152.21 MB and since there are 1024 MB in 1 Gigabyte then if you have a 4GB Ipod you could load up very much more than these basic albums. Woohoo!! __________________ "Sir" John Fowles Bt Honorary Curator Bootleg Museum (where Sir does not signify that I am a fully benighted Knight just a Bt which signifies a humble Baronet -?? read the wiki!) I meant no one no harm Once inside we found a curious moonbeam Doing dances on the floor Last edited by johnfowles; 02-10-2009 at 05:26 PM.