Sunday, June 10, 2012

Dance Times in the Database


Dance Times in the Database 120610

In a previous post I had mentioned that Barbara Collazo and Psyche Lunasea have been helping complete the dance database. While we are working on a way to make the database more accessible to all DANCE QUEENS members and allow both Psyche and Barbara to enter data, Barbara has come up with an idea to get more data on timings. Here is what she suggests:

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Nottoo,

As we discussed the other day, I thought if you put a request on the blog for people to time a few dances we could whittle away at the backlog. To that end, here is the procedure I'm using to time them, that you could put in the blog so people do it more or less consistently.

Choose 5 or so dances in your inventory that don't have times in the database. Check their properties and see if the maker has provided a time. If they have, you're done! If not,

1. Set your dance HUD to a long default time, such as 90 seconds.
2. Watch the dance a couple of times and identify an easily recognizable point in the dance, such an arm or leg thrown out or a turn.
3. Using a website such as http://stopwatch.onlineclock.net/ , time the dance 5 to 10 times and record the results.
4. Take the average of the recorded times.
5. If there are large differences in your recorded times, test the dance by sequencing it with something like Sultry Down Body and see if there are hitches. Refine the time if needed.
6. Report the times to Nottoo in a notecard with your name and date, in the form animation_name|time| .

If you'd rather, I could collect them for you, in the interest of offloading you.

Barbara

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I love the idea and hope that members will time a few dances and send the results to Barbara. She can give them to me and I will include the timings in the next update of the spreadsheet that is made from the database. Thank you, Barbara :-)

xxx
Nottoo