The latest version of CueTimer 2.5 has the ability to import spreadsheets with the event schedule, cue-sheet or rundown. Then you can just copy the columns from Excel and paste them to our new Spreadsheet-Import menu.
But while developing this feature, we soon realised that it would be difficult to import any kind of event-schedule. Because these documents can be written in all kinds of ways. And sometimes when you are working with CueTimer, the schedule you receive from the event-organiser is just a mail-excerpt which might look something like this:
“Regarding tomorrow’s event, I think John Smith can start at nine, then Jane Doe takes over at 9:30. Jim Jensen continues at 10, then June Olsen can wrap it up at 11. Lunch will be served at 11.30 and lasts until noon “
Luckily for us, there are ways to help us convert this mail-correspondence into a neatly structured spreadsheet that we can put straight into CueTimer: AI, and ChatGPT, are incredibly good at interpreting text and converting it into a table. And it works with both text and spreadsheet-data. If the schedule you receive is understandable for a human, ChatGPT will understand it too.
In this article, I will show how to use Chat GPT 4 to convert the the event-schedule shown above into a CueTimer cue-list.
1. Create the prompt
For this demonstration we will use the standard web-interface of ChatGPT which lets you write prompts that the robot will answer for you. I have made a prompt which consists of 2 parts:
– an explanation to Chat GPT what they should do with the data.
– the actual schedule-data that you want to convert.
The first part of the prompt will always be the same. I save this as a Word-document so I can reuse it.
The second part is dynamic, it is the actual schedule that you want to convert. I paste this below the static part in the Word document
Example of a prompt for ChatGPT, using the example-schedule written in cursive.
2. Run the prompt in ChatGPT
If you have used ChatGPT before, you are probably familiar with their web-interface. Here you can write or paste the prompt that you want ChatGPT to answer.
We will copy the whole text from our Word document into ChatGPT, and then push enter.
3. Paste the cue list into CueTimer
Use the “Copy code” button in ChatGPT to copy the newly created code. In CueTimer, open the “Import CSV” menu button and paste the code. In the “Preview” window below in the menu, you can check that the list is OK before importing it into the main cue-list.
Congratulations, you have now created a list of timers ready to be played in CueTimer!
Documentation
Prompt
Below is the prompt that I used along with the schedule. Feel free to copy this prompt and use it along with CueTimer
I would like you to help me create a spreadsheet from the information i send you. There are four columns in the spreadsheet you create:
ID (if you find numbered segments, if else leave emtpy), Name (name of the speaker/segment.), Start (start of the segment), Duration (duration of the segment), and End (end of the segment).
The cells in columns Start, Duration and End should be formatted as hh:mm:ss. If hh,mm,or ss is 0, always write 00. For example, 10 minute duration = 00:10:00. Use 24 hour time-format.
Use TAB as delimiter to separate the columns and rows, so that you create a spreadsheet that I can paste into excel.
Chat GPT versions
For this test we use ChatGPT 4. In my testing, ChatGPT 3 could be a bit unreliable when fed with more complicated texts.
I also tested with Bing, and got mixed results. For now, my recommendation is to use the best version of ChatGPT, or other AI-models designed for this kind of job.
Use with caution
If the timer-list contains sensitive data, be careful to let ChatGPT handle it. Some companies may not like to use ChatGPT. Alternatively, look for other AI-models that are more compliant.
Always quality-control the list created be ChatGPT, and compare it with the original. There is no guarantee that the output from ChatGPT will be 100% correct. If you are not happy with the results, you could also try to write more prompts to improve the list.
