07 - TRANSCRIPTION... 1 TRANSCRIPTION MODE Turning on Transcription Mode Start transcribing... 2

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1 07 - Transcription

2 Contents 07 - TRANSCRIPTION... 1 TRANSCRIPTION MODE... 1 Turning on Transcription Mode... 1 Start transcribing... 2 Adjust rewind interval, volume and playback speed... 3 Coding while transcribing... 4 Start and stop transcribing... 4 Transcribing with a foot pedal... 4 AUTOMATIC SPEAKER CHANGE AND AUTOTEXT... 5 Automatic Speaker Change... 5 Autotext... 7 TIMESTAMPS TO LINK TRANSCRIPTS WITH SOUND... 8 Add timestamps manually... 9 Delete timestamps INSERT TIMESTAMPS INTO EXISTING TRANSCRIPT Insert timestamps into a transcript LISTEN AND VIEW TRANSCRIPT AND SOUND AT THE SAME TIME THE OVERVIEW OF TIMESTAMPS... 13

3 07 - Transcription Transcription Mode MAXQDA enables you to transcribe audio and video files in the Multimedia Browser (called "Media Player" in older MAXQDA versions). To get started with your first transcription in MAXQDA, you must first import the audio or video file by clicking "Document" in the "Import" tab. (How this works exactly and where MAXQDA stores the recordings, is explained in further detail here.) When importing a recording, an empty text document is created in the "Document System", to which the audio or video file is assigned and in which you can write the transcript. These text documents with their associated media file can be recognized by special symbols in the "Document System": Transcripts of audio files feature a musical "note" and transcripts of video files a video camera: Special symbols for audio and video files in the Turning on Transcription Mode Right click on the document and select the option Transcribe audio file or Transcribe video file. This allows you to switch on MAXQDA's "transcription mode", in which the windows you need for transcription are arranged optimally: The "Multimedia Browser" is displayed and placed at the top of the screen. The "Document browser" with the transcript is displayed directly below - where you can write your transcript. A dialog window is displayed to the left of the "Multimedia Browser" where you can adjust all your settings for the transcription. 1

4 Transcription Mode Start transcribing Now you can play the recording and start writing. To play and pause, Press F4 or F5, or press Ctrl (Windows) or Shift (Mac) twice in succession, then you don't have to move your fingers very far, or use the play and pause icon in the "Multimedia Browser". To quickly navigate to a certain spot in your audio file, use the slide control in the "Multimedia Browser" window or use the keyboard combination F11 and +F11 to rewind or forward 5 seconds. Tip: How to use the function keys for transcription on a Mac is described in our Frequently Asked Questions. The transcript and the recording are linked to each other using time stamps. For detailed information on using time stamps, see this section. The transcription text is stored automatically in the project file every 5 minutes. You can change this time interval in the Transcription settings. To access the settings, click the gear icon at the top right of your MAXQDA window. 2

5 Adjust rewind interval, volume and playback speed A rewind interval of 2 seconds is set by default so you continue your flow when you resume playback. You can adjust this interval at any time, to a time between 0 and 10 seconds, in the transcription settings. Adjust rewind interval Tip: You can close the Transcription Settings window if you don't need it. You can open it at any time by clicking on the Transcription Settings icon on the left side of the "Multimedia Browser". Open Transcription Settings and the control panel To adjust the volume and playback speed, click the Control Panel icon in the Multimedia Browser. The following dialog window will appear, which allows you to adjust the volume and speed of playback. 3

6 Adjust the volume and speed of playback in the Control Panel Coding while transcribing You can code the typed text with new or existing codes during transcription. To do this, highlight a text segment, for example, and drag it to a code in the "Code System". The whole functionality of the "Multimedia Browser" is also available. This makes it possible to highlight and code sections and to set memos and document links. For detailed explanations on how to use the "Multimedia Browser", please refer to the section for coding videos. Start and stop transcribing You can start and stop Transcription Mode at any time - just close the Multimedia Browser. To resume working on a transcript, right click on the document and select Transcribe audio file or Transcribe video file. Transcribing with a foot pedal For faster and easier transcription, MAXQDA supports the foot pedals Science and Science II from Audiotranskription: 4

7 The yellow Science switch has the same functionality as the F4 or F5 key (depending on the software setting inside the foot pedal): press once to play, and a second time to stop. The black Science II switch must be held down to play media data and will stop playing when released. Automatic Speaker Change and Autotext You can simplify your transcription work with the help of two functions: In an interview with 2 participants, speakers' contributions can be labelled automatically as such at the beginning of a paragraph and individual letters can be replaced by any text. Automatic Speaker Change When transcribing a recording with two speakers, you can switch on the automatic speaker change in the transcription settings. As a result, each new paragraph begins automatically with a freely definable name, pseudonym or abbreviation. Follow these steps: 1. Select the option Automatic speaker change in the "Transcription Settings" dialog window. 2. Enter names for each speaker. It's a good idea to add a space on the end too. 3. Select the Bold option if you want to want to pu the emphasis on one name. 5

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9 Transcription Settings If you can't see the transcription settings, you can open it by clicking the Transcription Settings icon on the left side of the "Multimedia-Browser". If the names of the two speakers are marked "I:" and "B:", the next name will be entered automatically for each paragraph change in the transcript and save you a lot of typing. Automatically entered I: and B: Autotext In the "Transcription Settings" you can also define abbreviations, which are automatically replaced by text when two spaces are entered. This is particularly useful when you transcribe a group discussion with several speakers, because then the names of the participants can be filled with shortcuts and you can save yourself a lot of typing. Likewise, you can also use frequently recurring and difficult to type transcription elements with brackets, e.g. "(Incomprehensible)" or "(2)" for 2 seconds as autotexts. The autotexts shown in the following picture are defined for all new MAXQDA projects by default. The abbreviations can be up to one letter long. 7

10 Autotexts make transcribing easier You use the "Bold" setting to control whether the text is inserted in bold script. The autotext is stored in your project so that you can also use different computers with MAXQDA installed for transcription without having to reenter your required autotexts. A total of 15 autotexts can be stored. The entire autotext function can be switched off by deactivating this option in the "Transcription settings". Timestamps to Link Transcripts with Sound With timestamps you can link your transcript to the original recording so that you can always access the original sound and listen back to difficult to understand sections. By default, MAXQDA automatically enters a timestamp at each end of a transcribed paragraph, which is usually at the end of a speaker's contribution. The timestamps appear in a separate column in the "Document Browser". 8

11 Timestamps in the document browser Clicking on a timestamp (or the range between two timestamps) opens the associated media file and starts playback at the stored position. Playback automatically ends at the next timestamp. Automatic timestamp addition can be adjusted in the "Transcription settings" window. If the window sis hidden, you can open it by clicking on the Transcription settings icon on the left side of the "Multimedia Browser". Note: You can hide the display of the timestamps in the transciption text documents by right clicking the text and de-selecting Display Timestamp Column. Add timestamps manually You can also manually insert timelines into a transcript, such as to mark a difficult to understand section: To do this, click on the New timestamp icon in the "Document browser, or press F6. Add timestamps in current position MAXQDA then inserts a timestamp where your cursor is in the text and visualizes it in the time stamp column at the left margin. You can also create multiple timestamps in 9

12 a row, but only one timestamp is displayed in the timestamp column. Timestamps can't be inserted at will, however, MAXQDA instead checks whether the chronology of timestamps is retained by inserting a time stamp. If, for example, the current playback position of an audio file is at 3 minutes, but a timestamp already exists at 4 minutes, no further time mark can be added. Note: New timestamps can be inserted in the Edit mode as well as in the transcription mode. Delete timestamps To delete an unnecessary timestamp, click on it with the mouse button and select Delete timestamp in the context menu. There is also a "Overview of Timestamps", which lists all timestamps of the currently opened transcript. You can open the overview by clicking on the icon with the same name at the top of the "Document Browser". In the overview, you can delete timestamps by marking one or more rows and clicking the delete icon. The Overview of Timestamps lists all the timestamps in a transcript Insert Timestamps into existing Transcript MAXQDA lets insert timestamps into a transcript retroactively in order to link places in the text with the corresponding locations in the audio or video file. This can be helpful if you have already transcribed a recording with a different software - or have access to an existing transcript, for example from the Internet. 10

13 Let s say we want to have a synchronized connection link the text and the audio for the song I Want You by Bob Dylan. To save us the time of doing the transcription, we can get the text from Dylan s website. We can then either copy and paste it into a document in MAXQDA, or we could paste the text into an RTF or DOC/X file and import that file into MAXQDA. For this example, we ll name the document Dylan: I want you. Once the text is in MAXQDA, we need to create the link to the audio file. 1. Right-click on the document in the Document System and select Link audio/video file. 2. In the dialog window that appears, select the audio/video file you wish to assign to the document. This assignment can later be modified by selecting Properties in the context menu of the document. In the dialog window that appears, you can click on the three dots in the Media file row to reopen the file. The MAXQDA document with the Dylan text is now linked to the audio file, but the audio file wasn t actually imported as part of the MAXQDA project. You will now see that the symbol next to the Dylan: I want you document has changed. This is the symbol for a document linked to an audio file: Insert timestamps into a transcript Double-clicking on this document opens it in the Document Browser (see below). A new column has been inserted between the text and the paragraph numbers, which will show your timestamps. The document only has one timestamp at this point, representing the very beginning of the song, since we haven t added any yet. 11

14 Imported transcript with media file connection In order to play the song and to insert the timestamps, two things need to be done first: 1. Turn on Edit mode by clicking on the icon of the same name in the "Document Browser" at the top right. 2. Open the "Multimedia Browser" by clicking on the Open audio file icon, which can also be found in the "Document Browser" toolbar. Next, we would want to put the cursor at the beginning of the actual song text, right before The guilty undertaker and start playback of the song. We can do by pressing the F4 or F5 keys on the keyboard or by double-tapping the Ctrl (Windows) or (Mac) key. We would then let the song go until right before the singing begins and insert a timestamp by clicking on the New timestamp icon in the "Document Browser" or by pressing the F6 key. We want to do this same thing for the beginning of each verse. We would then see a timestamp symbol next to the first line of each verse. Timestamp in front of the verses We can now use the synchronized text and audio together. By clicking on any of the timestamps, we will hear the song played from that point. If you do this with an interview transcript, you can in a similar way get back to various sections that you may want to hear again for tone or emphasis. 12

15 If you turn on the Sync mode in the toolbar and click on the timestamp next to the first verse, the text follows the song, meaning the section of text being sung will be highlighted, similar to the way karaoke works. You can then follow along with the song text as you hear it. Listen and View Transcript and Sound at the same Time MAXQDA allows you to play an audio or video file at the same time as the transcript. You can view media files synchronized to their transcribed texts, like a teleprompter for a television presenter, or karaoke, in which you can read the text along to the sound playback. To start a synchronized playback, click on the Sync mode button in the Document Browser" toolbar. Open Sync mode in the Document Browser Begin by clicking the Play symbol or the F4 key. Sync mode works in both directions: If you change the playback position with the slider, the transcript jumps to the corresponding text point. This also works when you click anywhere in the media file, which in turn changes the playback position. The Overview of Timestamps The "Overview of Timestamps" lists all timestamps in the currently opened transcript. 13

16 To open the overview, click on the icon of the same name in the "Document Browser" toolbar. Open the Overview of Timestamps The Overview of Timestamps has as many rows as there are timestamps in the document, and every row has several columns. The first two columns contain the start and end points of that segment. In the third column, you have the option of writing in a short comment about that particular segment. The Duration column provides the length of the respective segment. The "Overview of Timestamps" These Overview of Timestamps table and the Comment column function just like any other MAXQDA table. It is possible to sort the comments or to search for a comment. Tip: To search for a comment, right-click on the Comment column header and select Search.` If you are importing a document with timestamps, you still have the option to add 14

17 new ones once it has been imported into MAXQDA. The option to write your comments in the list of timestamps also gives you a new way to find sections of your media file. You can use comments to organize and quickly access certain sections. Double-clicking on a row takes you to that section of the text in the Document Browser and starts playback of the media file from that point. Note: Each transcript to which a media file is assigned contains at least one timestamp at position 0, the beginning of the document. 15