mechanical chore of transcribing audio
One of my research projects this semester is an oral history of the TV-Smash events that took place at the late, great Austin coffeeshop Mojo’s Daily Grind. With oral history, comes the work of transcribing interviews. In the past, I’ve recorded interviews on cassette tape and typed them into Microsoft Word. This makes for pretty tedious work, starting and stopping the player, while I scramble to type. It took me three to four times as long as the recording to transcribe with this method. This semester, I learned of a device called a “transcription machine” that allows you to operate the cassette deck with a foot pedal, but I took a different approach. I recorded the interviews using the voice recorder on my digital point-and-shoot (mostly because I didn’t want to check out a tape recorder from school), transfered the audio files to my computer, and typed them up with the transcription application Transcriva.
Good gravy, Transcriva is awesome. I can’t say that it makes transcription fun, but it streamlines the process substantially. It allows you to play back an audio file and type your transcriptions in the same window. Keyboard shortcuts allow you to stop and start the audio track while typing. (You can also rewind and fast-forward through shortcuts.) It links your text with points in the recording, so you can find your place in the audio by referencing the text. And you can set it to “backtrack on pause,” so it autmatically rewinds a second or three each time you restart the audio. It took me a while to get a hang of some of the keyboard shortcuts, but I’m certain I picked it up faster than I would learn to use the transcription machine. The full-featured version costs $19.99, but the trial version has all of the features I need. If you do oral history or ethnographic work, I highly recommend this little OS X application.
Update: It turns out I do need the full-featured version of Transcriva after all. It disables the audio playback functions after 20 minutes (of audio, not use). Unless you’re transcribing very short segments, you’ll probably want to pay the $19.99, which is pretty inexpensive for such a useful package.
