Help my Mum! Please.

August 21, 2008 6:26 PM

Help my mum! Mum needs help transbribing lectures on PC. Are there any tricks or tips or nifty prggrams that can help her type, while being able to pause and rewind audio at the same time?

My mum has a job transcribing her sister's lectures for her.

She runs windows vista (depsite my protests) and is currently listening to the audio in windows media player, and typing it up in word, and she has to constantly flick back and forth between the two. Is there any all in one program that has audio controls as well as some sort of text input thing...am I dreaming??

Or should my mum just learn to resize her windows so that they are both on the screen at the same time...or listen to the lectures on a ipod or whatever?

What are your tips

posted by robotot to computers & internet (10 comments total)

You can buy PC transcription foot pedals to let you control the playback while you're typing — I don't know if most of these come with software, or work with Windows Media Player, or are programmable to emulate key and mouse events, or what.
posted by enn at 6:46 PM on August 21, 2008

Winamp can be configured to recognize hotkeys to pause and continue playback. For transcription I've used Winamp with a plugin that lets you slow down the rate of the speaking - It was a year or two ago but iirc it was the PaceMaker plugin.

The advantage of using Winamp is low cost, but a foot pedal system like robotat describes is easier (I tried one one time.)
posted by anadem at 6:56 PM on August 21, 2008

This came up on a search

Stenographer is a hybrid of a tuned audio player and a text editor that is used to type the text of seminars, interviews, lectures, etc. recorded on a dictating machine or using a microphone. The program is designed to make playing, searching for the needed fragment and other operations specific for typing text from an audio record as easy as possible and partially to automate them.

Don't know anything about how good it is but it looks like it might work for her.
posted by bowmaniac at 7:18 PM on August 21, 2008

There are several programs. ExpressScribe is a free program that I like for audio files - it has a decent set of basic features like you're looking for - pause, rewind, slow or speed up the playback, etc., and you can type right in the text window. It takes a little while to get used to the keystrokes to change the controls, but I suspect that's going to be true of any program.

If she just needs basic features, that's what I'd suggest. And I believe you can use it with a footpedal as well, though I haven't.

If she wants to get fancier, some other programs I've played with are Transana (waaay complicated unless you need some pretty advanced analysis features) and Inqscribe (worth looking at if she has video files - kind of like ExpressScribe but for videos). Both are fine for basic work; I believe Inqscribe is a pay program, though.
posted by Stacey at 7:19 PM on August 21, 2008

Thanks Stacey,
expressscribe looks good, and the price is right.
posted by robotot at 7:26 PM on August 21, 2008

Not the OP, but I've been looking for software to help me transcribe videos, and Inqscribe looks great! Thanks, Stacey.
posted by Bella Sebastian at 7:56 PM on August 21, 2008

I've worked as a transcriptionist in the past and I would second Express Scribe. It's worth getting the foot pedal if she'll be doing a lot of work, it usually runs about $100 for it though and plugs into your USB port. You can map the play and rewind keys to something more handy like F2 and F4. I would make sure that your mom is using an ergonomic keyboard though... typing a lot on a poor keyboard can lead to pain in the wrists.
posted by perpetualstroll at 8:55 PM on August 21, 2008

A footpedal is absolutely essential if you want to make any kind of speed while transcribing audio recordings. Do not scrimp in this department.

The people who give away ExpressScribe also sell quality transcription footpedals. I've bought a few from them. Highly recommended.
posted by fourcheesemac at 5:22 AM on August 22, 2008

Another vote for a foot pedal. Back in the olden days, I transcribed a lot of lectures from tapes. A foot switch sped the process enormously.
posted by neuron at 8:46 AM on August 22, 2008

I really like Transcriber. It's free.
posted by bubukaba at 11:14 AM on August 22, 2008