Keyboard Shortcuts for Film Editors

One of our customers, a professor at a film school, suggested this tip:

For those of you used to using industry standard editting software like Final Cut and Avid, you can map “j”, “k”, and “l” with modifier keys to back/pause/forward.  Since you need the j/k/l keys for actually inputting text during transcription, you’ll need to use modifier keys (Ctrl, Command, etc.).

On the Mac you would use the “Command” and “Option” keys to set up something like this:

• Command-j => Play Backwards at Custom Rate 1.x
• Command-Option-j => Play Backwards at Custom Rate 2.0x
• Command-k => Pause
• Command-l => Play at Custom Rate 1.x
• Command-Option-l => Play at Custom Rate 2.0x

In Windows you would use the “Ctrl” and “Shift” keys to set up something like this:

• Ctrl-j => Play Backwards at Custom Rate 1.x
• Ctrl-Shift-j => Play Backwards at Custom Rate 2.0x
• Ctrl-k => Pause
• Ctrl-l => Play at Custom Rate 1.x
• Ctrl-Shift-l => Play at Custom Rate 2.0x

You can obviously tweak these to suit your workflow.

Note that by setting Command-l/Ctrl-l to “Play at Custom Rate 1.x” you can toggle back and forth between the fast speed and the slow speed.  If you set it to “Play” instead, hitting Command-l/Ctrl-l would only continue playing at the current play rate.  So if you’re already at 2.x, the play rate won’t change.

An alternative approach would be to set Command-Option-l/Ctrl-Shift-l to “Change Play Rate” by 1.x.  Then every time you hit Command-Option-l/Ctrl-Shift-l the play rate would increase to 2.x, 3.x, etc..  And you can hit Command-l/Ctrl-l to get back to the 1.x rate.  This would more emulate the behavior of FCP.

For instructions on how to set up shortcuts: http://www.inqscribe.com/docs/keyboardshortcuts.html

Comments are turned off in this blog, but head on over to our Facebook page for to leave comments: http://www.facebook.com/InqScribe

charity: water

We’re proud to be sponsors of charity: water.  InqScribe’s ability to support transcriptions and subtitles in multiple languages make it ideally suited for work in the field, especially for organizations such as charity: water that rely on story telling.  Here’s how they describe their work:

—

Photo by charity: water

In 2006, we followed women in Ethiopia to a tepid water hole, where they filtered muddy liquid through their headscarves into a Jerry can. They hauled more than 40 pounds of this water on their backs to take home to their families. This is the only drinking water they had and they had to make it work for cleaning their homes, cooking, and unfortunately- drinking.

We filmed this. We shared their stories to show what millions of people in developing countries do each and every day. The response was overwhelming.

Fast forward five years and we’ve funded more than 4,200 water projects around the world to serve over two million people with clean water. Why? Because we’ve stuck to telling honest and beautiful stories from people living through the water crisis. As a result, thousands have joined our mission by donating or fundraising alongside us.

Each story we tell empowers giving as we return and share it with those willing to help… but we currently do all of our post-production work with very little equipment. Since we’re shooting in places that require a great deal of translation and subtitles, we also need to do a lot of transcribing.

InqScribe’s software allows us to quickly transcribe in one program — instead of having to toggle back and forth between a video and an excel spreadsheet. Not only that, the shortcut controls allow us to customize each document, thereby streamlining our editing process. Speeding up our post production only makes us more efficient in sharing stories that need to be heard.

Thank you for your time and all you do to improve video storytelling.

Guest Blog: “This is definitely the fastest transcription we’ve ever done.”

InqScribe & OSX Lion: It works!

We have done some testing of InqScribe in Apple’s newly released OS 10.7 “Lion,” and we’re continuing to do more. The good news is that everything seems to work fine in Lion, with one easy-to-address caveat. Here is our partial report:

InqScribe launches in Lion and will perform the basics — video playback, time code insertion, even foot pedal controls all work fine. Transcript windows scroll nicely with Lion’s new multitouch and scrollbar. InqScribe also works with Lion’s “saved state” feature, meaning that the windows you were working on during your last session will automatically open next time you launch it.

InqScribe does not yet work with Lion’s “versions” and “autosave” features; we’re working on that.

There is one important caveat: Lion (and Snow Leopard) users still need QuickTime 7.6.6.

Though it is not required, we recommend that all InqScribe users install QuickTime 7, since it supports many features that are not supported by the more recent QuickTime X (in Mac OS 10.6 and higher) and Windows Media Player (in Windows). QuickTime is available as a free download from Apple.

There are several versions of QuickTime 7 available, depending on your OS version.

• If you have Mac OSX 10.6 or 10.7 (Snow Leopard or Lion), download QuickTime 7.6.6
• If you have Mac OSX 10.5 (Leopard), download QuickTime 7.6.9
• If you use Windows, you can continue to download the latest Windows version of QuickTime

Notes:

• Depending on how you open your movie files, they may launch by default in QuickTime X. So if you’re doing things like subtitling, make sure to open your subtitled movies in QuickTime 7.6.6.
• In Lion, QuickTime 7 installs to your Applications > Utilities folder rather than the “Applications” folder.

A simple fix to a common error: Resolving the Windows “MediaProxy” bug

There was a known bug in InqScribe version 2.0.5 (and earlier) that caused problems with Windows Media Player. The crash report mentions things like “WMP_Provider” and “MediaProxy”.

This has been fixed in InqScribe version 2.1. Simply upgrade to the latest version of InqScribe and your problem will be solved. The upgrade is free; you can download it here: http://www.inqscribe.com/download.html

You can read more about this issue in our knowledge base.

Taking and Sharing Notes on Video

InqScribe’s free-form text editing is intended to support a wide variety of tasks. So while we often talk of “transcribing” video, in practice oftentimes it’s more efficient to simply take notes. I was reminded of this in recent conversation with one of our customers at a cable tv network: sometimes all you want to do is review a clip and call out highlights from the video that you might want to use.

This is particularly useful in team environments: you can watch a video, insert a timecode and quick note about interesting moments, and then share the InqScribe document with your editor or director. The editor/director can click on the timecode to view the segment of video.

For example, we need to edit our introductory screencast. I review the video and I write the following in an InqScribe transcript to tell Matt (who’s editing the video):

Cut [00:00:06.00] through [00:00:14.23] -- we can jump straight into the intro.
The audio at [00:00:27.00] is unclear.  Can you re-record that?
End the clip at [00:01:06.03].

Matt already has the video on his computer, so I can just email the InqScribe file to him. He’ll copy it to the folder where the video is, open the InqScribe file, and the transcript will automatically link itself to the media again. (Alternatively, you can reference a common file on a network somewhere). He can then click on the timecodes I’ve inserted to see exactly what I”m talking about.

The “transcript” is only few lines, but it conveys everything he needs to know. And obviously, there’s no need for a line by line transcript. A few timecoded notes suffice.

Guest Blog: Using InqScribe with Final Cut Pro and multiple languages

InqScribe’s ability to export transcripts to Final Cut Pro has made it particularly useful for documentary filmmakers working in multiple languages.  In this latest guest blog, part of our ongoing series highlighting how folks use InqScribe, Carlos Sandoval, an award-winning filmmaker, talks about how they’re using it with their latest project.

Got an interesting story about how you’re using InqScribe? Please contact us at info@inquirium.net if you’d like to highlight your work.

The Arizona Project

We are currently working on a feature documentary tentatively titled THE ARIZONA PROJECT. The film takes on Arizona’s current struggle with illegal immigration and presents it from all sides of the issue: from the perspective of the recent immigrants, to that of native Arizonans who are seeing their communities change. Because we are dealing with material in both English and Spanish, InqScribe has been invaluable for our editorial and post production tasks.

InqScribe allows us to quickly and easily access our footage and to create time code specific documents that will reference said footage. This allows us to best isolate the material that will shape our story. We can create transcriptions of our interviews in English, and translations of those in Spanish. Even more importantly, we can create subtitles in InqScribe that quickly and easily get imported into Final Cut Pro saving us (literally) hours and hours of time. This versatility is instrumental for a project like ours.

Thank you for making such a great product and for helping to bridge the gap between Spanish and English speakers. I wish we’d have had InqScribe when we were working on our award-winning film, Farmingville.

Carlos Sandoval

Camino Bluff Productions, Inc.
752 West End Ave., 2F | New York, NY 10025
p. 212 666 3266 | f. 212 864 4313
mail@caminobluff.com | www.CaminoBluff.com

Second language learning using films

A part of our occasional series highlighting interesting uses of InqScribe

In addition to transcriptionists and documentary filmmakers, researchers make up a large portion of InqScribe users.  Although, in this case, we hit two of our favorite topics simultaneously: research and education.

Alex Gilmore, a professor at the University of Tokyo, just published a book chapter on using InqScribe to produce film-based teaching resources based for second language learning.

Why film?  Think about it, wouldn’t you rather learn a language by watching a film than reading boring text or hokey audio tapes? Films are a naturally motivating platform for teaching language. They’re also useful because they have contextual and discourse features like colloquial language, politeness strategies, and vague language that make them valuable for developing listening skills. They represent a much more authentic use of language.

Why not just use the subtitles present in many DVDs? Subtitles are actually often condensed versions of what is actually said. In language learning, it’s important to have the full text. So you have to take the time to produce quality learning materials.

In the chapter, Professor Gilmore details a procedure in which he uses InqScribe to produce teaching materials for an episode of Fawlty Towers, a British comedy television series. This includes subtitles as well as classroom materials. He covers ripping from DVD all the way to producing subtitles, so it’s a pretty thorough tutorial.

He’s generously provided a PDF of the chapter. You can download the paper here.

—

Gilmore, A. (2009). Catching words: Exploiting film discourse in the foreign language classroom. In F. Mishan & A. Chambers (eds.), Perspectives on Language Learning Materials Development. Oxford: Peter Lang AG.

Tip: USB shortcut/footpedal crashing workarounds

If you’re using a corded Microsoft Digital Media keyboard or some multimedia keyboards from other manufacturers (we know of one case from Acer), you might be experiencing odd crashes when you try to run the “Set Up Foot Pedal” wizard or define shortcuts triggers.

(This tip is also helpful for others who might be experiencing crashes while setting up a foot pedal or defining shortcuts.)

We’re working on a fix for this, but in the meantime here’s what you can do:

1. Plug in only the minimal USB devices you need to set up the footpedal: e.g. a mouse and the foot pedal.
2. Unplug your digital media keyboard, and all unnecessary USB devices.
3. Start InqScribe.
4. Run the Set Up Foot Pedal wizard (or define your shortcut triggers).
5. Quit InqScribe.
6. Plug in your digital media keyboard (and other devices).
7. Start InqScribe again.

As always, we welcome your feedback and bug reports. We will do our best to work with you to resolve them.

Guest Blog: Using InqScribe on a documentary on Native American health

We just love it when InqScribe is put to use for a worthy cause. As part of our ongoing series that highlights how our folks are using the tool, we’ve invited Kitty Farmer of Watersong Productions to tell us about her advocacy work for Native Americans, and how InqScribe helped streamline her workflow.

Got an interesting story about how you’re using InqScribe? Please contact us at info@inquirum.net if you’d like to highlight your work.

What’s In The Heart

By Kitty Farmer, Watersong Productions, LLC

I am an advocate/activist who is new to filmmaking. My first experience with transcribing was starting and stopping the DVD player on my computer! As anyone can imagine, this was laborious, tedious and took forever. Last summer, a colleague recommended Inquirum’s amazing software. After spending time with the product, I can say in all honesty, I love to transcribe! It’s truly a remarkable product. My director, Dustinn Craig, White Mountain Apache, who has had several films broadcast on PBS, was thrilled to learn about it when we spent time together filming this last weekend.

Photo credit: Alejandro Lopez

We use InqScribe to log our video footage, especially to transcribe interviews. The director uses these transcripts to make edit decisions. During editting, we use the time codes embedded in the transcripts to be able to quickly jump to clips we want to review.

Leonard Little Finger, Photo © Deanne Fitzmaurice

We are producing a 20-minute trailer to Native American Public Telecommunications (NAPT) for a grant to create a documentary film to educate the general public and policy makers about the history and reasons why American Indians, despite treaties with the U.S. government that mandate basic social services, have the worst health disparities of any population in the nation. In addition, we highlight some remarkable people who through their resiliency and ingenuity have created programs and initiatives that are healing their communities. The film is sponsored by the Great Plains Tribal Chairmen’s Health Board (formerly the Aberdeen Area Tribal Chairmen’s Health Board).

Help see the film finished: contribute on Indie Go Go

Film Web Site: What’s in the Heart

What’s in the Heart from Kitty Farmer on Vimeo.

–

Kitty Farmer