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

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

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.

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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.