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

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.

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

Guest Blog: How documentary filmmakers transcribe and subtitle with InqScribe

InqScribe has many different kinds of users. But the majority of our users can be categorized into three groups: university researchers, professional transcriptionists, and documentary filmmakers.

To highlight how our folks are using the tool, we would like to do an occasional feature where we invite our users to be guest bloggers.

Here’s our first guest blog from a pair of award-winning documentary filmmakers. We were particularly interested in how they might be using InqScribe as part of their translation and transcription workflow, so we asked them to elaborate:

—

DigAllMedia

By Dianne Griffin and Erica Jordan

Digall Media, a 501(c)(3) organization founded by Erica Jordan and Dianne Griffin is currently in production on their one-hour documentary Painted Nails – a Vietnamese immigrant story of exotic nail art, pampered clients, and the serious health risks that lurk beneath the brightly painted surface.

We’re excited about using Inquirium’s product InqScribe to transcribe dialogue and create English subtitles for our Vietnamese and Spanish speaking characters. We’re still fine-tuning the workflow of importing subtitles, generated with InqScribe, into Final Cut Pro. It took some time to figure out the importing and exporting specs, but it was worth trouble-shooting. We can now transcribe dialogue in InqScribe with timecode, export it as an XML file using a custom FCP XML template. When the XML file is imported into Final Cut, the subtitles (as text elements) magically appear on a new timeline. InqScribe’s support page offers to look at your files to help trouble-shoot subtitling issues. InqScribe works great with a foot pedal, saving valuable post-production time.

Filmmaking is hard enough; it’s great to find a product such as InqScribe to make it easier.

Please contact us at info@inquirum.net if you’re interested in highlighting your work.