Using InqScribe With Dropbox to Share Media With Others

InqScribe users often work collaboratively.  Since InqScribe transcripts are very small files, it’s easy to share them with colleagues — say, as an email attachment.

But media files are usually huge, and unless you have access to a shared server, sharing the media files that go with your transcript can be difficult.

Enter InqScribe’s Media URL feature. This feature allows InqScribe to play an InqScribe-compatible media file hosted on a website using a publicly sharable URL.

Here’s one example of how to do this using the popular Dropbox service:

1. Sign up for a free Dropbox account
2. Drop an InqScribe-compatible video in a Dropbox Public folder. (Generally, anything that plays in QuickTime or Windows Media Player will play in InqScribe.)
3. Locate your media file in the Dropbox Public folder (bear in mind it must be the public folder in order for InqScribe to locate it), and right click the icon. In the contextual menu, select the Dropbox: Copy Public URL option.
   
4. Launch InqScribe
5. Click the “Select Media Source…” button above the video pane, then choose “Source Type: Media-based URL.”
6. Paste the public Dropbox URL from your clipboard. Click ok and the video should load.

Now, when you email your InqScribe transcript to a colleague, the URL will go with it. When they open the transcript, InqScribe will automatically find and load the media file via that URL.

Eventually we hope to support sharing of private media files via Dropbox or services just like it. Since InqScribe can load media via a URL, any file hosting service that supports a discrete URL for the media file should work. (Unfortunately, this rules out YouTube video which sits inside of a Flash player. InqScribe doesn’t support Flash video.)

Got other ideas for sharing video? Need additional features? Let us know via our customer feedback pages.

You can find other tips like this one on our support site.