CasualTranscriber is a utility program to assist transcription of audio/video text.  It can handle most of the file types QuickTime can handle.

This program hasn't been fully tested.  If you use this and find any bugs/weirdness, please let me know.



System Requirement: Any Mac with Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8 or later

The current version of CasualTranscriber is 0.9.6.


I decided to release a preview (alpha) of the new version.

System Requirement: 64-bit Mac (Core 2 Duo or later) with Mac OS X 10.7 Lion or later and you need to have QuickTime Player 7 installed to add and view subtitles.

Last updated: 2012/5/04

This alpha version may be unstable and does not have all the features of the current version.  No documentation is ready, but basic functions are similar to the current version.  Any feedback is welcome.  Please send email to the account listed on the Contact Me! page (see the left column) or post a comment on the blog.


This page shows you the basic functions of CasualTranscriber.  For more advanced features and Preferences settings, check these pages.

• Advanced Features (editing a clip, adding chapters, etc.)
  
• Experimental Feature (adding subtitles)
  
• Preferences

How to start

1. When you start CasualTranscriber, a welcome window opens.  You can create a new file or open an existing file.  This window only shows up when you start CasualTranscriber, but you can access these from Menu -> Files.
   
   The default file format of a new file is Rich Text Format (.rtf).  You can change this in Preferences.  Supported file format is RIch Text Format (.rtf), MS Word (.doc), and Plain Text (.txt).  RTF and MSWord format only supports text data.
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. To open a movie/sound file (or associate it to a document), go to Menu -> File -> Open Movie (Command  + Shift + O).  The selected file appears in the Movie View on the upper left.
   
   
   
   
   
3. You can also open a movie/sound file on the web by select Open URL as long as you know the path and it is publicly accessible.
   
   
4. When you open a file, the path to the file will be inserted at the beginning of the editor. 
   
   
   
   
   When CasualTranscriber opens the file with the path at the beginning, it automatically opens the associated movie/sound file.  If you want to attach a different movie/sound file, simply delete the entire line.
   
   
5. If the original file has chapters, CasualTranscriber asks you if you want to import them.
   
   
   
   
   If you click Yes, chapters will be imported to the editor.
   
   
   
   
   
   
6. If you have any Rich Text/MS Word/Plain Text file you already started transcription with or from other project, you can open it from Menu -> File -> Open File (Command + O).
   You can open up to 10 recent files from Open Recent.
   
   
   
    
   
7. You can control the movie/audio just like you use QuickTime Player.
   
   
8. Or you can use CasualTranscriber controller buttons (see below).
   
   
9. Transcribe text and save it from Menu -> File -> Save Text (Command + S).  If you want to save the file as a different file, choose Save As... (Command + Shift + S).
   
   
   
   
   When you save the transcript (Save or Save As...), you can select a file format (Rich Text, MS Word, or Plain Text).
   
   
   
   
   If you choose Plain Text, you can select encodings.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
10. You can always start a new document from Menu -> File -> New (Command + N).
    
    
    
    
    
11. Now you can start transcribing the movie/sound clip!
    
    

You can use the controller of the QuickTime player on the window, slightly larger buttons are also available.  The timer is an approximation as there is no direct way to get the time from the clip to display.  There is up to 0.1 second error.

If the text is selected and then click Time Stamp while a section is selected, the time stamps will be inserted before and after the selected text.

Select

If you select a time stamp on the editor and click Select button, you can easily move to the selected time point on the movie/sound.


If two time stamps are selected and click Select button, the section between two time stamps will be selected.

Duration is the length of the clip.

Time Scale

This sets the smallest time segment (600 is 1/600 of a second).  600 is default simply because it can be divided by common frame rates (24/30).  If you want to change the appearance of time stamps, you might want to change this.  But if you make this too small, time stamps will be less accurate (if you use Insert).  If you know your movie clip is encoded at a specific time frame, you might want to use it.

Editor

Editor part is very simple and similar to what you can find in any Cocoa-based text editors such as TextEdit.

Format

You can also set some attributes from Menu.



You can also use Context Menu.

Find Panel

You can use a OS X standard Find Panel by Menu -> Edit -> Find -> Find (Command + F).


A familiar Find Panel appears and you can use the same functions you are used to (if you use Apple applications).

Create Hyper Link

If you ever want to add a hyper link to your transcription, you can do it by Menu -> Format -> Create Hyper Link.  If you select text before doing this, the link will be added to the text.  If not, a link with the URL will be inserted.