I wasn't sure which catagory to use for this question, but figured it was at least a GEAR thing.........
With the barrage of videos now available, what tools and techniques are there for transcribing from video? Is there such a thing as Transcribe! or the Amazing Slow Downer for video? The average video players I've worked with so far are awful for transcribing.
Craig
Comments
Yeah, I am doing both. Once into an audio file, Transcribe! works great as always. For slowing down the video, I use Roxio player and this gives me a variety of slow speeds, but the interface is clumsy for repeated starts, stops, backup and repeat. I wish I could set a start point and play speed and then toggle back to restart a phrase. As it is, I have to set it manually each time. And, of course, when in slow mode, there is no audio. Is there a better video program out if one's purpose was transcription?
What would be great would be a program like Transcibe! for video. I pinged Andy at Seventh String, maker of Transcribe! and he said he has been thinking about it, but that's all.
Craig
Best,
Jack.
Interesting.... What version do you have? I have version 9 and though it has the ability to slow down the video, when I do, the audio drops out.
Craig
I might have just figured it out...it says the video codec is v9, and the audio is v9.1
Best,
Jack.
Registered users get upgrade free. seventhstring.com
Craig
it does seem that if you have an exact certain kind of video, it will probably let you play back a video slowly.
i have a core2duo quad with 4g of ram running at 2.7ghz and it was experiencing lots of problems with cpu power with a small 200gb video.
That reads like a possible CODEC problem. If you are working with AVI files, you may need to download and install the latest DIVX video codecs. Not all AVIs are created equal.
http://forum.videohelp.com/topic342793.html
Also, I found the explanation of DVD video file structure at the site below helpful in understand WHAT files you want to convert.
http://club.cdfreaks.com/f72/tutorial-d ... ure-77646/
The conversion process is slow. A 1-1/2 hour DVD takes me a couple hours to convert (4 year old Dell 2.2GHz, 2GB ram, XP Pro). The resulting .mp4 file is still pretty big (5-800 MB depending on video quality) and takes about a minute to load into Transcribe. Once loaded, though, it works quickly and smoothly. The video screen has an adjustment that helps to sync the sound and video. Once done, it seems to hold through various slow down settings and cycles. As with previous versions of Transcribe, it is best to reduce the number of other windows running, especially internet browsers and email clients which are processing frequently, to make for smooth playback. I notice having lots of memory helps.
The Google Videos website has a Download button that allows you to save the video in an mp4 format. Youtube does not and seems to be actively working at "breaking" third party utilities that endeavor to download from Youtube. Unfortunately, the large majority of GJ vids are on Youtube. If anyone has a method for saving Youtube files as .mp4, PLEASE let me know.
Oh, and you have to have Quicktime installed. Transcribe uses it for the video window. Quicktime is free from Apple on apple.com. If you use iTunes, you probably already have it as they are bundled together.
I've tried 7.5 on a dozen .mp4 video files so far. So far, I think it's pretty slick. It is funny to hear people talk at 50% slowdown though, they sound really drunk.
Craig