This article describes the steps to manually transcribe audio into timed text.

1. How to enter the Transcriber application

Find the Go to transcript action on a clip thumbnail and click it.

When you open the Transcript for a clip which has not been transcribed, you’ll see a window similar to the one below:

If you click the third option as seen in the screenshot above, a blank transcript appears:

At the top left corner, you see the VIEW | EDIT toggle. The ‘EDIT’ option should automatically be selected. Some extra buttons appear in the player controls at the bottom of the screen.

To write the transcript, we will “record” time ranges and provide text for them.

Let’s explain that a bit more. Play your video with the basic player controls. When you hear something you want to transcribe, press the SET IN button. The player starts playing and the following dialog pops up:

After a few spoken words, press the SET OUT button. Type the words you heard, and press confirm. That’s it! You just added your first words to the transcript, and they all have timecodes linked to them. The start of the first word corresponds to the IN timecode of the dialog, the end of the last word corresponds to the OUT of the dialog, and all words in between get interpolated between those.

Now click the SET IN button again to start recording a new time range (which starts at the OUT of the last added range) and repeat the same process. While the dialog is open, you can tweak the timecodes by typing a new timecode, or by moving the playhead and pressing SET IN (to change the IN timecode) and SET OUT (to change the OUT timecode).

To get the most out of the transcriber, use it via its shortcuts F9 (or fn+F9 on a Mac) to SET IN, F10 (fn+F10 on a Mac) to SET OUT and Enter to confirm the dialog. No mouse needed!

We strongly advise using the shortcuts to control the player and setting IN and OUT points. We use the F1, F2, … keys on your keyboard. So pressing the F9 key on your keyboard will have the same effect as clicking the SET IN button on the screen. Using these shortcuts will maximise your transcription speed.

If you are using a mac (and on some other devices), the shortcut is fn+F1, fn+F2, … So you have to press and hold the fn key while pressing the F1 key (and similar for F2, F3, …). As this is a bit clunky, you might consider configuring your Mac to use F1, F2 etc. as standard function keys as explained here.

If you want to use the transcript to mark interesting parts and create quotes, click the VIEW button. Also make sure that the subclips sidebar is visible by clicking the subclips button in the top right corner:

The interface now contains a player at the left, the subclips sidebar at the right and the transcript in the middle.

Note: The player controls and the subclips sidebar are explained in detail here. This article is about using the transcript text to create subclips.

Creating a new subclip using the transcript is as easy as marking the text in the transcript, and then clicking the ‘add subclip’ button.

The timing is filled in automatically, and the quote is included. You can add a description with tags and mentions as usual.

At the top right corner of the application, you’ll find the help buttons and some toggles to show or hide panes in the application.

Go ahead and try clicking some of the buttons. Click the button again to revert the action. For example, you can hide the video if you have a small screen or if you just prefer it that way.

The help button on the far right will show a menu with a ‘talk to us’ option. Click it to get in touch! We like to help you out if you get stuck for some reason, and we like to hear your experiences with the application!

Download the cheat sheet, print it, and hang it on your wall! Download Transcriber Editor Cheat Sheet