InqScribe News Archives

Studio Monthly: Great Gadgets

How cool is it to get a mention in Studio Monthly’s Great Gadgets rundown? Thanks guys!

By the way, if you do happen to have some year-end cash, you should know that when we release InqScribe 2.0, it’ll be a free upgrade for owners of InqScribe 1.x. Don’t delay; the store’s open 24/7…

posted December 12, 2006
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InqScribe and Wacom Tablets

We’ve tracked down a bug that affects users on Mac OS X with Wacom tablets.

The bug occurs when the tablet is connected and you click the “Define Trigger” button in the Edit Shortcuts dialog. With recent versions of Wacom’s driver software, this can cause a “NilObjectException” crash.

We’re fixing this for the next release. In the meantime, you can avoid the crash by unplugging your tablet from the USB port before clicking the “Define Trigger” button. Once you’ve finished defining your shortcut trigger, you can plug the tablet back in.

Now’s as good a time as any to mention that we’ve opened up a new support area with revised FAQ and Known Issues pages. Have a look, and please suggest any topics that you think should covered there.

posted December 06, 2006
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InqScribe used in new documentary "Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers"

InqScribe was used in the production of Brave New Film’s new documentary “Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers,” currently creating quite a stir worldwide (Brave New Films is Robert Greenwald’s new production company. You might better know him as the director of “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price” and “Outfoxed” ) . You can find a screening here. In their production blog they describe how they work collaboratively on the film using InqScribe to review footage and make notes.

posted November 20, 2006
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DV Magazine

We’re thrilled that James Longely of DV Magazine recommended InqScribe in the article Iraq in Fragments. If you’ve come to our site from DV, welcome.

InqScribe was originally conceived as a tool for ethnographic researchers. Since its release, and particularly in the last few months, we’ve seen a lot of interest from the film-making community. We’re working on a new release right now that adds features that will streamline InqScribe’s use with tools like Final Cut Pro, whether you use InqScribe for notetaking, transcription, translation, or subtitle creation. We’ll be posting more information of the upcoming version in a few days.

posted November 07, 2006
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New InqScribe Discussion Forum

We’ve been using phpbb to run our discussion forum for InqScribe. Unfortunately, phpbb-run sites receive a ton of spam, and the ratio of spam to legitimate posts was extremely high. In addition, in order to try to slow down the spammers, we had to create a set of hoops that everyone who wanted to post a question or comment had to jump through: you had to complete a registration form, check your email for a “welcome” message that contained a URL, and click the URL… all just to ask a basic question about how InqScribe worked.

It’s no wonder we weren’t getting a lot of traffic on the forum. So, we’ve switched over to a new forum that should address both issues: it’ll have limited spam and you can post a question right away, without having to register at all.

We’ve left the old forum up as an archive: you can search its contents, but no new posts (or registrations) are allowed.

Stop by and drop us a note.

posted October 28, 2006
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Perian

If you’re a Mac OS X user, take a look at Perian. It’s a free QuickTime plugin that enables QuickTime to play back additional formats, including Divx, XviD, FLV, MS-MPEG4 v1, MS-MPEG4 v2, MS-MPEG4 v3, DivX 3.11 alpha, 3ivX, Sorenson H.263, Flash Screen Video, Truemotion VP6, and more.

Did I mention it’s free? This is a great way to extend QuickTime (and InqScribe) to play back additional content.

posted October 02, 2006
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QuickTime and Closed Captioning

Buried among the announcements for Leopard, the upcoming release of Mac OS X, is the news that the next version of QuickTime — probably either 7.5 or 8.0, depending how Apple decides to number it — will add support for analog closed captioned tracks (CEA-608).

If Apple’s smart, they will also add a simple mechanism for toggling text tracks on and off, much like the CC button on a remote control. Currently the user has to jump through hoops to change the visibility of text tracks, and it’s up to developers to provide custom fixes (like a button in a sprite track). A standard solution for this would be fantastic.

posted August 08, 2006
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InqScribe in the Amazon

We hear from InqScribe users on a regular basis, and the ways in which InqScribe is being used go far beyond our original expectations. Here’s one example.

Conrad Feather is an anthropologist “working with Amazonian indigenous peoples helping them to defend and protect their rainforests from illegal timber extraction and irresponsible oil and gas companies.” He wrote:

Much of the rights based work involves helping the communities affected monitor these impacts and communicate them to the Peruvian government and the press so that their lands and rights will be respected. As part of this work myself and my colleagues (we have formed a small organisation called Shinai, www.shinai.org.pe) take many testimonies with both video and audio equipment. Much of our work involves transcription as many of these peoples, especially the elders, only speak their own language and do not speak in Spanish, the national language of Peru. For some time we have been looking for a transcription software that enables us to do this effectively and most importantly is simple enough for indigenous peoples themselves to use in order to transcribe themselves. We came across InqScribe a few weeks ago and since then I have been trying it out in Lima with a young indigenous man from a remote community in the Southern Peruvian Amazon. It was his first time using a computer but within an hour he was using InqScribe with ease and facility and transcribing the words of his elders.

We weren’t surprised to find that Conrad was using InqScribe in his own antropological research. But the notion that Julio, a Nahua, was using InqScribe to capture his own elders’ oral histories was pretty exciting. We asked Conrad to tell us more about Julio.

Julio is 24 years old and lives in the village of Serjali, in one of the remotest corners of the Peruvian Amazon. In June 2006 he travelled seven day’s by dugout canoe, boat and bus to Lima, Peru’s capital city for the very first time. Until Julio was four years old he lived deep in the forest with his people the Nahua fiercely repelling the efforts of missionaries, oil companies and lumberworkers to contact them. They were represented as “primitive savages” which in turn was used to justify the attempts to pacify or exterminate them. They avoided all contact with outsiders until four Nahua were captured on a beach by lumberers.

This first contact turned the Nahua’s world upside down. Within 6 months over half had died from flu and pneumonia; diseases that they had never experienced before. The lumber workers exploited the Nahua’s sudden weakness to invade their territory to exploit its valuable mahogany. The Nahua were mocked and taunted for their appearance and so they cut their hair, shed their monkey teeth necklaces and earrings and put on t-shirts and shorts. Slowly they began to recover and rebuild their lives. Their lives had changed dramatically but they began to fight back. Finally in 2002 they succeeded in throwing off all loggers from their land. Until June, Julio had never even seen a computer but within an hour he was using InqScribe to transcribe and translate the stories of his parents and grandparents that he had recorded in his village. The Nahua have already begun to write their present, they are only now starting to rewrite their past.

To learn more about Julio, the Nahua, and Conrad’s work, be sure to visit the Shinai web site.

posted July 28, 2006
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InqScribe and Final Cut Pro

We’ve recently seen a number of Final Cut Pro users taking a look at InqScribe. That’s fantastic and somewhat unexpected, if only because our background that led to the design of InqScribe was in educational research, not filmmaking or broadcast video.

But we’re certainly glad to see the interest and are working hard to add a few new features to make InqScribe even more attractive to FCP users.

We’d also love to hear from more FCP users about what they want out of InqScribe and how it might be able to better complement work in FCP. If you have any suggestions, please let us know.

posted July 01, 2006
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Copying and pasting on Windows

I want to note a copy/paste issue that affects Windows users.

The problem is that when you copy text in InqScribe, the copied text uses a single return character (CR) to denote line breaks. The standard practice on Windows is to use two characters, a return and a line feed (CR/LF), for this purpose. (The characters used for line breaks differ by platform: Macs have traditionally used CR, Windows CR/LF, and Linux and Unix use just LF.)

Some Windows applications are smart enough to handle pasted text with CR-based line breaks. For example, Word will paste that text just fine. Some other applications, including Notepad and (sadly) InqScribe itself, don’t handle CR-based text very well [1]: the text is pasted in as one giant paragraph, because the CR characters are replaced with spaces.

This is a particularly noticable issue if you’re doing something like using Word to spell check your transcript. In this case, you’re probably copying the text from InqScribe, pasting it into Word, spell checking in Word, and then copying the checked text and pasting it back into InqScribe. This process works great until the last step, when you paste the text back into InqScribe and discover that all your line breaks are gone.

We’ll fix this in the upcoming version 1.6. In the meantime, here’s a workaround.

If you are using Word to do the spell checking, you need to do a global search and replace before you copy the text and paste it back into InqScribe. In Word’s Find/Replace dialog, search for “^13” and replace it with “^p”. The ^13 will find all instances of CR, which Word has cleverly disguised as regular paragraph marks. The ^p replaces each instance of CR with a real paragraph mark. Once you’ve done this, copy and paste back into InqScribe, and you’re fine.

[1] Note that InqScribe imports CR-based text just fine. This issue only applies to text pasted via the Edit menu.

posted July 01, 2006
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QuickTime 7.1

Apple has released QuickTime 7.1. Apple’s release notes are remarkably opaque, so rather than reading tea leaves, here they are in their entirety.

QuickTime 7.1 is an important release that delivers numerous bug fixes, support for iLife ’06, and H.264 performance improvements. This update is highly recommended for all QuickTime 7 users.

Security fixes too. I’d give this a few days to see if any major issues arise, but otherwise It makes sense to upgrade, unless you’re holding on to a QuickTime 6 Pro license and don’t want to have to pay for QuickTime 7 Pro.

posted May 11, 2006
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USB Foot Pedals for InqScribe

With the release of InqScribe 1.5, we’ve been getting a lot of questions about whether or not InqScribe supports a particular manufacturer’s foot pedal. InqScribe 1.5 offers much better integrated support for foot pedals, including VEC, VPedal, X-Keys, and others. If your foot pedal appears as an input device on your system, InqScribe should be able to use it. Details on using foot pedals in InqScribe 1.5 can be found here.

While we can’t guarantee that InqScribe would work with every USB foot pedal on the market, we are in the process of building a list of confirmed compatible foot pedals. Currently that list includes VEC, VPedal, and X-Keys foot pedals. If you have a pedal from another manufacturer, please download our software (it’s free to try!) and just try it with your footpedal. If you find that your foot pedal works, please let us know!

posted April 26, 2006
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InqScribe 1.5.2

We’ve released InqScribe 1.5.2, a maintanence release that fixes, among other things, a highly annoying “shaking text” bug on Windows. (We’re really sorry about that one.) This version also cleans up some appearance issues to look better on specific operating systems, and breaks out a few preferences so you can vary them on a per window basis. (Perhaps most useful in this respect is the ability to turn time code coloring on and off for individual windows.)

posted April 24, 2006
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InqScribe 1.5

We’re proud to announce the release of InqScribe 1.5. Available for Mac OS X and Windows, InqScribe adds many new features to our easy to use digital media transcription and subtitling application.

New features include:

• Support for Windows Media Player.
• Support for QuickTime 7 pitch locking.
• Expanded keyboard shortcut commands.
• Text snippet support.
• USB foot pedal support (as well as other USB input devices).
• Support for film, PAL, NSTC, and NTSC drop-frame time code formats.
• Time code coloring.
• New offline media options for taking notes during live events.
• and more

InqScribe 1.5 is a free update for owners of InqScribe 1.0.2.

posted April 07, 2006
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Coming Soon: InqScribe 1.5

InqScribe 1.5 is in beta testing. There’s all kinds of goodies wrapped up in this release, but I’ll quickly highlight three.

• We’ve revamped keyboard shortcut support, making it possible to use a much wider range of key combinations. We’ve also added several new shortcut commands. Finally, we now have first class support for foot pedals and other USB input devices, including the ability to use modifier keys with those devices.
• We’ve added support for reusable text snippets. These snippets can be assigned a keyboard shortcut, or entered via an easily accessible list. Snippets can even contain references to the current time, so a single keystroke can insert something like “[01:10:00] Interviewer: “.
• And last, we’ve added Windows Media Player support for Windows users who need to work with wmv or wma files.

InqScribe 1.5 will be available shortly. Stay tuned.

posted March 28, 2006
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Teleprompter-style Scrolling Subtitles with InqScribe

Someone recently asked us if InqScribe could support teleprompter-style subtitles, e.g. subtitles that slowly scroll onto and off the screen. They needed to project a video with detailed transcripts to a large audience and they were concerned that traditional subtitles would disappear too quickly off the screen before folks could read it.
While this currently isn't directly supported in InqScribe, it *is* possible to use QuickTime Text Descriptors within InqScribe to do this. Basically, we need to do two things:

1. Make the subtitle pane large enough to display a lot of text. The easy way to do this is to place it side by side with the movie, like this:
   
   

   Subtitles side-by-side with movie
   
   
   
   
2. Insert special QuickTime Text Descriptors within your transcript to tell QuickTime to scroll the text on and off the screen.
   

Here are some detailed instructions to create teleprompter-style subtitle with InqScribe.

1. Transcribe your video, or open your transcription in InqScribe. (If you're transcribing as you go, it's relatively easy to insert time codes as you transcribe.)
   
   
2. If you haven't already, insert time codes at the points in the text when you want them to appear. You should probably play with a small snippet first (rather than trying to insert time codes in the whole document) to get a feel for how long each code point should be.
   
   
3. In order to get the text to scroll teleprompter style, you need to insert special QuickTime commands at the beginning of each transcript line, right after the time code. There are two codes: {scrollIn: on} and {continuousScroll: on} So your transcript might look something like this:
   

   [00:00:00.00]{scrollIn: on}{continuousScroll: on}
Introductory preface related to this recording.

[00:00:10.00]{scrollIn: on}{continuousScroll: on}
The Declaration of Independence of Thirteen Colonies

[00:00:14.16]{scrollIn: on}{continuousScroll: on}
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776

[00:00:18.21]{scrollIn: on}{continuousScroll: on}
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

   
   If you're careful not to use a right bracket ("]") in your transcript, you can use InqScribe to do a Find "]" and Replace it with "]{scrollIn: on}{continuousScroll: on}" to insert the code automatically.
   
   
4. Export your file as a Subtitled Movie.
   Select "File-Export as Subtitled Movie..."
   You'll want to set a few things in the "Export Subtitled Movie" settings window.
   
   1. Under "Position" choose "Custom Position"
      
   2. Click on the "Customize Position" button to set the position of the subtitles. In order to set the subtitle pane to sit to the right of the movie (e.g. a split screen) what you want to do is to set the "Height" to be equal to the height of your movie, and the "Left" position to be equal to the width of the movie. You can set width to whatever you think looks best for your text. For example, if my movie is 128px tall and 96px wide, then I want to set the position to:
      Top: 0
      Left: 128
      Height: 96
      Width: 128
      
      
   3. Make sure that the "Use Unicode" checkbox is NOT checked.
      
      
   4. Click on "Choose File" to set the name of your exported movie.
      
      
   5. Click on "Export" to export the movie.
      

You'll probably need to try exporting a few times to see the results and tweak accordingly.

If you enjoyed this one, you might also be interested in the full gamut of QuickTime Text Descriptors that allow you to control many aspects of subtitle display. QuickTime Text Descriptors

Have fun and show us what you do!

posted March 15, 2006
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Updated VPedal for Windows Instructions

[Update 1/31/06 -- Oops, forgot to include the link to the instructions.]

We've just updated the instructions for using VPedal with the Windows version of InqScribe.

Our previous script started InqScribe automatically for you, but it was causing problems for some people.

Also, we've had requests to find better unused keys on the keyboard, as the previous script relied on the numeric keypad. We're now using ALT with Home/End/PgUp/PgDn to control the video, which ought not interfere with most standard keystrokes. If you've installed the previous script, you'll need to re-assign the keys in InqScribe to use the ALT key combinations.

Let us know if you have any problems.

posted January 30, 2006
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InqScribe Runs on Intel iMacs

Today we had a chance to fire up InqScribe on one of the new Intel-based iMacs. It runs just fine. We can’t take credit for this; Apple’s done a very nice job with their Rosetta technology that translates PowerPC-native code on the fly.

At some point down the road, we’ll release an Intel-native version of InqScribe for Mac (of course, Windows users can get an Intel-native version for Windows right now), but in the meantime, rest assured that InqScribe will run on Apple’s new toys.

posted January 23, 2006
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Tip: Create a SkipForward Shortcut

InqScribe has a useful SkipBack keyboard shortcut. Assigned to a key of your choice, Skipback jumps back in time by an amount that you specify. When you are transcribing in InqScribe, the SkipBack key is great for those “what did they just say” moments. You can hit it once to go back a little ways, or hit it several times to go back farther.

Recently, someone asked us if there was a Skip Forward shortcut that complemented SkipBack. There isn’t — we hadn’t thought to include one — but you can create a virtual Skip Forward shortcut by creating a New SkipBack shortcut and setting the duration of the skip to a negative number. So if you want a shortcut that skips ahead 10 seconds, just enter “-10” in a new SkipBack shortcut.

posted January 19, 2006
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How to play .wmv and .wma files on Mac OS X

Great news for Mac users! Microsoft has discontinued support for Windows Media Player on OS X, and is now recommending that Mac users download Flip4Mac’s WMV plugin to play Windows Media format files (.wmv, .wma, and .asf) within QuickTime.

Flip4Mac has been around for a while, but what’s new is that, via a deal with Microsoft, the WMV plugin is now free and Microsoft is actively distributing it.

This means that Mac InqScribe users can now transcribe .wma, .wmv, and .asf format files. The only trick, once you install Flip4Mac, is that InqScribe hasn’t been updated to regard those file formats as playable files. So what you need to do is hold down the Option key when you click the “Select File…” button (or use the Media > Define Media File… menu item). This step lets you select any file, rather than limiting you to only those files InqScribe thinks it can play.

Ironically, this means that InqScribe supports Windows Media files on Mac OS before it supports them on Windows. But Windows users, be patient. This is a temporary condition.

posted January 16, 2006
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