Working with Multimedia Transcripts

A multimedia transcript consists of two documents: an audio or video file + an associated transcript. The first step is to add the audio or video file to a project. Then you can link one or multiple transcripts with the document. If you want to transcribe ourself, you link an empty document to the audio or video file.

Synchronized Scrolling

When associating a transcript with a multimedia file, or opening a multimedia transcript, synchronized scrolling is activated in the toolbar by default. This means when you play the multimedia file, the text segment in the transcript between two timestamps is highlighted while the multimedia file is playing.

Synchronized Scrollen

If the document does not contain timestamps, ATLAS.ti estimates the synchronization based on the length of the multimedia file and the transcript. You can add time stamps for a better synchronization. See below for further information on how this is done.

Display of Timestamps

You see a list of time stamps in the audio or video document pane. If you want to see more or less, you can grab the header with your mouse and pull it up or down.

To see the timestamps, click on the Edit Timestamps button in the toolbar.
The timestamps are indicated by green markers.

Activate Edit timestamps

  • In the transcript, you see green markers indicating the start and end positions of the time stamps.

Transcript with timestamps

Editing Timestamps

You can either modify the position of an existing timestamp, add new ones, or delete timestamps.

Adding a Timestamp

In the transcript, put the cursor at the position where you want to add the time stamp. In the multimedia document, position the play-head (red line) to the corresponding position. In the toolbar, click Add Timestamp.

Note you move the read play head by scrolling with the mouse or by using the error keys, but not by grabbing it with the mouse.

Moving a Timestamp

Option 1

To move the position of an existing timestamp, grab the timestamp shown as green line over the wave form in the multimedia document, and move it to a different position.

Moving a Timestamps

The above image shows the following example situation: When listening to the transcript in Synchronized Scrolling mode (see below), you may notice that the half sentence: "...and it is a paper from 2003" finishes in the audio file at the position of the red play head, thus below the timestamp. In order to correct this, you can simply move the green line to the position of the play head.

Option 2

You can also move the timestamp in the transcript to a different position via drag & drop.

Deleting a Timestamp

Select one or multiple timestamps in the timestamp list, right-click and select Delete.

Deleting Timestamps

Activating an Audio or Video Document with a Transcript

If you re-open a project, or have closed a multimedia transcript, it is easy to again load both documents side-by-side:

Option 1

Go to the Multimedia Transcripts branch in the Project Explorer and double-click on either the multimedia file or the transcript. Both the multimedia file, and the transcript will be loaded.

Option 2

Load either the multimedia document, or the transcript from the Documents branch in the Project Explorer. Open the drop-down menu for Transcripts in the toolbar and select the associated file.

Loading an associated document

Deleting an Association

Open the Multimedia Transcripts branch in the Project Explorer, right-click on either transcript or the multimedia file, and select Delete.

This does not remove the document from the project. The multimedia file and transcript are still available in the Documents branch, but they are no longer associated.

If you want to remove an associated document from the project, you need to delete the association first.