terms analysis

by Rajiv Poddar on HowTo, Transcription

How To Review Transcripts In Five Easy Steps

Checking transcripts after your file has been transcribed and delivered can an arduous task. You have to go through the transcript and match it with the audio file. Theoretically it should as long as the duration of the file, provided the transcript is 100% accurate. However in practice it takes around twice the duration of the file, since there are always some parts which need to re-played multiple times. There is also the issue of tools; the audio player and the Word document are two different programs and switching back and forth between them can be quite cumbersome.  But on Scribie, we provide tools to make it easy for you. Here’s a brief guide on how to check your delivered transcripts.

Step 1: Use the Editor

On Scribie, we provide an online tool which presents the audio and the transcript together in a single interface. The audio and the transcript is tightly coupled. You can play any point of the audio and the cursor jumps to the corresponding point in the transcript and vice-versa. Click on the Check & Download button on the Uploaded Files page to load the Editor. We recommend that you use the latest version of Google Chrome browser for the best performance.

Step 2: Analyze

Click on the Analyze button as soon as the Editor loads. The most uncommon terms in the transcript will be highlighted once the transcript is analyzed. These are the parts of the transcript which are likely to have major mistakes. The analysis takes around 3-5 minutes to complete. So in between you can continue with the other steps.

Step 3: Check the Blanks

Press Ctrl+B to start checking the blanks. The blanks are parts of the transcript where we were not sure what was being said. With the Editor, you can quickly cycle through the blanks. The audio is played from 1 second before the blank timestamp and the blank is highlighted.  Sometimes we leave our interpretation beside the blank.

Step 4: Random Checks

Instead of checking the complete transcript, we suggest you play 1 minute segments from different parts of the file, spaced evenly at 6 minutes. If you find a major mistake in any of segments, then check the complete paragraph. Click on the audio waveform at the top and the cursor will be placed +/- 10 characters in the transcript. You can also play individual paragraphs by placing the cursor on any paragraph and pressing Ctrl+Alt+N.

Step 5: Scan the Underlines

The Analysis which was started at the second step would have underlined some terms and phrases in blue. Play the paragraphs which contain the underlines and make sure that nothing is wrong in them. All spelling mistakes are also underlined in red, and should also be checked. Right click on the red underlines for spelling suggestions.

The Editor has a lot of functionality which helps you review the transcript and verify that the transcript is indeed accurate to 98% or more. We use the same editor for transcription, reviews, proofreading and QC. So it’s been dogfood-ed extensively. Checking a 1 hour transcript will not take more than 30 minutes if you follow the steps outlined and save a lot of time and effort.

Also remember that we offer free re-reviews. If you find major mistakes, please don’t hesitate of order a re-review. The button is at the bottom in the Editor.

Scribie.com is the only transcription service which offers this tool. Try it out today. We are available on email if you need any help with this. Your feedback and comments are most valuable to us.

 
by Rajiv Poddar on Feature

Term & Phrase Analysis

We recently updated the Terms and Phrase analysis tool in the Editor. In this post, we’ll illustrate how to use it to spot potential mistakes in the transcript.

The analysis is based on the fact that around 20% of the terms and phrases in any given transcript are new and the rest already appear in the other files. The probability of mistakes is higher in those new ones. This analysis identifies and highlights the new terms and phrases so that they can be checked. These highlights act as guides for the editing.

Click on the Analyze button in the Editor to start the analysis.

analyze-button

 

It takes around 2 to 5 minutes to complete. So you can continue editing while the analysis is done in the background.

analyze-continue

 

When the analysis completes, some terms and phrases in the transcript will have a blue underline. These are the most uncommon one’s and should be cross-checked with the audio during editing.

analyze-whitelist

 

We recommend that you check the complete paragraph which have the underlines, make corrections if any and whitelist the paragraph afterwards. We provide a shortcut for whitelisting; Alt+W is the default one. Whitelisting removes all the underlines for that paragraph, and for the rest of the file for those specific terms and phrases.

Terms can also be blacklisted. Blacklisting will ensure that it’s always underlined in your files. It is useful for highlighting common mistakes, soundalikes etc. which should always be checked.

analyze-blacklist

 

Blacklisting will ask for confirmation. It cannot be un-done.

analyze-blacklist-confirm

 

Finally, you can also analyze a particular term.

analyze-term

 

It returns the most frequent words which precede and follow a particular term . This tool can be used as a suggestion for alternatives.

analyze-results

 

This system is a self-learning systems. As we process more files and deliver, the system tunes itself and learns from it. Therefore it will get better with time.

So try it out today and let us know what you think. Your feedback and comments are most welcome.

 
by Rajiv Poddar on Announcements

The Integrated Editor

The Integrated Editor is a text editor which is tightly coupled with the audio file of a transcript for easy cross-referencing. We use this tool internally for Proofreading and QC. Today we are releasing this tool for our customers as well. The editor can be launched from the Check & Download button on the Recordings page. The editor looks like the following once it loads.

The Integrated Editor has some important features which makes it easy to check the transcript against the audio. It can position the cursor on the transcript as you skip forwards and backwards through the audio. The positioning is accurate to +/- 50 characters. Conversely, it can play the audio from a particular cursor position of the transcript. The audio position is accurate to +/- 10 seconds. This tight coupling makes it a breeze to jump through the audio and the transcript without having to manually control the audio player.

The editor also supports keyboard shortcuts to faster editing. The keyboard shortcuts can be customized and you can assign a key combination to a particular action. There are more than 80 actions available to control various functions of both the audio player and text editor. Keyboard shortcuts is useful for heavy editing. Please note that some key combinations may or may not work depending upon your browser and Operating System (eg. Ctrl+N cannot be mapped on Windows since it’s pre-configured to open a new browser window). The keyboard shortcuts may not work if there are other programs configured to use those key combinations and are running (eg. ExpressScribe). Close any such programs or use a different key combination.

Another useful feature is variable rate playback. It’s currently supported only for Google Chrome and let’s you speed up or slow down the audio during playback. Playing the audio at faster rate cuts down the time required to go through the entire file. You can maybe finish a 1 hour file in 30 minutes if you play it at 150% speed.

Terms Analysis is another useful feature which highlights terms which may be out-of-context in the transcript. The highlighted terms can then be cross-checked with the audio.

Here’s some tips on how to use this editor effectively.

  • Click on the Next Blank button to cycle through the blanks. As the audio of the blank is played, the cursor will be placed on it and  and it will be highlighted. You can then edit the blank and/or remove it. You go through all the blanks in the transcript quickly and fill them up.
  • Click anywhere on the waveform to play that part of the audio. The cursor will be positioned +/- 50 characters of the audio timestamp. Use this feature to randomly check segments of the transcript.
  • Press Shift+F10 to play the audio corresponding to the current cursor position. The audio position will be accurate to +/- 10 seconds.
  • Enable time-coding if you have it disabled. It improves the accuracy of the cursor/audio positioning during jumps. Note that if you have it disabled and enable it after making some edits, then those edits will be discarded. Therefore, enable it a the start and disable it again once you’re done checking.
  • Memorize the keyboard shortcuts for most frequently used actions. Play, pause and skip backwards are the most frequently used actions. The default shortcuts for those are F10, F11 and F7.
  • Remember to rate the transcript before downloading. Your feedback is important to us and helps us improve our service.

The Integrated Editor will vastly simplify the transcript checking process for you. You can quickly go through the transcript and verify it’s correctness before using it for your end purpose. Please contact support if you face any issues. We will be glad to help you out. Comments and feedback also are most welcome.