Transcribe Podcast

This is out of date! See Fanscribed notes for notes on the new software for transcription.

You are here because you're interested in how to transcribe podcasts or you'd like to help or something. We've been discussing podcast transcription in this MeTa thread and here are some things we think will work well for transcription purposes.

Wiki page setup

The first person to work on a transcription for any particular podcast should do a few simple things

• create the page for the podcast transcription (see the main podcast page for examples)
• link the transcription page to the main podcast page
• set up sections on the transcription page corresponding to chunks of time (example below) so that people can edit individual sections with minimal edit conflicts

Transcribing

Subsequent people to work on a podcast transcription should check the credits section to see which sections aren't currently being worked on, put their name in the credits section before you start work on a section, and just go to it. A few tips:

• Save your work -- don't just preview -- often.
• put your name in the credits section so people know who is working in a given section.
• Feel free to leave a placeholder (like ???) if you don't understand something, or ask the person who said it
• Removing ums and ahs and erms not only makes your job easier, it makes the mods sound smarter! Plus, it's easier to read, so consider that.
• It's not legal transcription. Do the best job you can, but don't stress out about it.
• People may change the transcription you make, it's a wiki after all. Make sure you're okay with that.
• When you save your section of the wiki page, note that if you have any links, you'll have to enter a capcha, just to verify you're not a spambot. (It's easy to forget & go on browsing without finishing the save.)
• Have fun, and thanks!

Software

These are two pieces of software that people have used in transcribing podcasts.

• Transcriber - open source and multiplatform
• Express Scribe - free and multi-platform

Example Sections

Remove the space at the beginning of each line and copy/paste the text into a new transcription page.

A transcript for [***insert metatalk URL here*** insert name of podcast here].
==Intro==
(Start to 3:00)
Intro music
==Section==
(3:01 to 5:00)
==Section==
(5:01 to 10:00)
==Section==
(10:01 to 15:00)
== Credits ==
* Minutes 0 to 3 - 
* Minutes 3 to 5 -

repeat as needed until all the time is sectioned out. Once the sections are more fleshed out, the headers can be repositioned and replaced to be headers for the different sections of the site that are discussed, or other appropriate sectioning.