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Transcripts integration with FCP X?
Probably too soon to ask such a specialized question, but here goes…
I am, and have been for years, jealous of ScriptSync inn Avid and now similar capabilities in Premiere Pro.
I have been using FCP since v1… I’ve been working for the past 9 years at an FCP facility in NYC, cutting documentary television.
In the past three years I been relying heavily on transcripts. We have transcribers who make transcipts in Word of 1 to 2 hour interviews with about a minute between timecode indicators. I took the interesting step a couple of years ago of deciding to copy and paste each paragraph from the Word doc into a marker comment field at the corresponding timecode in the clip (or sometimes just a sequence, if the interview is multi-cammed)Thus in FCP 7 I can easily jump from marker to marker, quickly read about a paragraph’s worth of copy overlayed onto the canvas or viewer window, and, best of all, it is roughly searchable. I have found this very handy for many obvious reasons.
Of course FCP X has freaked me out a bit, but I like some of it… but of course it doesn’t handle markers the same way, so that bums me out… The markers do not seem to be searchable, and I’ve tried to copy and paste paragraphs of transcript as keywords, and i don’t understand the results… it seems to make arbitrary “collections” within the event of words and sentences from the paragraph. So, I’ll keep messing around, but I’d think with the much-ballyhooed metadata dominance, there should be some cool new way of working with transcripts in X.
So, in short, would anyone like to speculate or ruminate on my desires?
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5 Replies
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Hi Joshua,
Thanks for posting this! Saved me from writing up another post 😉
I’m in the same boat. I work on a lot of corporate documentaries that don’t have the budget for transcriptions. So, my old technique for logging interviews was to go through and mark the beginnings of questions. In the marker tab I’d write the question. In the description, I’d give a brief summary of the answer. Looks like it’s pretty much what you did, but without the transcripts.
This would come in very handy 1 year later, when the client would call and ask for all footage pertaining to a specific question.
It seems to me that Apple hasn’t turned on all the metadata functionality, yet. So, my speculation is that once we get to Lion which, from what I’m reading, will have more AVFoundation support, FCPx functionality will begin to open up (hopefully) and run better (ie not crash as much!). Also, Apple is planning an update this summer. Hopefully that will help.
Oh, as a workaround for the freaky-deaky keyword thing. Try putting quotes around your paragraph of transcription–maybe that will help? Let me know!
In the end, ScriptSync for FCPX would be a killer app! I have a feeling someone must see this need and is developing something.
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I’ll speculate.
It’s not coming anytime soon. The only thing close to it is the software that AV3 makes called ‘get’ and obviously that’s not working in FCPX
They are using the same engine that Avid uses (neither of which is voice recognition, but rather phoneme recognition.)
Best,
Jeff G
Apple Master Trainer | Avid Cert. Instructor DS/MC | Adobe Cert. Instructor
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Speech analysis is built into Abode Premiere Pro – as in free. And it works well enough.
You know, just saying in case you’re interested 😉
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
Look at CAT DV it has the ability to link time coded transcripts to footage
James
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I have a workaround. Not perfect, but it works similar to the way that markers worked. And, as I’m sure you’re aware, this may not be the only answer or even the correct one. I found two ways, actually; both with very similar outcomes.
1. In the viewer, select an in and out on a clip. Hit F for favorite (consider this like a marker). Click on the word “favorite” that pops up in the clip. Change it to whatever the title of your marker would be. Now, tab to or click on Notes in the next few columns over. Paste in your transcription there.
– The good thing about this method is that you don’t get a keyword popping up in the viewer, which tends to clutter things up from what I can tell. Keywords seem to be good for very general sorting methods (or very complex, depending on the way you look at it).
2. Same idea as above. Except you hit CMD-K and punch in a keyword on your in and out points. Same next step, add the transcription to the notes column.
– Annoying thing with keywords is that they always pop up in the root area of your event. They can make things look real junky real quick.
Good and bad to both these methods:
Good – all words seem to be searchable either through the smart filter or in the search box on the top right hand corner of the viewer.
Bad – searching for an item will only bring up the clip that the word is in. It won’t highlight the specific favorite or keyword that the text is in. This sucks if you have tons of markers/favorites/keyframes/whatevers to search through. But, it’s a start! So, good luck and let me know if this works for you or if you’ve found a better way. 🙂
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