I’ve been a bit slow on the blogging front these days as I have been immersed in Skype interviews for my open source study. Although the interviews have been extremely enjoyable, transcribing audio has never been my favorite activity.
However, I’ve recently discovered Listen & Type, a great transcription tool that has been making my life much easier. Listen & Type is shareware available for Mac users, and it’s basically a tool that allows me to easily control audio playback (start, stop, back, etc.) without having to leave the keyboard or the application.
This application may have been out for a while, and there are likely other ones out there that are as good or better, but it works fine for exactly what I need so I was happy to pay the $20 shareware license fee. If there are other tools out there, I would love to know. If not, this is a good one.
Update: Heather Ross was quick to point out that she has been using Transcriva. SO, I downloaded it, installed it and figured it out in about 3 minutes, and I must say, I already prefer Transcriva to Listen & Type. Transcriva is free to use, although to get full functionality, and to get rid of some watermark issues, you can pay the roughly $27 Canadian for it. Looks like a good buy. Thanks Heather!
This is the first that I’ve heard of Listen & Type but I did come across Transcriva which I have found to be very useful. It’s shareware only for the Mac and costs $27 CDN, but goes down in cost if you buy more than one license.
It also allows for easy control of audio playback and has a few other little neat features.
transana.org is an open source project that offers both the transcription help you describe and tools for later analysis of the interviews.
The MAC version should be out soon.