Transcribing interviews with Notebook View in Word 2004

[Merilee Karr]

Hello,

I have a problem inserting text markers into a long Audio Note.

I just upgraded to Word 2004 (Version 11.3.5), thinking that the Audio
Note function would be great for transcribing interviews selectively.
I'm a journalist, so I need to transcribe good quotes accurately, but
I only need to paraphrase the rest of the interview. My desktop
machine is an iMac with a G4 PowerPC processor, running OS X version
10.4.9.

Here's my procedure so far: I record the interview in the field with a
microcassette tape recorder. Then at home I connect the audio output
of the tape recorder to the audio input of the iMac, create a new Word
2004 document in Notebook view, click the Record button in the
Notebook menu bar, hit Play on the tape recorder, and Word sucks the
interview audio into the document. That works fine.

Now I want to transcribe the interview. I click Play in the Notebook
menu bar and start typing, paraphrasing and skipping to keep up with
the audio. Then I come to a few good lines that I want to focus on and
transcribe exactly. When the audio gets ahead of my typing hands, I
click Stop in the menu bar--what I really want to do here is "rewind"
a few seconds, hear that line again, and type some more. (Hot keys
would be so nice for this function, but don't seem to exist. Think
about it for the next update? Please?)

But when I click Play in the menu bar, the audio goes back to the
beginning of the interview, which I don't want to waste time listening
to again. How can I mark the spot in the already-recorded audio stream
so that I can return to it?

Thank you. I appreciate your time.

Merilee Karr

 

[Merilee Karr]

Problem solved. Or rather accepted as a feature. I just have to listen
(with a splitter jack) and type something, even nonsense, every few
seconds while listening to create pegs for later transcription.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Another possibility--

Use the Tools | Audio Notes | Export function in Notebook View to get
the audio as an mp3 or mp4 (or whatever, I think you can set this in
Preferences or somewhere), and then listen to it in QuickTime, where you
have more control and can mark the time and jump to the time, etc.

Hassle while interviewing, hassle after interviewing....