Transcriptive | PowerSearch User Stories

Transcriptive | PowerSearch

Transcription-based workflow for video editors

Transcriptive PowerSearch

Transcription-based workflow for video editors

User Stories for Transcriptive and PowerSearch

See how Transcriptive for Premiere Pro, PowerSearch and Transcriptive.com are speeding up video editing for filmmakers, youtubers, large and small production companies, journalists and more!

If you’ve used Transcriptive on a project, we’d love to see it and show it to the rest of the world. Contact sales@digitalanarchy.com.

"The accuracy is incredible. PowerSearch finds anything"

DL Watson, Multimedia Video Editor

"Using Transcriptive, all our footage becomes searchable"

Kameron Toews, Multimedia Video Producer

"Having Timecoded transcripts so quickly is a lifesaver"

Brandon Freeman, Flying Fedora

"We generated 60 interview transcripts in 6 working days"

Annalise OPhelian, Award-Winning Documentary Filmmaker

"Transcribing, finding sound bites, and collaborating is so much faster"

Chris McElroy, Michigan Media Director

"Transcriptive is our go-to tool for making closed captioning"

Paladin Media Group

"The accuracy is incredible. PowerSearch finds anything"

DL Watson, Multimedia Video Editor

"Using Transcriptive, all our footage becomes searchable"

Kameron Toews, Multimedia Video Producer

"Having Timecoded transcripts so quickly is a lifesaver"

Brandon Freeman, Flying Fedora

"We generated 60 interview transcripts in 6 working days"

Annalise OPhelian, Award-Winning Documentary Filmmaker

"Transcribing, finding sound bites, and collaborating is so much faster"

Chris McElroy, Michigan Media Director

"Transcriptive is our go-to tool for making closed captioning"

Paladin Media Group

International crew transcribes and shares interviews with Transcriptive.

Creating global projects that highlight diversity and innovative audiovisual work have always been a priority for the creative team of Digital Art Video, a full production company based in New York City. The agency was founded by Kim E. Wang in 1991 and has embraced many genres – from the traditional commercial advertising to feature and short films, scripted TV series, reality TV shows, music videos, title sequences, live events, and direct-to-client corporate video assignments.

The wide range of video productions gave Wang’s team the credibility to grow fast and expand services, but nowadays one of Digital Art Video’s most exciting productions in the works is a feature-length documentary film. Chocolat Road explores the journey of three chocolatiers around the world as they each create a new fine chocolate product. This incredible journey led director Tanya Chuturkova to register beautiful images in the US, Japan, Central America, Peru, France, and Denmark and accumulate over 100 hours of footage with more than 50 hours of interviews.

According to Chuturkova, transcribing all this footage became a concern and made her team look for AI services in order to convert speech to text faster. “We were very overwhelmed facing 70+ hours of interviews, and finding a quick and easy transcription service became crucial for us to match post-production deadlines”.

“We compared services online, did some research and read a lot of reviews on different services. Minimizing time and budget was a big pro, but we were also very happy with how responsive the Transcriptive team was to our questions. Having quick and consistent replies is very important when working with deadlines so we decided to invest in Transcriptive”, explains the Director.

Transcribing different languages with Transcriptive

The high volume of interview hours was the first problem director Tanya Chuturkova and Producer Kim E. Wang were able to solve with Transcriptive, but it was not the only benefit brought by the plugin. Chocolat Road has interviews recorded in 6 different languages and being able to transcribe all of them inside of Premiere Pro has considerably changed the Digital Video Art team workflow for the best.

“We are using Transcriptive for our interviews with over 50 characters of the movie. So far we have used it for English, Spanish and French speakers. May use it for Japanese as well. It’s just generally amazing as it really allows you to process content very fast, providing us with a full transcript and saving us many hours of work daily”, says Chuturkova. According to her experience, transcribing with AI is a great way to convert speech to text quickly and accurately. Her team has been using Speechmatics and experienced around 98% accurate, depending on sound quality and speaker’s accent.

The ability to have well-transcribed interviews in minutes made Chocolat Road Producer and Digital Art Video CEO Kim E. Wang consider using the plugin for many other projects and clients. “Transcriptive has been a life-saver for us. It took us about a day to figure out the workflow. After that is has been a breeze and I believe it will allow our editors to minimize time and budget for a variety of productions we have been working on”, explains Wang.

Connecting team members around the globe

Since the beginning of its production, Chocolat Road has been looking for ways to increase collaboration within its international team. More often than not, they need to overcome the geographical challenges of being in different parts of the globe in order to work together and beat deadlines. According to Chuturkova, Transcriptive has improved their long-distance workflow considerably. “With Transcriptive we can have the producer, who is thousands of miles away in Japan, read through the text and give us input on parts he wants to include without having to edit or look and search inside the video. That goes from the rest of the crew that can have the SRT on videos and follow the story on screen”, she explains.

The ability to export transcripts in different formats allowed Chuturkova’s crew to improve not only the speed but also the overall quality of their selection process. After running the footage through Transcriptive, they use punctuation symbols to tag and easily identify the parts they want to include in the edited sequences. “We Make notes using * / ** / *** for the text that is of certain importance as this doesn’t ruin the text alignment. After we are done, we export as text and use those * to actually make and separate important parts of the text and compile our paper edit. Worked great so far!, concludes Chuturkova.

Michigan Media streamlines sharing and collaboration with Transcriptive.

The Michigan Media group has been producing audiovisual content for the University of Michigan (U-M) since 1993. Always committed to quality, they focus on producing uniquely creative projects at an affordable price, working closely with the different academic departments to understand their needs and help them to engage with their audiences. “We have 7 people working together to produce a wide range of video stories for the University of Michigan. From marketing videos to events’ coverage and short interview pieces, we often need to send content to the U-M Social Media and Marketing units to convey the U-M’s most important messages”, says the Associate Director of Michigan Media Chris McElroy.

The University of Michigan has more than 275 degree programs and receives approximately 15,000 students every year. Michigan Media is a unit within the Office of Communications, so staying in touch with the different departments and collaborating with other communication units is fundamental. “We often send content we filmed and edited, as well as marketing pieces we produced, to the Social Media team so they can share on the U-M profiles”, explains McElroy. This process requires the Michigan Media team to work quickly and send content before the final videos are ready. This is where Transcriptive comes handy.

Fast transcriptions and web app to improve cross-team collaboration

McElroy and his team of editors, producers, and videographers started using Transcriptive in 2018. They were looking for an efficient way to find content and a faster way to send it to the other University of Michigan departments. Since then, producing marketing pieces in conjunction with the Social Media team became much easier. “We used to share content much less often. When we did share content, we’d send out for transcripts (which would take days or longer) or we would share video files – a laborious process. Transcriptive has enabled us to transcribe, find sound bites, and share content faster. After filming, we can quickly use AI to transcribe. Using the web app, it is easy to share the transcripts among a group who can then review for content decision-making on paid social media”, McElroy says.

Michigan Media has been using the Transcriptive.com standalone Web App to share files every week. The app allows users to send a transcript or video file from Premiere to Transcriptive.com for a producer, client, or assistant to make a paper cut using a web browser, like Chrome or Firefox. Once edited, the transcript can be sent back to the video editor in Premiere to continue working with Transcriptive and PowerSearch. “There are whole layers of work that would be facilitated by using Transcriptive, but we’re only using a portion of its potential since we’re doing mainly shorter marketing videos (anywhere from :30 – 4:00). This would be really helpful in longer form documentary work, editing interview programs, etc”, McElroy highlights.

Transcribing interviews also became easier with Transcriptive. When asked about transcription accuracy, McElroy says their experience has been very positive overall. “Acronyms are often wrong but that would happen even with a human transcriber. We in the video department at Univ. Michigan are very impressed and find Transcriptive very useful. Even producer/editors who in the past have opted not to work with transcripts are finding it very helpful. It helps to find sound bites much faster, share content faster, make subtitles faster – everything. After the modest initial investment – it pays for itself big time since we no longer have to send out for transcripts.”

Transcriptive is a license-based plugin. After buying the license, clients can install it on two computers, but can only use it on one computer at a time. Transcriptions are paid directly to the chosen Speech-To-Text service. Clients can choose between Speechmatics and a Transcriptive-AI as their Automatic Speech Recognition engine. Speechmatics charges $0.07 a minute, and the Transcriptive service is $0.12/min but usually more accurate. However, both services are very accurate, and for difficult transcriptions, you can use the Transcriptive-HumanTouch service with a trained, native language transcriptionist ($1.50/min).

Transcriptive makes it possible to quickly subtitle low-budget productions

Filmmaker, photographer, and writer Tim Lorge loves a new challenge. Besides working as a Coordinator for the New York Raindance Film Festival, he produces and edits video for small non-profits and is always looking for efficient solutions to lower production costs, speed up his video editing workflow and help him deliver high-quality videos in spite of budget constraints. Recently, Lorge accepted the mission to compile all media from the American Parkinson Disease Association (APDA) into one short video to be showcased at the World Parkinson Congress in Japan; a big challenge with tight deadlines and no budget to spend.

According to Lorge, it would be very difficult to get the project done on time if it wasn’t for Transcriptive. “The APDA is a non-profit so when I say there was no budget for this, there was no budget. And there was no time to get it done. We did eight short films with the cast of their most recent PSAs, which means we had to review a lot of material. Transcriptive was quick to install and we got the transcripts and the captions we needed for all eight videos in about 2 hours. It saved us probably four days of manual transcription and we were able to deliver ahead of schedule as a result of using it.”, he says.

Since the APDA project, Lorge has been using Transcriptive for every production he is working on. As soon as he finishes shooting, he runs his footage through Transcriptive so he can review the material and have a clear idea of everything that was said. “Having a written script of my interviews helps my project to be the best it can be. I can use it to sync audio and video. In narrative projects, I can use it for ADR. I can use it for reshoots if an improvised line was great. I can easily add closed captions early on in the process. Anywhere in post, I need to know what material I’ve actually got, and Transcriptive gives it to me”, explains Lorge.

Using Transcriptive to make videos accessible

Besides being a very fast solution to convert speech into text and search footage in Premiere Pro, Transcriptive makes it easy to create captions and subtitles so people with disabilities can fully access media content. For Tim Lorge, this was one of the biggest advantages of choosing Transcriptive. “Being able to easily provide captions is a dream come true. For those who live with some sort of hearing loss, captions are vitally important to help them enjoy your work. Transcriptive is accurate, fast, and low-cost, making it possible for any video editor to add captions to every project”, explains Lorge. To learn more about adding captions with Transcriptive watch this video tutorial!

Tim Lorge is now working on a second video for the American Parkinson Disease Association (APDA) and will once again be using Transcriptive to make his editing easier. “The APDA had a diversity conference back in May that I’m editing now and will be using Transcriptive again! Let me tell you: It just works. I think it’s safe to say Digital Anarchy is definitely helping in the fight against Parkinson’s so thank you to you and your team for making such a great tool!”, says Lorge. Interested in giving Transcriptive a try? Download our Free Trial today!

Paladin Media Group takes advantage of AI technology, using Transcriptive, to provide quick feedback to clients and speed up video production

The Paladin Media Group has a well-established history in media production. With an average total of 20 current clients and 28 years producing content all around the US, including abroad, from Charlottesville to San Francisco, from New Mexico to Minnesota, their video production and post-production teams work closely with clients to provide unique media pieces. Their goal is always to deliver high-quality media at an affordable cost, which can be a challenge in video production. Filmmaking requires time, attention to detail and expensive equipment and that is why The Paladin Media Team is constantly looking for high-end technology solutions to speed up their workflow and reduce costs while keeping up with the high standards they have set over the years.

“Our video editing process sometimes starts while filming”, explains Ashby Wratchford , Paladin Media Post Production Supervisor. “While our production team is exhausting camera cards, editors start transferring captured media, so we can start transcribing and editing the videos right away. We currently have 6 people working in our post-production team, and taking advantage of technology to transcribe the interviews, help us find content, and deliver precise transcripts to our clients is crucial. Indeed, Transcriptive is our go-to tool for making closed captioning.”

To complete all the steps required by video production in a short period of time, without sending costs to the roof, the Paladin Media Group post-production team relies on automated tools. After spending a lot of time and money generating human transcripts, last year they decided to try incorporating Transcriptive into their workflow, so they could reduce costs without sacrificing quality. The result was more time left to focus on deepening the relationship with clients and investing in creativity.

The Power of Automated Transcripts

AI became part of Wratchford and his team’s workflow last year when they incorporated Transcriptive to their workflow to produce personalized videos for the UVA Health System. It is an endearing series of short documentaries that used video to close the gap between doctors and patients. Paladin interviews doctors as they talk about their career and present themselves to patients. Series also features patients’ stories that inspire. “All our current projects with the UVA Health System have been transcribed with Transcriptive. We were constantly shooting over 20-minute interviews that would take time and patience to transcribe. As an experienced finisher, I cannot imagine myself having to transcribe all this footage. AI has been an incredible time saver. Before Transcriptive, the transcribing process was often skipped.”

Wratchford has been making movies professionally since 1995 and was skeptical about the accuracy of transcripts initially. “Watson (IBM’s speech-to-text engine) was a very happy surprise. We interview people from different nationalities, with many different accents. So far the accuracy has been about 94%”. For him, it is still necessary to go back to the transcripts and make small corrections before sending it to clients or generating captions, but Automated Speech Recognition (ASR) is still incredibly worth it. “We have been transcribing with Watson for a year and have not yet needed to pay for the transcripts. I do want to try using Speechmatics, understanding it works more accurately. But so far Watson has met all our needs and expectations and its accuracy continued to improve”, says Wratchford.

Partnering with speech engines that offer accurate transcriptions has been a high priority to Digital Anarchy, the team behind Transcriptive. However, the precision of the transcripts will vary according to audio recording quality, language, people’s accent, etc. Adding Speechmatics to our Premiere Panel as another option for Speech-To-Text conversion increases the chances of precise transcripts because it allows clients to beta test and decide what transcription services will work better for their needs. Speechmatics offers 18 core languages, while Watson allows clients to transcribe in 8 languages.

According to the Paladin Media Group, automated transcripts have been making not only editors but clients happy. Because the transcripts come back within minutes it is possible for them to see the content in a very short period. “They are able to read and discuss the interview with us almost instantly, which makes them feel part of the process and us more confident to edit according to their comments and specific needs”. Also, the ability to search for content allows video editors to find exactly what their clients want to include in the video without having to spend hours watching the recordings to find content. Wratchford highlights metadata search as a valuable tool to give quick feedback to clients and speed up his video editing. “On any given day we may interview up to three subjects for a specific purpose, averaging a 23-minute interview. Weeks may go by when the client comes back and says, “did so and so mention this and can we make a video out of it?” My first reflex is to go to Transcriptive”.

Machines and humans working together

In business since 1991, the Paladin Media Group has gone through many video format and industry changes. AI was not always part of their reality and old transcripts created by humans was a big part of the company’s video production process. “Automated transcription is new to our workflow. We often need to go back to old footage and use transcripts created by our staff. Importing transcripts they already have created and letting Transcriptive assign a timecode to each word is one of the biggest advantages of the plugin to us”, explains Wratchford.

The strategy adopted by Wratchford’s team proves that the advantages Transcriptive brings are not limited to Automatic Speech to Text services. After importing transcripts from the computer into Premiere Pro, Paladin’s post-production crew can quickly get an idea of what was said and plan how each segment will be cut. “We can click on the word, jump to the video, and play the footage right away. The matching between transcript and footage through the timecode is pretty accurate even when the transcripts are not generated through AI”.

In addition to using human transcripts to locate specific content, Transcriptive includes a text editing platform that allows video editors and producers to edit the AI transcripts. The idea is to allow human and machine learning to work together for quick, but high-quality results. As previously stated by Wratchford, “AI transcripts are not perfect. Paladin editors have been experiencing an average of 94% when sound is well recorded, and accents are not too heavy”. Having the ability to edit the text allows transcripts to fully match the interviews before clients can get access to it.

Collaboration is the key

Since the incorporation of Transcriptive into their video production, the Paladin Media Group has saved time and money on the making of over 100 short documentaries for the UVA Health System. “Incorporating Transcriptive into our workflow has been incredibly important to speed up our video production turnaround time and lower costs.” Every year, Wratchford and his team need to browse through an average of 24 Tb of footage just for the UVA Health System, and Transcriptive has been keying on managing and editing videos all year around. “We are happy with the changes and ready to try other tools now offered by the Transcriptive Suite of products”.

When asked about his next priorities, the post-production lead of Paladin Media Group mentioned investing in collaboration tools as an important step to improve the workflow created with the acquisition of Transcriptive last year. “It is great to know new tools are being incorporated to Transcriptive. I think the web app is a very interesting idea and we’ll try the BETA version next. It may make sharing transcripts with clients a lot easier depending on how well it performs and how user-friendly the interface is”, explains Wratchford. He is also planning to ask all his video editors to try the app as a solution for transcribing, searching and collaborate with co-workers who are not using Premiere Pro. “Some of my colleagues edit on Avid or Final Cut, others use Premiere. I personally prefer Resolve so the App might be a game changer when its full version was released”, concludes Wratchford.

The Transcriptive App lets you get and edit transcripts! However, the real power comes from collaborating with your team or clients. Simply send a transcript or video file from Premiere to Transcriptive.com for a producer, client, or assistant to make a paper cut. Once edited, the transcript can be sent back to the video editor in Premiere to continue working with Transcriptive and PowerSearch, our most recent addition to the Transcriptive Suite of Products.

Award-winning documentary filmmaker uses Transcriptive to save time and focus on the creative aspects of video production

Annalise Ophelian started making feature-length documentaries in 2008, fueled by a desire to see more stories of under-represented communities on screen. Her work focuses on themes of representation and self-determination, giving voice to female protagonists and putting women in central story roles. “ I became a filmmaker in large part because of the magic I felt watching Star Wars. (…) For many of us, Star Wars was the first time we saw a female character holding her own on screen, and the first time we had permission to geek out on a genre previously reserved for boys,” explains Ophelian.

This early memory of self-empowerment directly inspired Annalise to produce her most recent film Looking for Leia, “a documentary about women who found identity, connection, and purpose in their love of the galaxy far, far away.” Now in post-production, the movie has generated over 100 interviews in a 14 month period of time, and quickly transcribing all this material quickly became a hard task to accomplish. That’s when Ophelian decided to incorporate Transcriptive into her documentary filmmaking workflow.

Taking advantage of automated transcriptions

Transcription has been a big part of Ophelian’s routine since the very beginning of her career. The filmmaker is also a psychologist with a background in qualitative research and has spent many hours glued to her headset and foot pedal, manually transcribing both research and film interviews. “On my last documentary, I manually transcribed about half of my material and sent the remainder out to various professional transcription services. This was incredibly time consuming and expensive,” Ophelian recalls.

The transcription routine she had been dealing with for years was about to repeat itself in Looking for Leia when Ophelian decided to research automated solutions and found Transcriptive. According to her, the biggest advantage of Transcriptive in comparison with other AI transcription services was the integration with Adobe Premiere Pro. The integration allows her to transcribe, edit the transcripts, search content and generate captions inside of Premiere.

Ophelian started post-production on Looking for Leia in August 2018, and Transcriptive allowed her to generate roughly 1,000 pages of transcript over the past six months. “Using Transcriptive for Looking for Leia involved a fraction of the time and cost of previous projects. The turn around time of the AI software is amazing and having timecoded transcripts for all of my interview material means I’m getting to review all my footage. It makes it infinitely easier to find things by participant or subject,” says Ophelian.

Finding a Transcriptive workflow that works for you

Documentary filmmaking generates a lot of material, and incorporating new software into an already established production workflow is not always easy. Ophelian recognizes there was a learning curve before she could fully take advantage of Transcriptive’s automated transcription, search, and text editing tools. However, she guarantees that learning how to best incorporate Transcriptive into the Looking For Leia post-production workflow was time well spent.

In the beginning, Ophelian’s biggest challenge was to choose an export format that works best for her and the Looking For Leia team. “Once I was able to nail down a format that worked best for me I created two master documents: A Word doc with an interactive table of contents that allows me to search all of my interviews for keywords or phrases; and a Scrivener project where I plug these transcripts directly into a script template,” explains Ophelian.

Transcriptive offers two AI services inside of its Premiere Pro panel: Transcriptive AI and Speechmatics. Transcriptive A.I. averages 97% accuracy, is priced at $0.12/minute, and allows you to pay for the transcriptions as you go. Speechmatics is about 95% accurate and costs $0.07 per min. On the transcribing side, Ophelian has a tip for new users: “I learned that periods of non-dialog would produce long sections with single words on each line. These were easy to grab and clean up, and I generally exported an mp3 of the audio to use as a reference when doing transcript clean up so I didn’t have to comb through my proxies.”

It didn’t take long for the Looking for Leia team to get used to Transcriptive. Before the plugin, the transcription side of her post-production would often take 2 – 3 months. With Transcriptive, they were able to generate 60 interview transcripts in 6 working days, which allowed Ophelian to focus on the creative side of her filmmaking work. “Because Transcriptive is so efficient and budget-friendly, I have more time and money to devote to other aspects of post-production. Like all things in post, find a Transcriptive workflow that works for you. Do one or two transcripts to start with and experiment with the export format, figure out what works best for you. And the team at Digital Anarchy are great with answering questions,” Ophelian concludes.

Non-Profit uses Transcriptive to transcribe professional and ZOOM video files efficiently in Premiere Pro

Video is one of the most powerful tools used by The Evangelical Alliance Mission (TEAM) to share compelling stories from the mission field to its community with passion and creativity. Through the power of moving images, the Christian missions organization can show not only the work their missionaries are doing around the world, but also efficiently craft marketing, educational, recruitment, and informational video messages that speak to its community.

At TEAM there is a video for everything, and all the visual content is gathered straight from the field. According to TEAM’s Multimedia Video Producer and Videographer Kameron Toews, their Marketing Department takes one or two international trips every year to capture the stories of their missionaries and those they work with. “The goal is to see the work up close and create beautiful images that will show the commitment we have to our mission and to encourage our donors and supporters of the great things God is doing around the world so we can keep sending our missionaries where the most people have the greatest need”, explains Toews.

To produce high quality videos in a short period of time, the Marketing Department at TEAM chose Transcriptive to turn all their footage into text and find content faster. Using Transcriptive, all their footage becomes searchable and the video team can easily identify inserts for each type of video they are creating. Another advantage of having hours of footage transcribed is that it makes it very easy to create captions for the final edits, which allows all the TEAM videos to be accessible and increases their Social Media channels reach.

Converting video to text in Premiere and online

In Toews’ opinion, Transcriptive has completely changed the videos TEAM shares with their community because it eliminates a lot of the manual work of watching footage in real time to find soundbites. Instead of constantly scrubbing through the footage, his team can now invest more time and energy into the creative side of their productions. “Since we started transcribing in Premiere Pro with Transcriptive, a process that used to take hours of work now requires just a few minutes of work to complete. It’s easier to assemble a rough cut from transcripts, especially when I have hours of interview that I need cut down to just a few minutes. Because we already have everything in Premiere, converting my final edit into a caption file takes no time and just a few clicks”, says Toews.

Since TEAM started using Transcriptive in May 2020, transcribing, editing the transcripts, and creating captions became an everyday routine in the Marketing Department. A workflow that even the team members who do not have access to Premiere Pro can do by using the Transcriptive web app. Toews highlights that transcribing on Transcriptive.com it’s as easy as converting audio into text in Premiere Pro. [MOU1] On Transcriptive.com, his team can not only access the transcripts but also download them in many different formats such as Plain Text and Rich Text.

Transcribing Zoom audio files with Transcriptive

One of new effective uses the editors and producers at TEAM found for Transcriptive is to take advantage of the plugin to transcribe interviews done over ZOOM, a practice that is becoming more common as social distancing rules due to COVID are not likely to end soon. Multimedia Video Producer Kameron Toews explains that interviewing missionaries remotely has been part of their workflow for a while, but it became a regular practice during COVID specially because he found that he can get great accuracy in spite of the poor audio quality of the recordings. “It’s extremely helpful to know that I can trust Transcriptive to give me a solid transcript from ZOOM files. Many of these recorded ZOOM interviews are for marketing purposes, and we are interviewing a lot of missionaries, staff, etc for promotional stories. The content has been received pretty well by our audience and I believe the number of remote interviews done over ZOOM will continue to increase”, Toews says.

Toews has also used Transcriptive to transcribe Skype audio and believes this is one of the reasons the plugin has become a great asset for the Marketing Department at TEAM . “As video editor, I can quickly convert different types of audio and video files into text very quickly. Then, with the transcripts in Premiere Pro, it’s easy to skim an interview and pull out my soundbites, while my editor can grab quotes for the written articles and team members without access to Premiere Pro can see and download the transcripts on Transcriptive.com. It’s great and I just wish I’d known about Transcriptive sooner in my career.”, concludes Toews. This process is now done by the TEAM Marketing Department at a much lower cost than before and took only two days for them to figure out an efficient Transcriptive workflow to speed up their video production.

Clip Mode and PowerSearch make it easy for independent multimedia professional to meet tight deadlines without compromising quality

D.L. Watson has been a multimedia professional in the Pacific Northwest for 12 years. With experience on a wide gamut of projects, including documentary/reality-tv down to local business promos and real estate videos. He is very hands-on and usually completes his projects on his own from beginning to end. However, interview-based productions can be very time-consuming, and looking for plugins that integrate with Adobe Premiere Pro has been a constant task after he became a father and time became even more constraint.

According to Watson, video editing plugins have been a great solution whenever contracting other professionals in the industry to help with the productions is not a viable option. Or when he is working on projects, he would like to handle himself. “I’m very dedicated, hands-on, and love to be part of every process of a project I take on. As someone who primarily flies solo and is a recent father, you can imagine my days are jam-packed. So, when I have a project that comes in that requires interviews to be shot and edited, Transcriptive has been an indispensable tool to save me time”, he explains.

Especially when editing reality-based projects with lots of interview footage, Watson has found in Transcriptive a quick, efficient, and inexpensive way of weeding through the content fast and telling his client’s stories creatively. For him, having all the content transcribed in minutes inside of Premiere Pro changed his workflow as dramatically as when video production went from capturing media to offloading media. But the biggest changes came with the use of Clip Mode and PowerSearch, features that make Transcriptive go beyond automated transcripts, captioning and subtitling.

Using Clip Mode to edit video through text

Anytime D.L. Watson has interviews to transcribe; he runs them though Transcriptive. And that’s because Clip Mode has made it extremely easy for him to transcribe clips and quickly assemble sequences straight from the transcribed text generated by Transcriptive AI. “I love that I can quickly cut out “ums, ands, ahs” and even form brand new sentences by clicking on a word, applying my in-outs, and repeating until finished. The level of accuracy of when a speaker says something versus where the in/out-point occurs is incredible. Very rarely have I had to adjust a clip”, Watson says.

Additionally, having transcripts attached to the clip means that any segment Watson cuts from that clip will carry its designated piece of transcript to whatever sequence the segment is pasted into. This eliminates the costs of having to retranscribe each sequence and allows users to auto generate a new transcript for each new sequence they create at no additional cost. Learn more here.

The ability to transcribe all the footage rather than what is on a specific sequence is one of the biggest advantages of having Transcriptive 2.0 instead of older versions of Transcriptive, which only allowed users to transcribe sequences. It means Watson can not only have timecode transcripts in Premiere Pro, but also set in/out points on those transcripts to easily insert sound bites into his timeline. “By transcribing clips, I don’t have to pre-watch 45 minutes of interview content to find sound bites and assemble a sequence. It’s faster for me to read a transcript and understand the context of the footage than having to watch the footage and add markers to remember where certain parts are located”, guarantees Watson.

Finding content faster with PowerSearch

For anybody working on reality-based videos, having the ability to search keywords in your footage is perhaps the most useful outcome of converting video into text. With every spoken word transcribed, it’s possible to use that metadata to find content in your footage, a process that became much faster with the release of PowerSearch: our metadata search plugin for Premiere Pro. PowerSearch is now bundled with Transcriptive 2.0, and D.L. Watson highlights that using the plugins in conjunction has made a big difference in his video production process.

Even though Transcriptive has always had a search field available, earlier versions only allowed users to search keywords in each transcript. With PowerSearch, the metadata of an entire Premiere Pro project is indexed, allowing Watson to fully familiarize himself with footage without having to listen to all clips right away. “Twice since purchasing, I’ve had a client ask me to find a particular passage and instead of scrubbing or worse – watching 40 minutes of an interview to find a five-second sentence – I used PowerSearch to find the keywords mentioned, and it automatically took me to that words in-point”. Watson also remembers once a client instructed him to use a portion of an interview that did not exist, but he swore it was there. “With the export tool, I was able to tactfully present everything that was said and kindly ask what he’d like to focus on instead. He later thanked me and apologized for the phantom-memory.”, he says.

PowerSearch is now included with Trancriptive 2.0 purchases, as well as Transcriptive 1.0 to Transcriptive 2.0 license upgrades. Combined, these two Premiere Pro panels become an accurate, efficient, and easy way to speed up any video production process. If you would like to learn more about how D.L. Watson has been using Transcriptive, check this video he made for his Youtube channel! Trial licenses for both Transcriptive and PowerSearch plugins are available for download here.

Video Production company uses Transcriptive to craft impact videos for organizations and nonprofits

After helping to run several media departments in Orange County (CA), video maker Zach Dove decided it was time to break free and find new ways to assist other businesses in creatively communicating their particular message. He started ZD Productions in 2008 and has been continually working to further his knowledge of storytelling through the medium of motion/still pictures as well as graphic arts.

The company quickly evolved along the years, but its mission stayed the same. “We provide a place of collaboration where we each bring our distinctive talents to the building of a more powerful story that will motivate your audience to thought and action”, explains Dove. The main goal is to provide highly personalized videos in a short period of time, which requires a skilled team, a lot of dedication and constant investments in new technologies.

Transcriptive: a new way to transcribe, search and edit content

The ZD Productions crew shoots around 50 hours of footage every month and going through all the clips to find sound bites used to be very time-consuming. “We mostly shoot social impact videos for organizations and nonprofits so all of our videos are very heavy on the interviews. We use Transcriptive to transcribe the entire interview so that we can read through it, highlight the sound bites that we feel are going to be useful, and start assembling the story”, explains Dove.

The ability to get his footage transcribed almost instantly makes it possible for Dove’s team to start piecing together the story quicker, sometimes moments after they finish the actual interview. “It has seriously been an incredibly freeing experience to be able to quickly (and cheaply!) receive transcripts of our interviews. It speeds up the editing process too. As now, instead of trying to scrub through hours of interviews to find that one sound bite that we’re pretty sure somebody said on Day 2 of the shoot, we can simply search the transcripts for particular words or phrases and BOOM! There we have it”, says Dove.

For Dove and his team, Transcriptive has been a very efficient way to convert speech into text quickly and efficiently. Although he still goes back to the original footage to catch eventual Artificial Intelligence mistakes on the transcripts, Dove highlights that having transcripts time-coded inside of Premiere Pro in minutes is an incredible advantage. “Transcriptive allows us to spend more time on crafting the story and polishing the visuals and not waste hours on transcribing everything by hand or going back through the interviews looking for a specific sound bite. I Most definitely would recommend the plugin to anybody wanting to produce videos more efficiently”, Dove concludes.

Transcriptive improves corporate and documentary video production workflows

The Flying Fedora is always looking for new ways to tell a compelling, authentic story through the power of video. At Brandon Freeman’s production company, unique scripts and creative visuals for documentary films, marketing videos, and book trailers are carefully shot based on each client’s needs. According to Freeman, “It’s simple – we’re not interested in keeping the craft of video production a mystery. Our experience and hard work are what make us valuable to you, not classified secrets of the trade”.

With no secrets to hide, Freeman talked to us about how he has been taking advantage of Transcriptive to speed up his projects, fulfill his client’s requests and lower production costs. He has been using Transcriptive since May 2019 and says that having timecoded transcripts in minutes at a low cost has simplified the Flying Fedora daily routine significantly. “We work with all types of productions, but Transcriptive has been particularly helpful to a documentary on cancer survivors we are currently editing for a client. We have used the Transcriptive AI service to transcribe about 5 interviews so far. Although not perfect, the transcriptions are coming out pretty great and having a timecoded transcript in such a short period of time is a lifesaver”, says Freeman.

For both documentary and corporate videos, The Flying Fedora is using Transcriptive to find sound bites faster and add captions to every production. “Transcriptive has revolutionized my video production process. When I have to edit ten 15-min interviews down to 3 minutes I gotta jump into the work and find the sound bites I need as fast as possible. Transcriptive multiplies my productivity 100 fold”, Freeman adds.

The Flying Fedora Workflow

Constantly judgling different projects and clients, Freeman believes Transcriptive helped find an efficient workflow for his busy schedule. “The first step after we shoot is to transcribe the interviews and highlight the best bits so we can start planning the cuts and selecting what information will get into the final piece. In this process, I like to print a text file of the transcripts so the creative director can also point out important pieces of the interview he would like to see on the final edit. This ability has leveraged my workflow considerably and allowed me to save time on editing because it gives me a better picture of what clients envision to have on the screen very early on in the process”, says Freeman.

Freeman has transcribed footage with both Transcriptive AI and Speechmatics and highlights either speech engines have generated accurate results. The editing process starts right after creative directors, producers and clients give their feedback based on the transcripts. Because the transcription is timecoded, it’s very easy for the editor to find highlighted segments of the clip and bring them into a new sequence to create the story. In Brandon’s opinion, being able to automatically load a new transcript for the cut sequence without the need to re-transcribe the clips is one of his favorite Transcriptive features. It makes it possible for him to have a better picture of the story he is creating as he goes and saves his team a lot of time on captioning.

When the story is all cut together, it’s time to tweak the transcript and get started with captioning the final video. For him, having perfect transcripts right away is not crucial so he prefers to correct misspelled words on the conformed transcript that will be used for captions. “Even when the transcript is confusing to read, they still provide me with a map of the interview that helps me navigate much more efficiently so I leave the fine-tuning for last. There are definitely times where the AI transcription will get it wrong. However, if you can look past these minor errors, you will see that your productivity in the selection process will triple”, explains Freeman.

Captions and Subtitles made easy

Because Transcriptive allows users to export their transcripts as SRT, STL, VTT, or SMPTE-TT (XML) files, the Flying Fedora team prefers to create captions inside of Premiere Pro rather than using Youtube, Vimeo, and Facebook to subtitle videos. “I find I’m able to move faster in an NLE than in a web browser. Add on to this the fact that Transcriptive has already provided me with a transcription that I can export to “.SRT”, my focus becomes correcting a few errors instead of typing the captions from scratch”, explains Freeman.

To correct the errors, Freeman takes advantage of the timecoded words to quickly inspect what was said and uses the Transcriptive text editor shortcuts to replace words faster. In his experience, correcting misspelled last names and medical terms, for example, seem a lot of work at first, but is definitely not a difficult process. His biggest recommendation for Transcriptive users who have just started using the plugin to create captions is that they get prepared to do a bit of phonetic reading. “As I said transcription mistakes will happen with AI, but there’s more to Transcriptive than just getting transcripts. It’s fantastic as it simplifies and speeds up my workflow from beginning to end. I am glad I decided to bring the plugin home to Flying Fedora”, concludes Freeman.

Chris Neufeld: Online Videos for Willow Park Church

Having acquired a significant deaf community at Willow Park Church, we needed to figure out a way to get our online videos available to them. At first I considered recording the American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter, but was told that some hearing impaired people do not understand sign language well. So instead, I have been using Transcriptive to subtitle our online videos for the deaf. I’m also working [with our lead pastor] on a series of podcasts and I’ve been using Transcriptive to produce transcripts of the podcasts in order to make them searchable. (Note: We’ve not release the podcasts yet.)

One of the most useful and time saving features of Transcriptive is the fact that our lead pastor was born in the United Kingdom (UK), but has done ministry in many parts of the world which has resulted in a very unique accent. While there are many speech-to-text engines available, none could understand his accent. Transcriptive works very well. This saves us a lot of time too, being that we used to spend many hours manually transcribing. The time we now spend on it is reduced significantly. Seeing the text highlighted as the track is played, and being able to make edits without your hands needing to leave the keyboard is brilliant!

Until I used Transcriptive, I couldn’t find a speech-to-text engine that worked well with two speakers in an interview situation. This has been particularly helpful and Transcriptive does an amazing job, and it reliably identifies the two speakers. Speaking of which, the transcripts have been very accurate. Which is significant since I haven’t been able to find an engine that understands [our pastor’s] accent until now.

I’ve been recommending Transcriptive to colleagues now, and will continue to do so in the future.

Chris Neufeld, Willow Park Church

Kelley Slagle: Short Films, Web Series & Feature Documentary for Cavegirl Productions

Kelley Slagle began directing, producing and editing independent films with Cavegirl Productions in 2004. Here she talks about her advantages with using Digital Anarchy’s transcribing plugin.

I first heard of Transcriptive while preparing a talk I was giving on documentary editing for Post|Production World at the NAB Show earlier this year (and ended up recommending [it] to attendees of the class).

We are using Transcriptive to transcribe all of our interviews for EYE OF THE BEHOLDER. We have 40+ hours of footage, and the idea of paying a premium for that much manual transcription was daunting. I am in the editing phase now. We are collaborating with a co-producer in New York, and need to share our ideas for edits and content with him, so he is reviewing transcripts generated by Transcriptive and sending us his feedback and vice versa.

The ability to get mostly accurate transcription (I would estimate 85%) versus completely accurate is fine for us, as we did not expect the engine to know proper names of characters and places in Dungeons & Dragons. We are able to find what we need by searching a text file or searching the metadata thanks to the feature of saving the markers in our timelines. As editor, I will now be able to find an exact quote that one of my co-producers refers to, or find something by subject matter, and [I] anticipate this will speed up the editing process greatly. And when it is time to do transcription/captions of our completed project, I will use the plug in again on final exports.

As I said, I have recommended and continue to recommend Transcriptive to producers and editors. I was thrilled to hear of it earlier this year, and so glad to have become a regular user.

Cavegirl Productions, headed by founders Kelley Slagle and Seth Polansky, has produced numerous successful projects since 2004, including 13 short films, a web series, and is the creative force behind 2014’s award-winning comedy feature, OF DICE AND MEN. Additionally, Cavegirl Productions is on target for releasing a feature documentary in 2018 – EYE OF THE BEHOLDER, THE ART OF DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS.

Kelley Slagle

Cavegirl Productions