In this video tutorial, we will take a look at how to transcribe audio and video files with MAXQDA. In MAXQDA, we can either transcribe audio or video files automatically using the new automatic transcription feature, or create transcriptions of audio or video files manually. In this video, we will take a look at both options and start with the automatic transcription feature. When we import an audio or video file into MAXQDA, we can either only import the file, link it to an existing transcript, or automatically transcribe it using MAXQDA Transcription. Then this transcription window opens. To transcribe audio files you can purchase minute packages from our shop. However, to start out we give you 60 minutes for free. Up here you can see how many minutes remain on your budget and if you have already purchased time, you can redeem the corresponding code here. Here we can now select the language of our audio or video file and in order to increase transcription accuracy, we can now also add our own vocabulary of special words or phrases here. We can now start the transcription by clicking this button here. Once the transcription is finished, the newly created transcript will be linked to our audio or video file in the documents window.
Now let’s take a look at how to transcribe audio and video files manually in MAXQDA. In the import tab, we can find the appropriate import options for audio and video files, and we can now import our files by clicking this button. To start transcribing, we right click on our audio or video file in the documents window and select “Transcribe Manually” from the context menu. MAXQDA then automatically switches to transcription mode. In this mode, we will see the audio file displayed in the multimedia browser at the top. Below the Multimedia Browser we can see a Document Browser window into which we can type our transcription, and in the transcription settings window we can adjust the settings for our transcription. We can now play the recording by pressing F4 or clicking the play icon.
If we press F4 again, the recording will be paused. Meanwhile, we can start transcribing in the Document Browser by typing in what we hear in the audio file. When we press F4 again, MAXQDA jumps back a few seconds in the recording so that we can listen to the last segment again and compare it with our transcript. We can adjust this rewind interval in the transcription settings, and if we click on this icon here in the Multimedia Browser, we can additionally bring up the control panel that allows us to adjust the volume of the audio file and the playback speed.
Here the interviewer has asked a question and there is a speaker change coming up. If we activate the functions “Timestamps on enter” and “Automatic speaker change” in the transcription settings, a timestamp and a speaker abbreviation is set when we press enter. In order for MAXQDA to correctly recognize the speaker changes, I have placed an “I” for the interviewing person at the beginning. Now we press F4 again and listen to the answer of the interviewed person.
If we want to transcribe focus groups with MAXQDA, we can also define multiple speaker abbreviations, which we can edit in the transcription settings. Here we also have the option to insert text modules, for example, to indicate certain occurrences in our audio or video files. With F6, we can insert additional timestamps manually. However, we have to make sure that the order of timestamps in the transcript is analog to the order of timestamps in the audio file. The timestamps now connect the audio file and the transcript. If I click on one of the timestamps in the transcript, the audio file will be played from that point.
By clicking on this icon, we can also display the timestamps in a list view and then start annotating them, for example to create summaries. Transcribing video files basically works the same. The only difference is that with video files, the video is also displayed in the Multimedia Browser. And when the transcription is finished, we simply close the transcription by closing the Multimedia Browser. And now we can continue working with the transcript in our MAXQDA project, code it, and analyze it using the wide variety of MAXQDA features. And that’s it. You can find further video tutorials right here on our YouTube channel or on our website. We wish you all the best for your project.
