Transana's lead developer is David Woods. This page records his thoughts on his development work. Check it frequently; David updates it fairly regularly.

On the sidebar are some links to specific development-related issues.

September 2, 2010

Transana 2.42 is finally ready for release. The biggest change for this release is that the database tree now allows multiple selection and acting on multiple elements of the same type at the same time. It's definitely a time-saver. In addition, the synchronization dialog has been improved. The Notes Browser is no longer modal, meaning you can leave it open in the background to make it easier to modify Analytic Memos as you go.

The next set of revisions is likely to be a large one. I'll be replacing the transcription component. There are many reasons to go in this direction, but it means the 2.50 release (or perhaps it will be a 3.00 release) will be out in late 2011 at best, probably 2012 more realistically. It's a pretty fundamental change, and is a pretty delicate operation. I have a LOT of plans for new features that this change will allow.

August 25, 2010

I'm now doing the final testing for the Transana 2.42 release. Multi-select has come together well, though it is one of those changes that had a number of surprising implications. I kept finding new variations I needed to implement. I don't know if I got everything that makes sense, but it's one of those changes that reached "I can't live without this" status pretty immediately. I'll be interested to see what the feedback is once the release is out.

I'm pretty pleased with the new Synchronization dialog. I think the redesign really makes it easier to synchronize media files. Jeff had some really good ideas there.

I'm not done with this release yet, and already I have so many ideas for what I'd like to do with the next release.

I killed off the Discussion Board a few weeks ago. It was taking a LOT of time to keep spammers off, and there really wasn't much traffic there. I may make a couple of adjustments and resurrect it, or I may just forget about it. So far, handling all the support through e-mail instead of through the discussion board doesn't feel any different, except that I'm saving a TON of time not having to keep an eye on the board.

February 25, 2010

I've added support for *.aac audio files. I also made a minor change in the Import routine so that duplicate Keywords don't interrupt the whole import process.

I'm now working on integrating the new transcription component into Transana. I expected it to be a bit tricky, and I was right. This is going to take a while.

February 18, 2010

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been working on implementing multiple item selection in the Database tree. There are some analytic activities that are much easier and faster to accomplish when you can select multiple nodes in the database tree and then do the same thing to all of them.

To preserve my own sanity and to avoid the potential for bugs, I'm limiting multiple selections to same object types. If you want to delete a couple of collections, plus selected additional clips from another collection, you'll have to do this in two operations (one for collections, another for additional clips) rather than one operation. Still, this is better than having to do each collection and additional clip separately.

There are only a few activities where multiple selection is helpful, but in those instances, I think it can be VERY helpful.

January 28, 2010

The past few weeks, I've been experimenting with a new text editor component. I'm considering replacing Transana's transcript editor with a new component that will support a number of features that the old one simply can't support. The primary new feature I'm interested in is the ability to add images to the transcript, but the new control also brings a number of other useful features to the table.

This is still very experimental. As I said, the new control adds some interesting and valuable capabilities. However, it also lacks some very basic features that we probably need. It's still an open question whether I'll be able to compensate for those capacities.

December 2, 2009

Okay, I've pretty well finished the development phase of Transana 2.41. It will be a minor upgrade, available for free to anyone who has purchased or upgraded to 2.40.

I've added a couple of things since my last post. First, I created a new visual report called the Collection Keyword Map. It's a lot like the Episode Keyword Map, except you run in on collections. Because collections can hold clips from different media files, the horizontal axis represents an artificial time line created by placing all the clips in the collection side by side, rather than getting the time line from the media file the way an Episode Keyword Map does. If the order of your clips in a collection is meaningful, you might be able to interpret horizontally, but usually you'll use it to explore relationships between keywords within clips in the same collection.

I also added a parameter that allows you to turn off Word Wrap in the transcripts. This may be helpful to people trying to do horizontal formatting in their transcripts with fixed-width fonts.

Finally, I re-worked the Filter Dialog for the Keyword Map. Since color can now represent keyword instead of clip in the Keyword Map and in the Collection Keyword Map, I had to make sure users could select what colors were associated with what keywords.

My plan is to send the translation files out tomorrow and to spend some time editing the Manual and Tutorial files in the next couple of weeks.

November 17, 2009

Okay, a lot has happened since my last post. Let's review

The 2.40 release officially came out on October 26th.

Since then, I've added a few minor features for the next release.

• Support for *.m4v media files.
  
  
• The ability to copy and move Notes to equivalent objects. That is, you can move a Collection Note to another collection, etc.
  
  
• A configuration setting for transcript tab size. Some Conversation Analysts were having alignment problems using tabs, which I traced to beign related to tab size.
  
  
• When zoomed in, the Visualization Window will now automatically scroll as the video plays or as the user moves around in the transcript.
  
  
• Playback Looping, a transcription aid, has been added.
  
  
• You can now create a new Keyword by dragging text from a Transcript to a Keyword Group. The dragged text will become the Keyword.
  
  
• I added multi-select capacity to the Filter Dialog (for re-ordering and bulk selection) and to the Color Configuration tool (for re-ordering and deleting items).
  
  
• I added a configuration parameter for the Keyword Map that allows the user to select whether color represents Clips (the old system) or Keyword (as like the Keyword Visualization).

I've also fixed three bugs.

• The synchronize dialog was hard to use if the videos involved had too high a resolution.
  
  
• Certain transcripts containing Korean characters, digits, and certain time code characteristics could not be time-coded and did not display segments properly. (This could also come into play with other non-English languages, though I haven't seen any examples of that.)
  
  
• One user's data did not upgrade fully, leaving two new columns in the database without default values. The effect of this is that clips made prior to upgrading did not function. I added code to detect and compensate for this circumstance. I was not able to determine the reason for the upgrade failure.

Although I have had only a single report of each of these bugs, I'm planning on putting out a next release sooner than I would have otherwise.

September 28, 2009

I've just returned from the Visual Methods conference in Leeds, England, and from providing a 2-day Transana workshop for the CAQDAS project at University of Surrey. It was a very successful and productive trip.

One of the main things to come out of the trip is that I'm getting a lot of encouragement to add processing of still images to Transana. I'm taking a day or two to write up the ideas that came up during these discussions before I return to the task of testing Transana 2.40. That it might take a couple of days to write it all up indicates the magnitude of encouragement I was given and the level of detail several of the discussions went into. Thanks Paul and Christina and to all of participants in the CAQDAS workshop.

I also got a number of very good suggestions for modifications to the Visualization Window which I will likely implement shortly after 2.40 is released. Thanks John!

August 19, 2009

Sorry this is taking so long. Busy summer, and this is a complex release.

I'm still testing. I've found and fixed a number of bugs in this release, and still have more testing to do. Most of these bugs are no-big-deal things that only I would notice. There have been one or two that I'm surprised nobody had mentioned to me, though.

I doubt I'll get the release out by the end of August at this point. I will try to get it out before the Visual Methods conference in Leeds in September, but at this point I can't promise it.

June 26, 2009

I distributed Transana 2.40 Beta 1 within WCER yesterday. I start the final round of formal testing today. I'll release it when I'm done with that, probably in August. You can get a glimpse at the new features by looking at the Release Notes.

I've been busy recently with conferences, including ICQI and GLS. My hope is to have the new version out before the next conference I'm signed up for in September.

March 3, 2009

The new "multiple simultaneous media files" feature is working really well. I'm still finding issues that need to be address, but that's expected.

I added Text Search capacity to the text-based reports. I added an "Audio and Transcript Only" presentation mode, for when you want to play audio without showing a picture at a conference. I modified Presentation Mode so that the transcript text is shown considerably larger, as the small text was pretty unreadable for conference presentations. I also added Quick Searches, which allow one-click access to searches of a single keyword. Finally, I have re-worked the meaning of double-clicking in the data window just slightly to make things a bit more intuitive for new users. This is based primarily on watching new users in workshops make the same assumptions over and over about what should happen when one double-clicks something in the data window.

I've had four or five reports of version 2.30 not being able to start the first time for Windows users who run Windows in languages other than English and whose user names contain non-English characters. This was a tough problem to diagnose, and a very difficult one for me to recreate. After several failed attempts, I'm now fairly confident that I have sorted out the full problem and it is resolved for the next release.

February 4, 2009

I think I now have all aspects of multiple simultaneous media files working satisfactorily. I need to update the database export and database import tools to reflect changes I made in the database, and I need to write the documentation for the new features, and I need to do a ton of testing. Otherwise, the new feature is done and is working really well. Now I just need to find someone with real data to try it out.

January 13, 2009

Multiple Media File Transana development is going really well. I've discovered and solved a lot of issues along the way, and am now convinced that this is really going to work. There will be certain complexities and limitations, but if you can live with that, this is going to be really cool.

Let's start with multiple video episodes. You can currently have up to four simultaneous media files in an episode. If they don't start at the same time, I've built a synchronization tool that makes it reasonably easy to get the files synched up and running in tandem. I've been able to achieve really good results with my MPEG-1, MOV, and MP4 test videos.

It's possible, even likely, that the multiple video files will have non-overlapping audio content, so I've added a feature that lets you turn the audio for each video on or off independently. I think this capacity is going to be important for some people.

Multiple video clips are also coming together nicely too. You can select which media files get included in a given clip, and you can choose which of the included media files have their audio on by default when the clip is loaded, as a way of highlighting certain aspects of the sound if needed. Regular clips, Quick Clips, and multi-transcript clips all work, as of today.

I've found that this feature requires more processing power than single-media Transana. No big surprise there. If you have a computer that's several years old, this feature may not work well for you. I've also found that "fat" video files, such as MPEG-2 and high-bitrate MOV files don't work as well as "slimmer" video files, such as MPEG-1 and lower-bitrate MOV files do. It may take a bit of experimentation to determine recommended video settings. But I've had enough media files work in the new system that I'm confident that you can have decent quality video.

I do NOT yet have access to the SMPTE time code data that is embedded in some media files. This will require a level of technical expertise that I simply don't have, and I don't have the money to hire someone to do the necessary work at this time. However, despite dire warnings to the contrary, I have not found this to be a major obstacle. But it's important to note that all of my test videos were shot with same-model cameras and were digitized and manipulated on the same decent-quality equipment, yielding videos that are able to maintain near-perfect synchronization, without drift, for over an hour. At present, it's working far better than I could ever have imagined.

The implication is that what I'm developing will NOT work perfectly in all cases. But it will work well enough in MANY cases, and that makes it worth doing. It's got some really interesting implications for people with multi-camera or multi-source data. And it's very cool to play with.

November 4, 2008

I've started experimenting with a multiple video interface. It's just early experimenting, but the results so far are interesting.

With MPEG-1 video on Windows, I can show 3 simultaneous videos. Synchronization isn't perfect, even as a stand-alone with just 3 video frames and none of the rest of Transana's overhead. There seem to be limits to how close I can get the separate streams running. If you have audio up in all three windows, you can hear that they're slighly out of synch, but it's only a frame or two, so if you only have one audio track playing, it actually looks pretty good. Of course, we'll have to see what happens when we add in synchronizing a transcript, etc.

With MOV video on Windows, I can't even get two video streams to play decently in my stand-alone video player app. The audio is in perfect synchronization, but the video frames simply don't update adequately. One frame is jerky, but the other doesn't seem to update at all. MOV video looks like a non-starter to me.

My second attempt with QuickTime MOV video was MUCH more successful. I just rendered it as a lower bitrate with smaller images, and it works just fine.

Obviously I have a lot more exploring to do, but at the very least, this is starting to look feasible.

October 29, 2008

Release is finally out. Yeah. Now to get the notification e-mails out.