Transana Version 5.22, Released September 5, 2024

This release is most important for Transana Multiuser.  It includes the following changes:

• For Transana Multiuser, connection issues seemed to be increasingly common.  The most common form of this problem was a message that stated that the MySQL connection had been lost.  Transana now re-establishes both MySQL and Message Server connections better when internet issues break the connection with the server.
• For Transana Multiuser, there were sometimes problems with copying and moving Library, Episode, and Trasncripts Notes.  These problems have been resolved.
• Difficulties could arise when pasting to Episodes items.  This has been fixed.
• The size of the “Import Media Files with Automated Transcription” form was reduced to fit on laptops with a resolution of less than 1920 x 1080.
• I made several changes to the Guide pages.

Transana Version 5.21, Released July 15, 2024

Transana 5.21 is characterized by subtle interface improvements and minor bug-fixes. The following issues were addressed:

• The Properties forms for Quotes, PDF Quotes, and Clips were enlarged, as was the Edit Keyword LIst form. This should make coding a bit easier.
• Spreadsheet Data Import was no longer working properly in some circumstances. For example, if case was inconsistent in a field that was used for a Keyword, some instances of the keyword were not properly applied.
• You can’t use Transana in “dark mode” on macOS. Certain crucial elements of the interface are not visible. Transana now detects dark mode on macOS and displays a message to the user.
• Resizing the Document Window with multiple open transcripts now distributes the changes evenly.
• When multiple Transcripts are open, cut, copy, and paste work a little more smoothly between them. (There is a fairly subtle difference.)

Transana 5.20 includes the following improvements:

• Added a new “Import Media Files with Automated Transcripts” tool.
  • Available in the Library menu.
  • Select multiple video and audio files for import and automated transcription.
  • Automated transcription is processed on the researcher’s computer.  No data is shared with external servers.
  • Automated transcripts are created as a background process, allowing researchers to proceed with their analytic work while additional transcript are being created.
• Added user options to the “Export Transcripts” function.  Researchers can now customize file format and time code settings.
• A Time Code Frequency option was added for Speechmatics as part of improving consistency between the Faster Whisper, Speechmatics, and Deepgram automated transcription tools.
• Implemented the ability to move Transcripts from one Episode to another in the Database Tree.
• New databases are now automatically given a “My Files” Library.
• Several Guide pages have been revised to be clearer and to appear in a more logical time.
• Bug fixes, including:
  • When Transana is set to a secondary monitor, the Splash screen and more popup forms now appear on that monitor instead of the computer’s primary monitor.
  • Installation of supplemental files did not function properly in Transana 5.11 on macOS.
  • Exported DOCx files had the wrong File Date, Creation Date, and Modified Date values.
  • Exported transcripts with human readable time codes or no time codes were sometimes improperly formatted.
  • Paragraph Formatting options sometimes failed.
  • A user provided a DOCx file with Jeffersonian “open dot” characters that was implemented in a way that Transana could not import.  This narrow issue is now detected and handled.

Transana 5.11 fixes two issues:

• The Deepgram Automated Transcription option did not work correctly.
• A problem with the Search Library Report that I fixed 5 months ago re-appeared.

The main new feature of Transana 5.10 is embedded automated transcription. You can now access the power of artifical-intelligence-powered automated transcription on your own computer, without having to send your data to someone else’s server. Using an embedded automated transcription tool provides high quality transcription zero risk of data exposure. The new embedded automated transcription tool can also create an English transcript from non-English data.

Transana 5.10 also fixes some obscure bugs:

• We added an option for time-coding every word during automated transcription for the Deepgram and Faster Whisper options.
• We altered the configuration form for Deepgram automated transcription to clarify language support of the different transription “tiers” offered.
• We discovered and fixed minor issues with automated transcription when Transana’s interface was in a language other than English.
• We updated the links on Transana’s Guide Pages to match improvements we made in the online Tutorial.
• We changed Transana’s handling of parentheses in Keyword Groups and Keywords.
• We fixed an error that could occur when PDF data could not be found.
• On Windows, moving Transana to a different display with a different resolution or scaling factor caused problems with the Menu window. This has been fixed.
• We fixed an issue where editing Transcript properties caused the plain-text copy of the transcript to be temporarily lost.
• We improved the security of Transana Multiuser’s Message Server by changing to a newer SSL option.
• We discovered and fixed a problem with Clip (and possiblly other) record locks that were not expiring correctly.

Transana 5.05 fixes several bug.

• We improved the order of pages in the Automated Transcription tool, making the process smoother and more logical.
• When a user changed a media file’s name, either in the Find Missing Files tool or the Media Conversion tool, the matching Core Data record was not being updated to reflect the change.
• You could not create the Search Library Report.
• Some users were having difficulty with the Authorization process. We improved the error message, making it easier for users to resolve the underlying problem.
• We modified the Computer Lab version, making it easier to run a lab where users log into their own user profiles.
• Transana Multiuser 5.04 contained an error that prevented users of databases on servers that allowed mixed case table names from logging in for some circumstances.

Transana 5.04 fixes an obscure but frustratiung bug. This bug only appears in Transana Multiuser, and only in databases that were upgraded to Transana 5.x from Transana 4.x. Under these circumstances, users could not create PDF Quotes from PDF Documents they added to their databases. There were several situations where Transana would crash, requiring a Force Quit, invalid PDF Quotes were sometimes created, and Keywords could not be propagated from PDF Documents to PDF Quotes. Version 5.04 corrects the underlying issues and fixes any invalid PDF Quotes that arose due to this issue.

Transana 5.03 adds the following new features:

• Transana 5.03 adds automated Transcription using the Deepgram speech recognition engine. Deepgram supports over 30 languages, provides confidence estimates at the word level, and is fully integrated into Transana. A Deepgram account is required to use this feature.

  Please note that this is an external cloud-based service, so you will need approval from your IRB or other ethics board before you make use of this feature.

• Transana 5.03 re-introduces an Arabic translation on Windows, allowing support for analysis of right-to-left text and transcription in Arabic.

Transana 5.03 contains several bug fixes.

• Text-based reports would crash when they included too many images. (The limit I found in the reported example was about 370 images.) This limitation has been eliminated.
• Creation of reports with images on macOS has been streamlined to reduce screen flicker and the temporary appearance of empty windows on screen.

As always, if you experience issues with Transana, please report them through the Contact Form. I can only fix bugs that I know about

Transana Version 5.02, Released August 14, 2023

Transana 5.02 contains several bug fixes.

• If you pasted a Keyword onto a PDF Quote or a Collection with PDF Quotes, the keyword could get assigned incorrectly to a Quote instead of the PDF Quote.
• You could not move or copy a PDF Quote to a new Collection.
• There was an issue that prevented exporting and re-importing empty transcripts.
• You could not import Transana Database Export (*.tra) files that contained Polygon coding in a Snapshot or PDF Snapshot in Transana Multiuser.
• You could not drop or paste a single Keyword onto multiple Episodes at once.
• We added more punctuation symbols to mark the end of a sentence in Automated Transcription.
• You could not use *.wav files with Automated Transcription under some circumstances.
• There was an encoding issue of a non-visible character when using Speechmatics Automated Transcription in Chinese.
• The Help button on the Program Settings dialog box did not work correctly.
• There was a problem with dropping a file on the directory where it already existed in File Management.

Transana Version 5.01, Released June 6, 2023

Transana 5.01 contains several minor bug fixes.

• You could not create new still-image Snapshots or edit existing still-image Snapshots if Transana’s interface language was set to a language other than English.
• You could not drop files from the operating system onto places in Transana that should have been able to accept OS file drop actions.
• If you had a completely blank Transcript, sometimes you could not export your database.
• If you had no Collections created, you could not perform text searches on your Documents, PDF Documents, or Episode Transcripts.

All of these issues have been resolved.

Transana Version 5.00, Released May 22, 2023

Transana 5.00 contains several significant changes and several smaller, but still important, changes.

Automated Transcription

Transana 5.00 supports automated Transcription using the Speechmatics.com speech recognition engine. Speechmatics currently supports automated transcription in 48 languages, provides information about the confidence of each word in the transcription, and is fully integrated with Transana. They currently offer limited transcription for free and subscriptions for projects that require more than the free accounts provide.

Please note that this is an external cloud-based service, so you will need approval from your IRB or other ethics board before you make use of this feature. I am, however, working with them to develop an embedded version of their transcription engine that would likely not have this requirement.

PDF Documents

Transana 5.00 supports importing PDF Documents. You can identify segments of the PDF as either text selections or graphical selections for coding and categorization. This allows you to create PDF Text Quotes, which behave like Quotes for text data, or you can create PDF Snapshots, which behave like still-image Snapshots in Transana, allowing you to choose between textual and visual analysis of PDF data.

Polygons now available as a Coding Shape option

Transana 5.0 adds “Polygon” as an option for coding Snapshots and PDF Snapshots. This allows you to create more precise Coding Shapes that more closely reflect the potions of visual data you want to code.

Additional Tabs in the Data Window

Media and Text data have had additional Data Window tabs for as long as they have been supported. Transana 5.0 adds additional Data Window tabs for Snapshots as well as for the new PDF Documents and Selections.

Improved Transcript Export

Transana 5.0 adds Transcript Export as a right-click option. You can choose to export a single transcript, all transcripts for an Episode, all transcripts for all Episodes in a Library, or even all transcripts in all Episodes in all Libraries. Transcripts are exported in Word *.DOCx format, are saved in the same directory where the media file they describe is stored, and are named after their media file.

Bug Fixes

Several annoying bugs were identified and fixed.

Transana Version 4.03, Released May 6, 2022

Transana 4.03 contains one change. It’s a little subtle. Here’s way more information than you want to know.

Apple’s *.mov format has been around for many years. However, Apple has made significant changes to the format over the years. Here are some of the high points.

• Originally (or at least years ago), *.mov videos were encoded with a codec called Sorensen Vector Quantizer 3, or SVQ3 for short.
• At some point, Apple changed the internal video encoding of *.mov files from SVQ3 to H.264 encoding, the encoding behind the MP4 format. If you loaded an old-format *.mov file into the QuickTime player, the file would be converted as you watched a progress bar dance across the screen. If you saved a file, as you were encouraged to do, “(Converted)” was suggested as an addition to the file name and the H.264 encoded video was saved within the *.mov wrapper. I’m not exactly sure when they started doing this, as I never loaded *.mov files directly into the QuickTime Player, but I’ve seen this as far back as macOS 10.10, Yosemite.
• When macOS 10.15, Catalina came out, you could no longer play old-style SVQ3 *.mov files. The automatic format conversion functionality of the previous few macOS versions was gone, and Apple no longer, as far as I am aware, offers any options for converting those files.

Supporting Apple’s *.mov format within Transana was something of a challenge on Windows as well.

• For a long time, users could install Apple’s QuickTime for Windows player and Transana could use that to display *.mov videos.
• At some point, security issues were raised about QuickTime for Windows. Apple decided to stop supporting the product.
• At some later point, my programming tools dropped support for the QuickTime for Windows player as well, so that was no longer an option. Transana 4.00 explicitly excluded *.mov videos on both Windows and macOS.

Well, it turns out I was being overly cautious in Transana 4.00. While it is not possible to display old-style SVQ3-encoded *.mov files on either operating system, it turns out that you can display converted H264-encoded *.mov files on both macOS and Windows!

The point of all of this is that Transana 4.03 includes code that detects the internal video encoding used in *.mov files and enables researchers to use H.264-encoded files in their analyses on both operating systems. If you still have old SVQ3-encoded files, Transana’s Media Conversion tool can still convert them for you as well.

Transana Version 4.02, Released May 3, 2022

Transana 4.02 contains two feature enhancements.

• I enhanced the “Text Time Code Conversion” routine so that it recognizes more forms of time information.  This allows conversion of time data from a number of external speech-to-text tools including Otter.ai and YouTube.
• MySQL changed the rules about UTF-8 character encoding at some point.  As a result, Text Search would fail when Transana Multiuser was connected to a MySQL server released after the change was made.  Transana now handles this change appropriately.

Transana 4.02 also contains a number of fixes for mostly rare and obscure issues in previous versions of Transana.

• If you were not consistent in how you used character case when entering Keyword Group names, it was possible to cause problems with how Transana presented Keyword Group : Keyword pairs.  For example, “Keyword Group : Keyword 1” and “Keyword group : Keyword 2” could not coexist because of differences in capitalization in the Keyword Groups.  This problem has been resolved, with Transana allowing only one variation of the Keyword Group.  If you think your data may have been affected by this issue, please contact us.
• If you were using multiple simultaneous transcripts, Transana had a problem switching between transcripts if the “Show/Hide Time Code Values” setting was not the same.  This problem has been resolved.
• If you used “Locate Clip in Episode”, some of the right-click behaviors in Transana’s main interface were not functioning correctly.
• Under some circumstances, the Collection right-click menu’s “Add Clip” option was not working correctly. 
• “Text Time Code Conversion” was incorrectly interpreting some decimal values for seconds, sometimes failing to assign correct digit place, and sometimes truncating the last digit of decimal values. 
• Version 4.00 broke the ability to copy Collections containing nested Collections.  Version 4.02 repairs this functionality.
• A new issue with importing dates in Core Data records popped up recently.  This issue was addressed.

Transana Version 4.01, Released November 2, 2021

Transana 4.01 contains two minor bug fixes for Transana.

• In the File Management tool, the Copy File function was not working correctly due to a minor typo.
• In Transana Multiuser, the Database Export tool was not handling dates correctly, causing most exports to fail.

Transana Version 4.00, Released May 7, 2021

Transana 4.00 represents a major overhaul of Transana.

• We have upgraded from a 32-bit architecture to a 64-bit architecture on both Windows and macOS.  This means that Transana 4.00 will run on macOS 10.15 Catalina and macOS 11.2 Big Sur.
• We have added code signing and notarization to our build processes to improve program validation by operating systems.
• We improved Media Size functionality, making media size relative to the size of the screen rather than the size of the media file.
• We have added an Autocomplete feature, allowing you to define expandable text shortcuts to use during transcription.
• We have added Guide Pages, which provide users new to Transana with help getting started.
• We have updated the media conversion infrastructure, allowing for faster and better conversions of media files.
• We have improved import of plain text files, letting users import files with a wide variety of text encodings.
• We have added support for a wide variety of USB foot pedals on Windows.  Foot pedals are easy to use and can help with rewinding, playing and forwarding media files during transcription.
• We have eliminated the use of the QuickTime for Windows media player, which is no longer maintained by Apple and which has known security issues.
• A number of bugs have been discovered and eliminated.
  • At some point, repeating the same Quick Search stopped working correctly.  Additionally, problems arose if two searches were given the same name.  The code that prevented this difficulty has been re-instated.
  • If two Keywords that were used as detail codes in the same Snapshot were merged, some detail coding (coding shapes) were lost in the process.
  • Quotes that were currently open for editing were not properly excluded from the Quote Change Propagation process.
  • If the same Keyword was present in more than one Keyword Group, keyword counts on the Keyword Summary Report were sometimes incorrect.
  • There was a problem with the propagation of Keyword styles when some style elements were blank.
  • If a Filter record’s Configuration name contained non-English characters, these records could sometimes not be loaded correctly, especially following an export-import cycle.
  • If you saved a search with limited Collection records and then edited that search record, the Collection list was lost.

Transana Version 3.32, Released July 21, 2019

This release includes a number of improvements and adjustments in Transana’s implementation of the REFI-QDA Data Exchange standard.

Transana Version 3.31, Released May 20, 2019

New features:

• The Rotterdam Exchange Format Initiative has defined a standard for exchange of project data between a number of qualitative data analysis software programs. This Transana release adds support for the Project Exchange, which allows exchange of data between Transana and five other programs (Quirkos, QDA Miner, NVivo, f4analyze, ATLAS.ti) as they release parallel support for the REFI-QDA standard. Transana is proud to be one of the founding members of REFI.
• Transana is now able to import data from StudioCode. StudioCode users can transfer their existing data to Transana and continue to work with their data in familiar ways, while also tapping into the additional power provided by Transana’s powerful suite of tools and functions. (We are seeking collaborators to help us identify additional StudioCode functionality not identified by our first round of development. If some feature from your StudioCode data does not import smoothly into Transana, please let us know and we will work with you to meet your analytic needs.)
• If you request a Clip without a transcript without first having made a selection in the Visualization Window, Transana now automatically creates a Clip starting 1 second before the current media position and lasting five seconds. This makes coding on the fly easier and quicker.
• Pressing the F7 key brings Transana’s main windows to the front from any of the main windows in most circumstances.

Enhancements:

• Transana’s Keyword Summary Report can now optionally indicate the number of times each Keyword has been used in your database.
• Transana’s Plain Text Conversion utility is required less often, speeding related activities such as Batch Episode Import of Episodes that do not have identified Transcripts for import.
• Large media files can no longer bump the Database window off the end of the screen.

Bug Fixes:

• If you created Quick Quotes from existing Quotes, the new Quick Quotes were assigned incorrect starting and ending positions. As a result, the Coding Visualization, Locate Quote in Document, and all Reports would display the incorrect position.
• The Database Window’s Selected Items tab did not always update correctly for Episodes. Specifically, Clips that did not have Transcripts were not displayed correctly.
• When displaying a Clip, you could not play the Clip properly if the Visualization Windows was zoomed in. (Thanks František)
• When you have multiple simultaneous media files and one files ended before another of the files started, you could not insert time codes or create Clips after the shortest media file ended. (Thanks Pål)
• If you had two coded Documents open, opened the Filter Dialog, then added new (not previously used) coding to the second or later Quote for the second document, then switched documents, the Keyword Visualization would not restore correctly when returning to the second document. One variation was direct, the other only occurred for changes by other users in Transana Multiuser.

If you find a bug or problem in Transana, please let us know using the Contact form.

Transana Version 3.30, Released February 3, 2019

New features:

• The Search Matrix tool allow you to define a grid of searches, with the grid cells displaying those Quotes, Clips, and Snapshots that describe the intersection between the two searches.
• You can now create Transcription Shortcuts. This feature allows you to associate a block of text with a function key (combined with the Shift, Ctrl/Cmd, and Alt keys). Press the Shortcut key during transcription or document editing and the text will be inserted in place.
• The Rotterdam Exchange Format Initiative has defined a standard for exchange of codes between a number of qualitative software packages. This Transana release implements the Codebook Exchange. Transana is proud to be one of the initiative’s founding members. Members of the Initiative are currently working on implementing an exchange format that will allow the transfer of many types of data between qualitative software programs.

Enhancements:

• We have replaced the built-in Tutorial with a new, online tutorial for Transana. The new Onine Tutorial is clearer, integrates ScreenCast videos, and, because it is online, can be updated more easily as needed.
• You can now capture video screen shots from Episodes and Clips that contain multiple media files.
• When in Edit mode, if you double-click a word, that word will be selected.
• If you change Keyword Color or Snapshot coding style options in Keyword Properties, you can now select the Propagate button on the Properties form to push these changes out to all Keyword instances so that your codes are displayed consistently across reports, maps, and graphs in Transana.
• The import of Transana Database Export (*.tra) files is now significantly faster. In one test, the import time was reduced from 0:14:12 to 0:05:48.
• When you click a Clip Hyperlink in a Document, Transcript, Quote, or Clip Transcript, the linked item that is opened by the click will also be highlighted in the Database Tree so it can be easily found.
• When a row or column was cleared but not deleted in an Excel spreadsheet, Transana could not import the file in Spreadsheet Import. The data needed to be deleted rather than merely cleared in Excel. The Spreadsheet Import routine now ignores cleared rows and columns in Excel files.
• Ctrl/Cmd-(comma) and Ctrl/Cmd-(period) work for compatible media formats to slow or speed media playback. There is a conflict with the Cmd-(comma) shortcut on some MacOS versions. Therefore, Ctrl/Cmd-< and Ctrl/Cmd-> now also trigger speed changes for formats that support altered speeds.
• In Transana Multisuer, conditions leading to warning messages for MySQL 5.7 have been eliminated. MySQL 8.0 is now supported.
• Transana Multiuser should run into “MySQL has gone away” problems less often when network strength is marginal. However, the program still cannot compensate for really bad networking conditions.

Bug Fixes:

• If a Snapshot has both whole-snapshot coding and detail coding, an AND search looking for both terms was not returned by the search engine. This issue has been fixed. All Transana users who use Detail coding on Snapshots should upgrade to Transana 3.30.
• When a Snapshot that included detail coding was displayed, if you edited one of the Keywords included in the detail coding, by changing its Keyword Group, it would disappear from the displayed Snapshot until that Snapshot was reloaded. The detailed coding now updates correctly for displayed Snapshots.
• Under some circumstances, creating a Transcript-less Clip caused an extraneous error message, although the clip was created. This error message is no longer displayed.
• When Auto-Arrange is disabled, the Media Window will automatically shrink when a media file is un-loaded, such as when File > New is selected. When a subsequent media file was loaded, the window did not expand correctly. This has been fixed.
• There was a Unicode handling error during Word export for some rare characters. This has been fixed.
• For new installations on Windows, the wrong media player option for MP4 files was the default. To fix this, the user either needed to change the MP4 Media Player Setting on the Transcription tab of the Program Options dialog or needed to install the free QuickTime for Windows Player. Windows Media Player is now the default in this circumstance. This fix only applies to new installations, not to upgrades where the media player selection is already stored in the configuration data.
• In Transana Multiuser, the Refresh Database List button did not work correctly until you connected to a first database. The Refresh Database List button now works right away the first time you use Transana Multiuser.

Transana v. 3.21 includes the following bug fixes:

• The Tools > Database Export function was broken in the 3.20 release. It has been fixed.
• If you defined a Transcript Template, then opened Transcript Properties, the transcript for that item would be replaced by the contents of the Template file. This could cause the loss of transcription data. Only Transana 3.20 was affected, and this issue has been corrected.
• If a Document Import failed, further attempts to import Documents produced a Transaction error. Other database functions may also have been affected. You had to restart Transana to resolve this problem.
• In the Missing Files tool, if you pressed the “Change File Name” button, then pressed “Cancel”, you got an ugly error message.

Transana Version 3.20 includes the following changes:

• Transana can now import Documents and Transcripts from Word *.DOCx format files.
• Transana can now export text-based reports in Word *.DOCx format.
• During Spreadsheet Data Import, Transana now allows for the automatic creation of Quotes for each question for each participant, automatically coded by user-selected values of data fields. Data formatting has been improved, as has the handling of quotes, apostrophes, new-line characters, and commas.
• Added a tool to help locate missing media and image files. This tool automatically identifies all media files that are not where they are expected and provides ways to locate the files and correct the underlying issues.
• Added a bar chart of keyword frequencies to the Summary section in text reports.
• Added “SkipWords” to Word Frequency Reports to allow a pre-defined, user-selectable list of words to be excluded from this report.
• Added the ability to select multiple words at once in the Word Frequency Report’s Word Group editor.
• Added a Media Playback Speed indicator to the Media Window. This helps when trying to change media playback speed.
• Transana can now export a “Codebook,” containing Keywords Groups and Keywords only, to allow the sharing of the coding structure across databases.
• You can now add graphics to Documents and Transcripts using Copy and Paste through the OS Clipboard from programs which provide data in the appropriate form.
• When copying Keywords, a “Yes to All” option was added.
• When deleting multiple objects, a “Yes to All” option was added.
• The Audio Extraction process was made more efficient for multiple media files.
• Transana’s installer has been updated to allow for program installation on Windows 10 with the Creators Update without causing a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) error.
• A bug was fixed that allowed unsupported Document and Transcript formats to be specified during object creation. Several users tried to import *.DOCx and *.PDF files, causing problems opening databases. *.DOCx files are now legal, and *.PDF files and other unsupported formats are blocked rather than imported incorrectly. (If you have an affected database that you cannot open, please contact us and we will repair it for you.)
• During Spreadsheet Data Import, the “&”, “<“, and “>” characters within the data would prevent data import. This has been fixed.
• When specifying tabs in centimeters, you could not specify tab stops of less than 10 centimeters along with tab stops greater than 10 centimeters as a result of improper numeric sorting. This bug was fixed.
• You could not save Library Report Filters in Transana Basic. This was repaired.
• Fixed a problem with saved search specifications in data that has been exported and imported multiple times.
• Transana would sometimes crash during Audio Extraction. At least one cause of this crash was fixed.
• Transana would reliably crash during audio extraction while synchronizing media files under certain circumstances. This process now functions correctly without crashing.

Transana Version 3.10b compensates for a change in the Windows operating system released as part of Microsoft’s Creators Update, officially Windows 10, version 1703. As a result of some changes included with this Windows update , Transana installers stopped working, including the installers for old versions that had been in the field, working flawlessly, for over 4 years. Symptoms include a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) error shortly after the installation process was complete, and the resulting installation was corrupted. The issue in the installer; pre-existing Transana installations function perfectly, as do manually-installed copies of Transana.

Transana 3.10b alters the Transana installer so that the BSOD error does not occur and the Transana installation is valid when the installer is run on Windows 10 with the Creators Update. I was not able to make the equivalent changes to older versions of Transana.

Transana Version 3.10 includes the following changes:

• Global Text Search – You can now search your Transana Database for words or sentence fragments. Text searches can be combined with keyword searches.
• Word Frequency Reports – Transana can now display word count information for all text in the selected scope. You can create arbitrary word groupings, there is a mechanism for creating word groups by pattern as appropriate, and you can create and customize a Word Cloud. (This feature does not work with Chinese data because of the way the Chinese language is structured.)

  You can right-click the following nodes and request a Word Frequency Report:

  • The Library Root Node – Report covers all Documents and Episode Transcripts in the database
  • A Library Node – Report covers all Documents and Episode Transcripts in the selected Library
  • A Document Node – Report covers the selected Document
  • An Episode Node – Report covers all Episode Transcripts for the selected Episode
  • A Transcript – Report covers the selected Transcript
  • The Collection Root Node – Report covers all Quotes and Clips in the database
  • A Collection – Report covers all Quotes and Clips in the selected Collection and all nested collections
• Import Spreadsheet Data – You can now import survey data from a Spreadsheet file. This is the form many online survey tools produce. This tool uses a multi-step Wizard that walks you through the data import process.
• Default Report Settings – You can now define a “default Report style” which will be used for any report that does not have a “Default” saved configuration. (Thanks Annelies!)
• Refresh Database List – There is a new button on the database selection form that allows you to synch your database list with what is actually on your disk.
• The maximum width of embedded images was increased from 520 to 1024 pixels. However, if you will be embedding more than a few images in Documents or Transcripts, we encourage you to keep them small by shrinking the width of the Document Window before importing them.
• Transana’s overall layout looks better on Windows 10, which handles frame boundaries transparently and differently than previous Windows versions.
• Hyperlinks were made optional in the Library Report and the links were fixed.
• Default Filter Configurations were enhanced for text-based reports.
• If you pressed the Media Control Shortcut Keys when you were in a Document, you would get an ugly error message.
• In Research Journals, Ctrl/Cmd – T now inserts a Date / Time stamp like it does in Notes.
• Problems that occurred if the last character in a Transcript was a time code were fixed.
• Orphaned Clips would not load in single-user versions of Transana.
• If Auto-Arrange was disabled, the Media window would minimize when a new media files was loaded.
• Quote Change Propagation did not work in Transana Professional and Multiuser. That has been fixed.
• In the Professional and Multiuser versions, you could not save a Filter Configuration from the Collection Report if there were no Quotes.
• I fixed Cut / Copy / Paste functionality in the Notes Browser on OS X. (Thanks Yvonne!)
• Searches including only the term ‘NOT Keyword Group : Keyword’ were not working correctly, in that they did not return results that had no coding at all. Such searches are no longer allowed.
• Document Notes entered in Transana Professional could cause a loading failure if the database was subsequently loaded in Transana Basic / Standard.
• Multiuser Transana now works with MariaDB version 10.x.
• Transana Standard is now known as Transana Basic

Transana Version 3.02 includes the following changes:

• Transana is now a product of Spurgeon Woods LLC rather than the Wisconsin Center for Education Research. (We are grateful to WCER for their years of support and their facilitation of a smooth transition.)
• On Windows, *.mp4 files are now displayed in Windows Media Player by default rather than in Apple’s QuickTime Player. However, users of Transana 3.01 will need to make this change manually if they don’t want to use the QuickTime Player.
• Transana on OS X no longer offers multiple simultaneous media file conversion, as this function isn’t compatible with all OS X versions.
• Problems with multiple simultaneous media file conversions on Windows were resolved. The Update DB function was not reliable when multiple simultaneous conversions were requested.
• Batch Document Creation was not handling duplicate file names correctly.
• The Transana Web Site link in the Help menu has been updated to use the new preferred web address.

Transana 3.01 is a bug-fix release.

• If you use fonts with non-English names, RTF Export would crash. While such fonts are still not handled properly, the export doesn’t crash any more. (Thanks Yoonjoo and Xuying)
• If you use drag-and-drop to place multiple file names on the Add Episode form, media synchronization would not work. (Thanks Christoph)
• Batch Document and Episode Creation did not work correctly when files had file extensions with upper case letters. (Thanks Brian)
• Batch Snapshot Creation was not checking for file types correctly.
• When changing the Media Library Directory, file paths were not always updating correctly for files outside of the original Media Library Directory structure.
• The File Management tool’s “Update DB” function failed sporadically in single-user versions of Transana.
• Text Time Code conversion required a 2-digit value for hour, but was ignoring the first digit. (Thanks Christoph)
• Non-breaking spaces in Rich Text Format files were not being processed correctly. (Thanks Yves)
• During Rich Text Format document import, some alternate Unicode characters were being processed incorrectly, causing characters “a”, “b”, “c”, “d”, “e”, and “f” to be skipped if they followed the Unicode character immediately. (Thanks Yves)
• There was a character encoding issue which prevented the Collection Report from working when Transana was in French and the data was in French. (Thanks Yves)
• “Load Snapshot Context” was not working.
• If you had many extremely large transcripts (with lots of images), Database Export would not work. (Thanks Alina)
• Quote and Clip Merge were not working in single-user versions of Transana. (Thanks Yvonne)
• One person reported a problem playing MP4 videos on Windows. This problem was solved by adding an option on the Transcriber Settings tab allowing the user to specify that MP4 files should be played using Windows Media Player rather than the Quicktime Player. (Thanks Christoph)
• If you nested an existing Collection inside a newer Collection, items in those Collections could not be found using the Full Search. (Quick Searches still worked correctly.) (Thanks Ben and Heather)

Transana Version 3.00 includes the following changes:

• Support for text-only data. For users already familiar with Transana, you will find that text data is treated as similarly to media data as possible within Transana. (This feature is NOT included in Transana Standard.)
  • What used to be known as a “Series” is now called a “Library” because it holds more than just Episodes.
  • You can import RTF, TXT, or Transana’s XML-format text files into Libraries as “Documents.” A Document is the text-only equivalent to an Episode and Transcript pair.
  • You can identify segments of a Document as analytically interesting and can code it by creating a “Quote.” A Quote is the text equivalent of a Clip.
  • As much as possible, Documents behave like Episodes and Quotes behave like Clips.
• You can insert Hyperlinks to Quotes, Clips, Snapshots, and Notes into Documents and Transcripts. When you click the hyperlink, the identified data object is loaded in Transana’s interface. (Thanks Christian.)
• When you insert a Snapshot into a Document or Transcript, you now get a Hyperlink to the original Snapshot in addition to the still-image of the Snapshot. (Thanks Christian.)
• The addition of Documents and Hyperlinks can be combined to create “Research Journals.” A Research Journal is simply a Document in Transana that you use for analytic writing. You can add Hyperlinks to Quotes, Clips, Snapshots, and Notes that illustrate the larger analytic concepts you are writing about. You can also create and code Quotes from your Research Journal, allowing you to code your analytic writing. Please see the “Working with Research Journals” page in the Tutorial for more information. (This feature is NOT included in Transana Standard.)
• In Transana’s Reports and Maps, you can Ctrl-Click on Windows or Cmd-click on OS X any Clip or Quote in the report or any coding bar in the Map and the object will be loaded within its original context. For example, if you click a Clip, the Clip will be loaded. If you Ctrl/Cmd-click that Clip, the source Episode will be loaded, positioned to the Clip starting point, with the Clip text highlighted.
• Text Reports can now be saved in HTML format in addition to Rich Text Format. (Thanks Julie.)
• You can now Copy and Move Notes between Snapshots.
• The Media Conversion tool can convert multiple media files at once on computers with multiple CPU cores. This can radically reduce conversion times for multiple files on appropriate hardware. Similarly, the Batch Waveform Extraction tool can extract audio from multiple files simultaneously. (Unfortunately, standard audio extraction when loading a multiple-media file Episode was not able to make use of this new feature.)
• Single-user versions of Transana (Standard, Professional, and Computer-lab versions) now use a different database engine. This allows single-file storage of a database, making backing up data and sharing databases with colleagues easier.
• I have revised the Manual and completely re-written the Tutorial. Even experiences Transana users will probably benefit from re-visiting the Tutorial. (Thanks to Jen Patashnik for editing the Tutorial.)
• Please note that the Danish translation has not been updated for the new release. If you are able to update this translation, please contact me. (Our thoughts are with our regular Danish translator.)
• Several bugs were discovered and fixed:
  • The underlying problem with editing long transcripts has been resolved. I have removed the “Long Transcript Editing” option, as it is no longer needed.
  • On the Episode Report, you have Clips in Collections. A second Clip with the same name and in an identically named Collection (but with different overall Collection nesting) would not be displayed. This primarily affected duplicate Clips created through saving Search Results.
  • On the Search Dialog, selections of nested Collections were not always processed correctly.
  • Version 2.61 introduced a bug that broke the capture of screen shots from video files when using MPEG video. This has been fixed.
  • In Multi-user Transana, if one user started a Change Propagation process, then a second user locked a Clip that was yet to be updated, user 2 could lose edits rather than the first user being told that the record was locked, and the second user would have a problem closing Transana. This very obscure circumstance is now handled correctly.

Transana Version 2.61 includes:

• You can now create Clips without first creating a Transcript of any sort in Transana. Make a selection in the Visualization Window, select a Collection (for a Standard Clip) or a Keyword (for a Quick Clip), and press the “Create Transcript-less Clip” button in the Visualization Window. See the newest ScreenCast for details.
• You can now specify Collections during a Search. That is, you can choose to include or exclude data at the Collection level. Thus, Collection membership can now be included in Searches.
• I have implemented several improvements to the Snapshot interface:
  • Batch Snapshot Creation, to allow the import of multiple still image files in a single action.
  • “Next” and “Previous” buttons in the Snapshot Window toolbar, allowing easy movement between Snapshots that reside in the same Collection.
• A “Yes to All” button has been added to copy / move confirmations for Clips and Snapshots.
• Transana for Windows (Professional, Multi-user and Computer Lab versions) now includes an Arabic translation, along with the capacity to work with right-to-left languages when appropriate translations are in place. (Thanks to Zeynab and Abdelghani at the ICAR lab at the University of Lyon, France.)
• I have improved the international capacity of the Rich Text Format parser. You should be able to import Rich Text Format documents in many languages that didn’t work before. This should also be reflected in improved Copy/Paste of text into Transana’s transcript window. I’ve been testing this with documents users have submitted in Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Arabic, and Czech. (Hebrew does not appear to work, but I lack the language expertise to be sure.) If you have RTF documents that won’t import, please let me know.
• The Media Conversion tool now seeks a position in a file better. This significantly speeds up the process of screenshot image creation (used for inserting images into transcripts and for creating Snapshots) and Clip Video Export.
• Implementation of optional TLS / SSL security for the Message Server component of Multi-user Transana improves data security for the Multi-user version of Transana.
• The Transana Message Server tool for multi-user Transana now functions as a daemon on OS X and Linux.
• Several bugs were discovered and squashed.
  • On OS X, keyboard shortcut keys for Cut, Copy, Paste, Undo and Redo were not working properly. You should now use Cmd-X, Cmd-C, Cmd-V, Cmd-Z, and Cmd-Y on OS X for these functions.
  • Editing of Transcripts could become slow in long transcripts. The more paragraphs follow the current cursor position, the slower transcript editing would be. This is due to a bug in one of my programming components, which is in the process of being fixed. To reduce the impact of this issue, I added “Long Transcript Editing” to the Options menu. When this option is enabled, Transana loads only part of your transcript when you enter Edit mode, loading no more than 200 lines from your current cursor position. When you want to edit a different part of the transcript, leave Edit mode, move to the new location, and re-enter Edit mode.
  • If you are working in a long transcript that does not contain time codes after the current cursor position, Transana could become slow. This would come up when people would import transcripts and start time-coding them. Transana now detects the lack of following time codes better and doesn’t spend so much time looking for them.
  • Selecting a segment of transcript over a time code using shift and the cursor keys would not work. Time Code handling prevented such selection. This was completely fixed for the cursor-right key and improved somewhat for cursor left. We recommend making such selections from beginning to end, not from end to beginning.
  • If no Snapshots existed when some Filter Configurations were created, Transana did not appropriately handle Snapshots that were added later in the Filter system.
  • Filter Configurations for the Keyword Visualization were trying to check for hyperlinks where none were possible, leading to problems.
  • Windows users who selected Medium Text in their Operating System setup were not able to see all fields in the Multi-user Transana login screen.
  • Transana would crash if you were dragging in a Snapshot and dragged off the edge of the image or Snapshot window.
  • The “Yes to All” option was being retained too long with certain right-click copy options in the Data Window, meaning some confirmation windows were never displayed.
  • Versions 2.61a and 2.61b include bug fixes to the Long Transcript Editing feature, released October 13, 2014 and December 15, 2014 respectively.

Transana 2.60 introduces major new functionality and includes several minor changes as well

• • Transana can now be used to analyze still images, called Snapshots.
    • Snapshots are added to Collections. There is no Series/Episode equivalent for still images.
      • Graphic files in a variety of formats can be loaded from the hard disk into Snapshots.
      • Snapshots can also be created by capturing the current frame of a video file being analyzed.
    • Snapshots can be linked to specific locations in media files, although this is not required.
    • You can zoom and position still images to focus analytic attention on only part of an image. The zoom and position are saved as part of the Snapshot definition.
    • Snapshots can be coded in several ways.
      • You can code an entire still image.
      • You can code part(s) of a still image by drawing coding shapes on the image.
      • Snapshot coding is fully accessible to the Search Engine.
    • Snapshots are fully integrated into Transana’s Reports. When associated with media files, they also appear in Transana’s Maps and Graphs, and on the Episode Clips tabs of the Data Window.
    • Coded Snapshots can be exported to *.JPG format.
    • Coded Snapshots can be inserted into Transcripts.
  • Keywords have been expanded.
    • You can define a default color for each keyword for use in Maps, Graphs, and Snapshot Coding.
    • Default Snapshot Coding Shape properties can be defined for each Keyword to facilitate consistent coding properties across Snapshots.
  • Transana’s text-based reports (the Episode Report and the Collection Report) now include hyperlinks to the individual Clips and Snapshots listed in the report, allowing the researcher to load a specific Clip or Snapshot in Transana from within the report. (Such links are not exported to saved reports, as they require Transana’s full infrastructure.)
  • Playback performance with HD video has been significantly improved.
  • Transana’s main interface can now be moved from one monitor to another when using multiple monitors.
  • A Windows menu has been added, making it easier to move between Transana’s windows, especially when multiple Snapshots and Reports are open simultaneously.
  • The Keyword Visualization now accepts filtering of Clips and Snapshots. Prior to this version, all Clips were always included in the Keyword Visualization.
  • If you import a Transcript with text-based time code information in “H:MM:SS.ss” format, you can convert these text-based time values to Transana Time Codes with the “Text Time Code Conversion” item in the Transcript menu.
  • There is a new option on the Transcriber Settings tab which sets a limit for the width of still images brought into transcripts. This can help prevent problems with images in transcripts being too large for Transana’s reports.
  • Database Import time has been improved significantly. For example, one test file’s import time was reduced from 9 minutes to 2.5 minutes.
  • Transana’s transcript engine showed a number of very rare but very annoying problems around issues of detailed font formatting. The wrong characters were inappropriately formatted at times, and the correct characters were not formatted correctly at times. One underlying problem in Transana’s code was repaired, and a second underlying problem with one of the programming components received a significant work-around.

    One note: If you have problems with underlining not appearing when you apply it, try increasing the paragraph line spacing. In particular, using a 12 point font with single line spacing (which is a 10 point line spacing) can cause underlining to be hidden when it should be visible.

  • Formatting changes in large transcript segments was improved and optimized in numerous ways. Program crashes during bulk formatting have been significantly reduced.
  • Single-user Transana has been divided into two versions, Standard and Professional.
    • The Standard Version includes all the features needed for basic analysis of video and audio files.
    • The Professional Version includes a number of advanced features which not everyone needs. Features included in the Professional version that are not included in the Standard Version include:
      • Multiple Simultaneous Transcripts
      • Multiple Simultaneous Media Files
      • Series Keyword Maps and Graphs (mostly used for longitudinal qualitative analysis and cross-file coding comparison.)
      • Snapshots
      • Export Clip Video

      We hope this division will allow us to continue to offer Transana Standard at a very low price to researchers with straight-forward needs for the analysis of video and audio data, while also allowing WCER to cover the costs of developing Transana’s advanced features in the current challenging funding environment.

  • Multi-user Transana 2.60 and higher can be used with MySQL 5.6.x. Multi-user Transana 2.53-MU and lower would not work with these newer versions of MySQL due to changes in MySQL.
  • Multi-user Transana 2.60 can use SSL to make secure connections to the database server. The MySQL server you connect to needs to be properly configured to support SSL, obviously.
  • On OS X 10.7 only (as far as I know), if you used ANY File Dialog within Transana, the Media Conversion tool stopped working on files with non-English characters in the file path or file name. This problem has been fixed.
  • Exporting text files in several situations did not work correctly with non-English characters. The following text exports have been modified to export text in UTF-8 format instead of using latin-1 encoding:
    • Graphics Color Configuration
    • Clip Data Export
    • Notes export
  • A bug in the display order of clips in the Collection Keyword Map was discovered and corrected during pre-release testing. While I believe this issue probably exists in Transana 2.53, nobody ever reported it.
  • In the multi-user version, I discovered a way of adding incorrectly updated Keywords that no longer exist in the database to Episodes, Clips, and Snapshots. In essence, these Episodes, Clips, and Snapshots end up improperly coded.

    Separate operations by different individuals would need to happen in just the right order nearly simultaneously. I suspect this would be extremely rare if it has happened at all in regular use of the program. At least, nobody has ever reported the issue to me.

Because of the seriousness of this issue, I strongly recommend that all users of multi-user Transana upgrade to version 2.60 as soon as possible.

• The Keyword Map and Series Keyword Sequence Map were not showing overlaps correctly. This has been fixed.

Version 2.53 is a primarily minor bug-fix release.

• The Episode Clips Tab and the Selected Clips Tab were modified to show keywords in addition to Clip information.
• There were workflow issues when moving Episodes. These have been resolved.
• The Rich Text Format parser was not handling the ellipses character that Word uses when it auto-replaces three periods. This character is now properly imported.
• The Rich Text Format parser was stopping imports when it encountered an unknown Unicode character. This led to the truncation of transcripts during import. Unknown or undefined characters are now ignored without interrupting the entire RTF import process. (If you have such transcripts, try re-importing them.)

Version 2.52 is primarily a bug-fix release.

• Transana’s Transcript Editor was having problems with underlining.
  • In some circumstances, underline formatting was not showing up immediately or at all. Sometimes the underlining would show up following a different formatting action on the same transcript line. Other times, it would show up when the transcript window changed size. This is due to a bug in one of my programming components, but I have found an acceptable work-around to this bug. (Thanks Harrie.)
  • In other circumstances, trying to underline part of a line would cause most or all of the line to become underlined. This, too, is due to a bug in one of my programming components, but I believe I have found an acceptable work-around that automatically corrects the problem most of the time. (Thanks, Paul and Katariina.) If you see this problem, you should be able to select the improperly underlined section of the line and turn underlining off.
  • Underlining may still occasionally exhibit improper behavior. When it does, select the entire paragraph, add and removd italics, then add and remove underlining from the whole paragraph. Then apply underlining to the desired segment. If the underlining still doesn’t appear, apply italics formatting to the first space following the underlining (or preceeding it, if at the end of the line). At that point, you should see the underlining you requested. (Sorry about this. I’ve submitted the bug report and eagerly await the fix from the developer.)
• When you insert a time code, Transana will always put the program focus in the active transcript now. Time code insertion from anywhere in Transana now automatically sets you up to type in the transcript window.
• You could not copy or move more than one Transcript Note at a time. Multi-select actions for Transcript Notes have now been implemented.
• If you have a video file with a frame rate of greater than 30 frames per second, Transana’s Media Conversion tool will now automatically reduce the frame rate to 29.97 fps. This solves a problem I ran into with video files recorded on an HD camera at a 59.94 fps frame rate that would not play properly in Transana even after media conversion on some older computers.
• You can now specify the font and font size for the four special symbol characters in the transcription toolbar. Earlier versions of Transana automatically used Courier New font and increased the size of these characters by 4 points over the character immediately preceeding the special symbol. This improved the appearance of the special symbols (especially on OS X), but caused problems for Conversation Analysts who wanted to be able to line characters up in successive rows of the transcript. The configuration settings are available on the Transcriber Settings tab of the Program Settings dialog. (Thanks Harrie.)
• The four special symbol characters were automatically followed by a space. This space is no longer automatically inserted. (Thanks Harrie.)
• The special symbols could be inserted into a transcript that was not in edit mode when using shortcut keys. While such changes were not saved, they caused problems with the appearance of read-only transcripts.
• It was not always possible to paste text into transcripts on OS X, particularly from outside of Transana. Enabling of the Paste option in editable transcripts was fixed, and an issue with the Rich Text Format Parser on OS X was fixed. (Thanks Jaber.)
• Pasting a Rich Text Format selection into a transcript through the Clipboard always inserted a new line at the end of the paste. This was not correct. (Thanks Harrie.)
• Rich Text Format export of transcripts sometimes introduced quotation marks into the transcripts. This has been fixed. (Thanks Harrie and Katariina.)
• Files saved in Rich Text Format on some versions of Word for Windows could contain the legal and meaningful character combination “{\*”. ‘ . “Transana’s RTF Parser was not handling this character combination correctly.
• If you connected to an sFTP server in a directory where your user account didn’t have permission to access some of the files or subdirectories, Transana’s File Management Tool would not display the file and directory information correctly. This has been fixed.

Version 2.51 is a bug-fix release. No new features have been added. Bugs fixed include:

• Special symbols (rising intonation, falling intonation, audible breath, whispered speech) were not displayed in the correct font when followed by a Time Code.
• There were a number of problems importing Rich Text Format documents:
  • Some Unicode characters were not importing correctly.
  • “Smart apostrophes” from Word (maybe only Word for Mac) were not importing correctly, and were in fact preventing import of the remainder of the RTF file.
  • The em-dash and en-dash characters from Word were not importing correctly (maybe only on OS X).
  • Default Tab Widths were being ignored.
  • Some basic formatting (bold, italics, underline) was not getting terminated correctly during RTF import.
  • An alternate RTF specification of the end of underlining was not being processed.
• On OS X 10.6 and 10.7, if Transana was started in Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Spanish, or Swedish, (but not Chinese, English, Norwegian Bokmal, or Norwegian-nynorsk,) you couldn’t change character formatting under some circumstances.
• The sFTP utility was not handling symbolic link directories correctly.
• Changing languages when you had search results wiped out those search results without notifying the user.
• Some library files needed for the FFmpeg utility for audio extraction and media conversion were not being installed correctly on OS X.
• The Conversion Utility had a bug related to character encoding.

Transana Version 2.50 includes the following changes:

• I have replaced Transana’s old transcription engine with a new control that allows significantly more power. This has many implications, including:
  • Cut/Copy/Paste now preserves text formatting, both within Transana and between Transana and other programs that support RTF-formatted clipboard text.
  • Text background color is now supported.
  • Paragraph formatting is now supported, including:
    • Paragraph alignment
    • Left and Right indentation
    • First line indentation
    • Line spacing
    • Specification of space before and after paragraphs.
    • Tabs
  • Improved line spacing. (The old component used the same line spacing for all lines. The new one adjusts line by line.)
  • Embedded images. You can now import graphics into your transcripts. Note that transcripts are limited to about 64MB in size, which may restrict the number and size of images that can be embedded in a given transcript. (Database Administrators have the option to further restrict transcript size for the multi-user version of Transana.)
  • The old component placed an upper limit of about 100 formatting styles on a given transcript. The new component does not have this restriction.
  • Formatting for Transana’s text-based reports (which use the transcription engine) has been improved.
  • Transcripts now use a fast XML format for internal storage
  • Transcripts can be exported from Transana in either Rich Text Format or Transana’s XML format. RTF documents can be loaded into Transana and many word processors. The XML format can only be loaded in Transana, but is much faster and exhibits less subtle distortion than RTF documents.

    

• When you export a transcript from Transana, you will now be prompted about whether you want to include time code information (for re-import into Transana) or strip time code information from the exported transcript.
• Similarly, when you print a transcript from Transana, Transana will prompt you about whether you want to include time codes in the printout. (If time code data is displayed in human-readable format in your transcript when you go to print it, that information will be included regardless of your response to this question. The question only refers to the time code symbols.)
• A formatting button has been added to the transcript toolbar.
• Episode keywords function as default keywords in Transana. With this release, if you add a keyword to an Episode, Transana will prompt you about adding that keyword to all Clips that have been created from that Episode. (Thanks, Anna.)
• An “auto-save” feature has been added. If the Auto-Save checkbox on the Transcriber Settings tab is checked, Transana will automatically save your transcript every 10 minutes when you are in Edit mode.
• You can create a transcript template to be automatically used for all new transcripts. Create your template in Transana and save it in XML format as “default.xml” or in Rich Text format as “default.rtf” in your video root directory. (Please note, however, that you must have at least one character in the template in each formatted section. Whitespace in the template is not able to correctly hold formatting information.)
• I have expanded Transana’s audio extraction tool to add media conversion capacity.
  • Audio extraction now works on more files, including those with AC3 and AAC audio encoding.
  • Audio extraction now allows the user to cancel the process.
  • Transana can now convert many media formats to Transana-friendly formats. Go to Tools > Media Conversion, and you can select files in a wide variety of formats (including Flash Video) that don’t work with Transana and convert them to a format that works with Transana. This tool doesn’t support all possible media formats, but it is a good place to start if you have a media file that doesn’t seem to work with Transana.
  • The Media Conversion tool is also useful for reducing the internal settings for HD video files, which generally don’t work well with Transana because the image size is too large and the bitrate of the file is too high to allow for analytic work alongside video display.
  • You can now export the media portion of Transana clips as free-standing media files. Just right-click your clip in the Data Window and select Export Clip Video.
  • Conversion and export formats are limited due to legal issues.
• You can now take a snapshot of a video file displayed in Transana and have that snapshot inserted into the current transcript. With your transcript in edit mode, just press the Snapshot button in the lower right-hand corner of the video window. (This feature is only available for single media file Episodes, and only works with some video formats.)
• Common Ctrl-key combinations [Ctrl-A, Ctrl-S, Ctrl-D, Ctrl-F, Ctrl-T, Ctrl-(period), and Ctrl-(comma)] now work from ALL windows, not just the Transcription and Visualization windows.
• New Function Key assignments.
  • F1 selects the Menu Window (Windows only)
  • F2 selects the Visualization Window (Windows only)
  • F3 selects the Video Window (Windows only)
  • F4 selects the Transcript Window, and cycles through multiple transcripts when more than one transcript is open. (Windows only)
  • F5 selects the Data Window (Windows only)
  • F6 toggles Edit / Read Only mode
  • F12 and Ctrl-F12 save the current transcript. (F12 has always done that, but the key was hijacked on OS X by Dashboard when OS X 10.4 was released.)
• When you create a new clip from an existing clip, the originating clip’s keywords are now carried over to the new clip by default. Prior to this release, only the appropriate episode keywords were present in the new clip.
• The File Management tool’s interface has been improved.
  • Single context-sensitive command buttons (such as Copy and Move) have been replaced with paired directional buttons. This makes common file management tasks significantly easier to access than with the old interface.
  • “Copy All New” feature added, which copies all files in the source directory to the destination directory. This feature iterates through source sub-directories, creating matching sub-directories in the destination directory as needed.
  • When copying or moving multiple files, “Cancel” now stops ALL file copy/move operations, not just the current ‘ . “file’s copy/move.
  • The Storage Resource Broker technology has been replaced by sFTP technology for secure remote file transfer. sFTP servers are significantly easier to set up, making secure file transfer much more easily accessible to those projects that need it.
• On the Keyword Summary Report, keyword examples are indicated with a “clip” graphic.
• Transana’s window layout methodology has been modernized. This means that the use of large fonts in Windows no longer causes problems (and coincidentally makes Transana for Linux more feasible in the future.)
• When you load a clip from a search result, Transana used to move the highlight in the Data window’s database tree to the location of the original clip. This made reviewing a series of clips in a search result too difficult. Now, the clip in the search result remains selected. If you want to locate the original clip, right-click the clip in the search result and select “Locate Clip in Collection”.
• In Transana-MU’s chat utility, you can now select which current users receive your chat messages by selecting specific names in the user list. (The default is that all users will receive your message.)
• Transana’s Database Export (*.tra) files are now fully XML compliant. All transcript objects are represented in XML format rather than Rich Text format.
• Transana will now place an Error Log file in the default data directory. Prior to this release, error log creation and access differed depending on what version of what operating system the user had, and sometimes the error log was not created at all. This should make bug reporting easier and more reliable.
• If you nested an older collection inside a newer collection in Transana 2.42 using drag/drop or cut/paste, then exported the database, the subsequent import of that database would fail. This problem has been fixed. (Thanks Anke.)
• Multi-transcript Clips were not getting the default keywords they were supposed to. This has been fixed.
• The Keyword Visualization was not always perfect for multiple media file episodes, depending on a number of complex interacting factors related to the lengths and offsets of the component media files. This visualization is now fixed.
• I discovered and fixed several encoding problems in the Single-user version of Transana on Windows when Chinese was selected under Languages. The most serious part of these problems is that several of Transana’s reports could not be accessed. These problems probably also affected Eastern European data, Greek data, Japanese data, and Russian data. Database export and import issues have also been addressed for Chinese and other languages. If you still encounter encoding problems, please let me know.
• Language support in the single-user version of Transana on Windows is now as flexible as it has been on OS X and in the multi-user version. To use Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Russian, or some Eastern European languages in single-user Transana 2.42 on Windows, you had to choose a specific language option. You couldn’t use Italian prompts with Chinese data, and you could not always mix multiple languages such as Chinese and German. The reason for this is that the single-user version of Transana had to use a much older version of MySQL than other Transana versions. I was finally able to upgrade the MySQL engine underlying single-user Transana on Windows with this release. This solves a lot of language problems.
• One side effect of the database change for the single-user version of Transana on Windows is that databases in this Transana version MUST BE converted. Please watch the video ScreenCast on 2.42 to 2.50 Data Conversion for more information on how to convert your databases. Please note that this is ONLY true for the single-user version of Transana on Windows.
• As a result of the transcription and database changes, I believe that Transana is now prepared to support languages that read right-to-left, such as Hebrew and Arabic. For this support to be complete, I need interested Transana users to volunteer to do translations in these languages. (It doesn’t work to use left-to-right prompts with right-to-left content.) If you might be interested in helping with a translation, contact me.
• If you imported non-overlapping data into an existing database in Transana 2.42 or earlier, that inadvertently wiped out all “Source Transcript” references in Clip Transcripts that existed before the import. The primary effect of this is that “Locate Clip in Episode” ends up broken for those clips. This problem has been remedied.
• Several minor problems with multiple-media file clips were corrected.

Transana Version 2.42 includes the following changes:

• • I’ve re-worked the Database Tree to define ways of manipulating multiple Transana objects of the same type at once:
    • You can select multiple Episodes and move them all to a different Series in an single drag and drop or Cut/Paste action.
    • ou can select multiple Episodes and move them all to a different Series in an single drag and drop or Cut/Paste action.
    • You can select multiple Transcript records for the same Episode and open them in Transana’s multiple transcript interface in a single action.
    • You can open multiple selected additional Transcripts with a single right-click.
    • You can select multiple keywords, then create a quick clip with all of those keywords. This can be done through right-clicking in the data window, through using the “Create Quick Clip” button in the Transcript Toolbar, or though pressing Ctrl-K in the Transcript window.
    • You can right-click Copy a keyword, then select multiple Episodes, multiple Collections, or multiple Clips, and then right-click Paste they keyword onto the selection, thus applying the code to many Episode or Clip objects at once.
    • You can select multiple Keywords, then copy or drag those keywords onto a Series, Episode, Collection, or Clip in the database tree to apply the selected Keywords.
    • You can copy of move multiple Keywords to a different Keyword Group in a single drag and drop or Cut/Copy/Paste action.
    • You can select multiple tree nodes for the same type of object, then right-click to delete all selected entries at once.
    • You can copy or move multiple Clips in a Search Result at once.
    • You can drop multiple nodes from Search Results at once.
  • I’ve reworked the multiple media file synchronization dialog. Overall, it is now much easier to synchronize media files.
    • The dialog box has been reorganized. Both media files now share a single waveform display, making the alignment process simpler.
    • The user can select which media file’s waveform is on top in the waveform display.
    • The user can use the cursor left and cursor right keys to change the position of whichever media file’s waveform is on top.
      • Plain cursor keys and Ctrl-cursor keys move the top media file one frame left or right.
      • Alt-cursor keys move the top media file 1/2 second left or right.
      • Shift-cursor keys move the top media file 1 second left or right.
    • Imprecise media position sliders were replaced with a set of much more precise media file position change buttons. This allows users to shift both media files by exactly the same amount, if desired, during sunchronization.

Thanks go out to Jeff Higgenbotham for providing significant advise and funding for these changes.

• When you copy or move a Collection to another collection, the moved collection will now be made a nested Collection. This action used to copy the clips in the source Collection to the Destination collection, but with multiple clip selection added, as described above, this action could be redefined. This should be more intuitive for most Transana users.
• When copying Clips, Clip Notes are now also copied automatically.
• Multiple selection was enabled for adding and removing Keywords for Episodes and Clips in the Episode Properties, Clip Properties, and Edit Keywords dialogs.
• The Series Report now has an option that allows it to include media length information.
• An option for automatically adding time codes at fixed intervals into a blank transcript has been added to the Transcript menu. While this makes transcription a bit slower, it can be useful where analysis of fixed-interval time units is desired.
• Support for *.aac audio files was added.
• A number of bugs, mostly minor, have been fixed. Thanks, Joseph, for your enthusiastic software testing efforts.
  • If you edited an Episode Transcript, then pressed the “Edit Keywords” button on the Transcription Toolbar, your transcript changes would disappear. Thanks for letting me know about that, Ufuk.
  • When editing a Transcript, the cursor could sometimes get caught in the formatting for a time code, causing some text next to time codes to be displayed in red. This has been corrected.
  • When clicking on a time code to add text just to the right, it was possible to place the cursor between the time code symbol and the time code data. If this happened and you added text, the time code would be corrupted. Thanks for helping me track this down, Christine.
  • You should have been able to create a quick clip from another clip by dragging a keyword onto the transcript with Quick Clips Mode turned on. This was broken, perhaps since Transana 2.30. It’s fixed now.
  • During Import Database, Notes would lose blank lines. This has been fixed.
  • I removed the Rename function from the Notes Browser window. Renaming notes worked okay, unless you didn’t complete the rename by pressing enter before moving on to something else. If you failed to complete the edit, bad things could happen, including applying the name change to the wrong note, depending on what you did after editing the note label.
  • Several problems could occur in the Notes Browser when there were multiple notes of the same type with the same name, mostly related to the Notes Browser’s failure to operate on the correct note.
  • When Options > Auto-Arrange is disabled, the Transcript Window was still re-sizing to match the width of the Visualization Window’s width when Transana’s interface was being cleared rather than keeping its current width. This has been fixed. Thanks for letting me know about this, Nicolas.
  • Episodes without any Transcripts were not properly displayed in Search Result sets.
  • Database Export and Import added a number of spaces the start of Notes in version 2.41. This has been corrected.
  • There were some circumstances where the “Paste” option on a Transcript node in the database tree was enabled when there was nothing to paste.
  • If you edited a transcript in one of Transana’s reports and deleted a time code, you would get an odd error message. This has been fixed.

Transana Version 2.41 includes the following changes:

• A new report, the Collection Keyword Map, is available by right-clicking a Collection. This visual report is similar to the Episode Keyword Map. The Collection Keyword Map displays the clips in the same order they appear in the collection, with the horizonal axis representing Clip Order and clip duration rather than actual time.
• The Visualization window will now automatically scroll when zoomed in so that the current video position is always visible in the Visualization window.
• I added a button to the Visualization window for playback looping. If a selection is highlighted in the Visualization window, the highlighted segment will play repeatedly when the playback loop button is pressed. If no selection has been made in the visualization window, a 5 second segment will loop. Looping can only be stopped by pressing the playback loop button a second time.
• You can now copy and move Notes to parallel nodes. That is, you can copy or move a Series Note to other Series records, but not to an Episode, for example, or you can move an Episode Note to another Episode record but not to a Series record.
• You can now create a new Keyword based on text in your transcript. Just highlight the text you’d like to use as a Keyword and drag it onto a Keyword Group. The selected text will be added as a keyword in that keyword group.
• The Filter Dialog and the Color Configuration Tool now support multiple item selection.
  • In the Filter Dialog, this allows you to re-order groups of items where re-ordering is allowed, and you can select and unselect groups of items more easily.
  • In the Color Configuration Tool, you can re-order groups of colors and delete multiple color definitions more easily.
• Transana now supports *.m4v media files.
• The meaning of color in the Keyword Map is now user-selectable. You can choose whether color represents Clip membership, as has been true up to now in the Keyword Map, or whether color represents keyword, as it does in the Keyword Visualization. When color represents keyword, you can customize the colors used in the Filter Dialog.
• Tab size in Transcripts is now configurable. You can also turn off automatic word-wrap in the transcripts. These changes should help conversation analysts who need to indent lines or attempt other feats of horizontal formatting using fixed-width fonts.
• If you used spaces or tabs at the beginning of lines in the transcript to achieve indentation, you lost this indentation when importing a Transana *.tra file. This problem has been fixed.
• The Synchronize dialog had size problem when used with videos that had resolution of greater than 240 pixels in height. This has been fixed.
• Several users reported problems with certain transcripts following upgrade from Transana 2.30 to Transana 2.40. This revealed a bug in the code responsible for time code processing within a transcript, a bug that involved an interaction between digits in the transcript, the final time code currently placed in a transcript, and possibly the decoding of a few non-English characters in the transcript. The primary symptoms of this bug were that the user could not insert additional time codes, and time-coded segments did not play properly. These problems, while apparently rare, have been fixed.
• One user experienced problems with the database upgrade process from Transana 2.30 to Transana 2.40. New database columns were properly created but were not properly populated with default values. This caused clips created before the upgrade not to work properly. I have added code to detect this situation and compensate for it if needed.
• I experienced increasing difficulty importing transcripts, either from Rich Text Format or following Database Import. Lines of the transcript would occasionally be imported out of order. This problem was rare and sporadic, and no users ever reported it. I finally discovered a pattern of use with one data set that led to this problem occurring frequently enough that I could investigate it systematically. The problem has been resolved.

Transana Version 2.40 includes the following changes:

• • Transana now supports multiple simultaneous media files. You can load up to 4 media files in a single Episode. Once you have synchronized the files, they work together. See “Working with Multiple Media Files” in the Manual for more information.
  • Transana no longer uses the media player control bar provided by the media player. Instead, I have added a very simple media control bar to the Video window. This new media control bar can control multiple media sources simultaneously. In addition, this allows playback speed changes to work when playback is being controlled from the Video window.
  • I added Quick Searches. If you right-click a keyword and select “Quick Search”, Transana will do a search for that keyword and will place the results in the Search node of the Database Tree.
  • You can now select “Play All Clips” from a Search Results node and this will play all clips from all collections in the Search Result. It used to be that if a Search returned results from several root Collections, you couldn’t play all the clips in one Play All Clips operation.
  • I added a Text Search control in all of Transana’s text-based reports.
  • I changed the default configuration of the Episode and Collection reports so that these reports now include clip transcripts by default. (Thanks Nicolas.)
  • I reworked the meaning of double-clicking in the Data window’s Database Tree. The main result is that Clips and Quick Clips are easier than ever to create.
    • If a tree node can be expanded, double-clicking will expand it.
    • If the node is a Transcript, a Clip, or a Note, the appropriate object is loaded in Transana’s main interface.
    • If the node is a Collection, a Clip is added if possible.
    • If the node is a Keyword, a Quick Clip is added if possible.
  • When playback speed can be changed, it is now possible to change playback speed using Ctrl-(comma) to reduce playback speed and Ctrl-(period) to increase playback speed. The Transcript Window or Visualization Window must be selected for this to work. (Playback speed functionality depends upon media type and media player selection on Windows. It is always available on OS X.)
  • When you use Presentation Mode, the size of the type in your transcripts is now automatically enlarged to make it more visible to your audience.
  • At the request of the participants in the 2008 summer training workshop, I added a new Presentation Mode called “Audio and Transcript Only”. This mode should be useful for conference presentations where you want to play your clip audio without showing the associated video.
  • Transitions between clips when using Play All Clips in Video Only or Video and Transcript Only Presentation Modes are smoother.
  • Transana now has a Chinese – Simplfied translation, thanks to Zhong Hongquan and Bei Zhang.
  • Single-user Transana’s default database directory on Windows was moved from a location that was difficult to find to the “Transana 2” subdirectory of the “My Documents” folder. This change affects only first-time Transana installers to avoid problems for installed users.

    If you are upgrading from an earlier version of single-user Transana for Windows, you are strongly encouraged to move your data, as the new location is much more likely to get backed up and is easier to find during recovery from hard drive disasters.

  • I updated the Manual and Tutorial extensively, as some content and all the graphics were quite out-of-date. I encourage everyone who hasn’t done the Tutorial in a while to go through it again. You might just be surprised how much you will learn about Transana, even if you are comfortable with the program!
  • When a transcript was sparsely time-coded, such that two adjacent time codes could not both be displayed on screen at once, several problems occurred. This was particularly problematic during transcription when the end timecode was not being displayed in the Transcript window. While this situation still presents some difficulty, I think the modified behavior will be considerably more user-friendly. (Thanks Harrie.)
  • It used to be that you could not create a Quick Clip from within another Clip. Now you can.
  • I discovered a problem with the “Update DB” function in the File Management tool. Specifically, if you updated a file name that was a subset of another existing file name, some file names were improperly updated. For example, if I had “Men’s Focus Group.mov” and “Women’s Focus Group.mov” episodes and I used “Update DB” on “Men’s Focus Group.mov”, the “Women’s Focus Group.mov” episode and clips would end up pointing to the Men’s video file. While I suspect this situation is very rare, the problems caused can be difficult to sort out.
  • When you create a clip from an episode in Transana, Transana remembers what episode and transcript(s) that clips was created from. When you create a clip from another clips, previous versions of Transana would remember what clip the new clips was created from.

    However, parent clips are much more likely to get deleted than parent episode transcripts. If you decide to split a clip into smaller parts, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll decide to delete the original source clip. The result was that many clips were being unnecessarily orphaned, and the “Locate Clip in Episode” feature wouldn’t work for them as a result.

Starting with Transana 2.40, when clips are created from other clips, the parent data will reflect the source clip’s episode transcript rather than the source clip itself. This is expected to reduce the number of orphaned clips.

As part of this change, the first time you run Transana 2.40, the program will go through all your clips looking for clips parented by other clips, and will alter the data to show these clips as being parented by the originating episode. While this is not possible for clips that have already been orphaned, it should prevent further clip orphaning if you delete parent clips from your database.

• If you had multiple-transcript clips and used Play All Clips in All Windows presentation mode, only one transcript was displayed, and the Transcript window was improperly sized. This problem has been resolved so that multiple transcripts are now displayed correctly.
• It used to be that when you loaded a new media file, you lost your playback speed setting. (The setting slider didn’t change, just the playback speed.) This has been fixed so that your selected playback speed is retained.
• Episode Keywords were disappearing during Database Import. This has been fixed.
• In multi-user Transana, if one user performed an activity that required a change to the sort order of clips in a collection while another user had one of the records in that collection locked, several problems could arise. Sometimes, clips would disappear from the database tree. Other times, clips would be displayed in the wrong order. No data was lost, once you restarted Transana, but the display contents were temporarily incorrect. This situation now produces a warning message indicating that sort order could not be set correctly and the display on all computers reflects the data accurately.
• Windows Vista users are no longer offered a Media Player option that Vista does not support.
• Windows Vista users occasionally (rarely) found clips starting at the beginning of the media file rather than the beginning of the clip. This has been fixed. (Thanks Sonya!)
• There was a subtle bug caused by editing labels within the Database Tree on the Mac. Specifically, if you edited a label, then clicked on another label before pressing “Enter” to finish the label edit, the edit could get applied to the wrong data object, the one you clicked onto. (Thanks Stephanie!)
• I changed the way Transana creates waveform diagrams. All waveforms are now created in memory, and graphic files used in waveform creation have been eliminated. The “Waveform Quick-Load” option has been removed from the Options menu.
• There was an encoding error when the Series Keyword Percentage Graph was populating its Filter Dialog. This has been fixed.
• Non-English users, particularly those in Japan, had difficulty installing Transana 2.30. This issue should be resolved.
• Blank lines in Transana-XML files caused import problems. This has been resolved.
• There was a problem exporting data when keyword definitions contained Unicode characters. This problem has been resolved.
• I fixed the unicode error in the error message about not being able to locate the database.

Transana Version 2.30 includes the following changes:

• Drag and Drop now works on the Mac versions of Transana.
• Multiple simultaneous transcripts for both Episodes and Clips. See “Working with Mutiple Transcripts” in the Manual for a full description of this new set of features. This feature makes it easier to look at several discrete analytic layers in your data at once.
• Added Default Filter Configurations. Anywhere there is a Filter dialog (Keyword Visualization, Maps, Graphs, Reports, and Clip Data Export,) if you create a filter configuration and name it “Default”, that filter configuration will be applied automatically. This is very helpful when you are trying to refine your output and need to jump between the data and the report. You should delete the default configuration to go back to seeing everything when you are done, although you can save the final configuration under another name first if you want to keep it for later use.
• You can now move Episodes from one Series to another using Cut / Paste and Drag and Drop.
• Created “Batch Episode Creation“. If you right-click a Series and choose Batch Episode Creation, you can select multiple media files, or even an entire directory with subdirectories, and Transana will create Episodes for all of the selected media files. If a media file has a corresponding RTF for TXT file, that file will be imported as the Transcript; otherwise a blank transcript will be created. See “Batch Episode Creation” in the Manual for more information on this feature.
• Automatic Transcript Selection during Clip Creation. If you do not make a transcript selection before choosing “Add Clip” or “Create Quick Clip”, Transana will automatically select the text between the nearest time codes on either side of the cursor as your Clip Transcript text.
• If you select a keyword in the Data Window’s Database Tree, you can create a Quick Clip from within the Transcript Window by pressing Ctrl-K or by pressing the new “Create Quick Clip” button in the Transcript Toolbar.
• An “Undo” button has been added to the Search Dialog. In addition, you can now save and load searches.
• You can now merge Clips in Transana. If you right-click a Clip in the Data Window’s Database Tree and select “Merge Clips”, you will be shown a list of clips adjacent to the selected clip, and you can then select one for the merge.
• When you load a clip from a Search result, Transana automatically selects the original clip in the data window, making it easier to update clips located by searching when you don’t want to save your search result as a collection.
• The Video Root Directory and the Waveforms Directory are now saved as database-specific rather than as global. This allows you to specify a different set of paths for different databases, and then to change between projects (that is, databases,) without having to reset your video paths.
• You now have much greater control over the colors used in Transana’s Maps and Graphs. In the Tools menu, select “Graphics Color Configuration”. This interface allows you to add, edit, delete, and sort colors to be used in Transana’s graphics. You can even create different color “profiles” which you can save and load.
• Increased the size of the data field for Keyword definitions from 256 characters to about 8 MB. While Keywords don’t have Notes for analytic memoing as other Transana objects do, you can now use the Keyword Definition to record how your keyword definition or use changes during your analysis.
• In previous versions of Transana, you had to click outside of the text selection in the Transcript window to cancel a text selection. This proved difficult when selections were long. You can now click within a selection to cancel a transcript selection.
• When adding a Transcript, if you select an RTF or TXT file to import before you have provided a Transcript ID, the root name of the import file will be suggested as the Transcript ID.
• When creating Quick Clips, there was an information message that told you when a quick clip already existed for a given selection. That message is now optional. You can choose not to have this message displayed by unchecking “Quick Clips Warning” in the Options menu. (Some users found that message problematic because it slowed down quick clips.)
• I added Media Filename as an optional data element to be included in the Series Report.
• Increased font size for Notes.
• The Database Export and Database Import tools now default to the Video Root directory when the Browse button is pressed.
• I added a “Port” specification to the Username and Password screen for Transana-MU. You can now use Transana with MySQL servers running on ports other than 3306.
• RTF import times have been significantly improved. For example, one long transcript on one computer used to take 74 seconds to import, but now takes 18. Transcript load times are also improved, though this is less noticable because the times are shorter. (0.95 seconds to 0.55 seconds is significant proportionally, but is still only half a second!)
• The accented character “É” was not importing correctly during RTF import. This has been corrected.
• You can now select multiple files at once in the Batch Waveform Generator interface.
• We reversed the order of the “Video Root” and “Waveforms” directories on the Directories tab for Program Options / Preferences.
• The Mac-Intel installer has been made simpler and faster. (The process of building the Mac-PPC installer is also simpler, though the user won’t notice any differences there.) Thanks Ronny!
• There is now a special Computer Lab version of Transana designed for use in computer labs. The key to this version is that users should not store data on a lab computer, but instead should use an accessible network volume (if the lab/organization supports this type of storage) or should use a portable hard drive for their data. Thus, the lab version of Transana prompts the user for the location of their video data and database files upon program startup.

Transana Version 2.22 includes the following changes:

• Episode Transcript Change Propagation — If you edit an episode transcript, you can reflect that change in all clips derived from that portion of that transcript.
  • Just place your transcript cursor within the changed section and press the “Propagate Changes” button in the Transcript Toolbar.
• Clip Change Propagation — If you edit a clip’s transcript, keywords, or clip ID, you can reflect those changes in all exact copies of the clip.
  • If you edit a clip’s Properties, press the “Propagate Changes” button on the Clip Properties form and Clip ID, transcript, and keyword changes will be pushed to all clips with the same (original) Clip ID taken from the same transcript and with the same start and end points.
  • If you load a clip in Transana’s main interface and edit its keywords or transcript, pressing the “Propagate Changes” button in the Transcript Toolbar will push the changes out to copies of that clip.
• A toolbar button has been added to the Transcript Toolbar that allows the display of Time Code Data in human readable form within the transcript.

  Please note that this feature is implemented by simply adding text to the transcript. You should NOT create clips with this feature enabled. However, because of the way clip creation works, it is not practical to disable it automatically during the clip creation process. Clips accidentally created with time code data showing will require manual editing to remove the time code data.

  If time code data is shown when you save a transcript to RTF, the time code data will be visible in the same format in your exported transcript. However, you should be aware that it will not be possible to remove that time code data automatically if you re-import the transcript. (Thanks to the DICA-lab team and the multi-LEARN project at the University of Luxembourg for supporting this project.)

• The color of Transana’s Transcript Highlight has been altered from white text on a dark blue background to black text on a cyan background. This should be more legible, especially when a data projector is being used.
• Collection IDs now show the full nested collection path in most locations.
• Episode and Collection Reports that include Clip Keywords now show cumulative time for each keyword in addition to keyword count in the summary section of the report.
• Episode and Collection Reports that include Clip Transcripts now show an indicator of what transcript the clip was created from. (This is helpful when there are multiple transcripts for a given episode.)
• When you are creating Quick Clips, Transana no longer automatically expands the database tree to show the new quick clip, as this would often move your keywords out of the visible portion of the Data Window. Users found that this slowed down the Quick Clip process. If you like to see the clips as they are created, have your Quick Clips collection expanded. If you find this disruptive, leave the Quick Clips collection node collapsed.
• Time Codes are now displayed within the transcript on the Clip Properties form.
• The maximum size of a Note has been increased from 64KB to a bit over 4 MB.
• On Windows, release 2.20 added media formats but lost the ability to alter playback speed for formats that used to be supported, due to a bug in the new media control I switched to. For this release, a new parameter has been added to the Transcriber Settings tab for Windows only that allows users to select between supporting more media formats (using the new media control) and having support for playback speed control (using the old media control.)

  If you need speed control, use the old control. If you need WMV or WMA formats, use the new control. If you need speed control with WMV or WMA, you’ll need to convert your media files to a format that supports speed control.

• If you delete a transcript from which clips have been made, those clips are orphaned. You can no longer use the “Locate Clip in Episode” function to discover the clip’s context. If you delete the episode record as well as the trancript, the orphaned clips cannot be displayed in episode-based reports, maps, or graphs. Transana now asks if you really want to delete transcripts from which clips have been created. As a general rule, this should be avoided.

   

• Clip Data Export now handles Unicode characters that don’t fit into the default encoding scheme differently. It used to fail, now it attempts to do character translation.
• Unfortunately, there is a new bug in wxPython that breaks Print Preview functionality on the Mac. As a result, all Print Preview capability has been temporarily removed from Transana on the Mac. While program flow is a little different in a couple of spots, the overall impact of these changes should be minimal. These changes will be removed when the wxPython bug is fixed.
• The single-user version of Transana for Mac did not allow non-English characters in the media filenames or paths. This restriction has been removed as obsolete.
• Note Time Stamps in Transana-MU now automatically show the username of the person who adds the time stamp.
• The Chat feature in Transana-MU now optionally plays a sound when new messages come in.
• A Buffer Size parameter has been added for SRB connections. This allows manual selection of a parameter that may affect file transfer speeds depending on internet connection speeds.
• Bug fixes in this release include:
  • If you choose to delete a collection but then interrupt the process because of the presence of a keyword example, the interruption of the deletion was not handled properly. This left the database in an unstable condition, preventing it from loading correctly and rendering it unusable. (Fortunately, this is a rare sequence in real usage of Transana.)

    If you have a database that was corrupted in this way, please contact me. I can repair it for you quite easily.

  • If, during the process of converting search results to a collection, you ended up with a nested collection that matched your Quick Clips collection name, you could no longer create Quick Clips.
  • If you used “Undo” following deleting a time code, the time code was improperly restored. This could cause a variety of serious problems with the transcript. If you have any transcripts that are not working properly as a result of this problem, please contact me.
  • The Series Keyword Maps and Graphs can get quite large and complex quite quickly. Unfortunately, the capacity to save filter configurations for these maps and graphs was limited by the size of one of the fields in the database. This was reflected in an odd error when trying to load filter configurations where the number of clips exceeded this limit, followed by the failure of the configuration data to load. The size of this database field has been increased.
  • If you selected text that included one or more time codes, then applied formatting using the Transcript toolbar or the formatting shortcut keys, the time code was formatted and the hidden time code data was exposed, sometimes spoiling the time code in the process. This problem has been corrected.
  • If the only change you made to a transcript involved formatting using the toolbar or shortcut keys, transcript changes were not “noticed” by Transana and would be lost if you left Edit mode without explicitly saving.
  • Ctrl-U, the shortcut key for underlining text in the transcript, would change upper case letters in a selection to lower case and remove all formatting from them. This behavior (which comes from the underlying control and not from Transana’s code) is now avoided in Transana.
  • If you used “Paste” to create clips following having used “Add Clips,” the Add Clip form was given incorrect data. The “Paste” method has been eliminated as a clip creation method.
  • If your transcript requires the use of Word Wrap, typing speeds could become painfully slow. This problem was especially evident on PowerPC Macs. Several changes were made to reduce typing lag. While the results are not perfect, the problem is largely resolved.
  • If you were editing a keyword label in the data tree to initiate merging of keywords and exited by clicking on another item in the data tree, an odd error message occurred.
  • Unicode did not interact with the Clipboard properly on the Mac.
  • The “.mov” and “.mp4” file extensions were case-sensitive on Windows.
  • The Transcript Window help page was missing a graphic on Windows only.
  • When using Transana-MU in English, trying to change object IDs would cause a Unicode error.
  • The cursor could become trapped inside a time code, between the time code symbol and the time code data, on the Mac. This caused time code data to appear in some clip transcripts and may have caused other problems.
  • One user produced a transcript with one mal-formed time code. I’m still not quite sure how. Transana now scans for mal-formed time codes upon loading transcripts and corrects them if possible.
  • Quick Clip creation got very slow as large numbers of Quick Clips were created. It was quite evident with about 1,500 Quick Clips. This process was optimized to reduce speed problems.
  • On the Keyword Map (and possibly other reports, maps, and graphs,) if you printed, then used the Filter Dialog, then tried to print again, Transana would crash. The cause of this crash has been remedied.

Transana Version 2.21 includes the following changes:

• Transana’s text-based report infrastructure has been completely revamped.
  • The Series Keyword Usage Report has been renamed the Series Report. It has been made filterable (ie. it now has a filter dialog which allows you to select which data objects to include.)
  • The Episode Keyword Usage Report has been renamed the Episode Report. It has been made filterable and the report contents are configurable.
  • The Collection Keyword Usage Report and the Collection Summary Report have been collaped into a single Collection Report, where the report contents are filterable and the report contents are configurable. Both the Keyword Usage Report and the Collection Summary Report can be created using the Collection Report, but they can also be combined, and a variety of new report structures can be specified.
  • The Episode and Collection Reports configuration options include:
    • Clip Times, Length, Media Filename are now optional.
    • Clip Transcripts and Clip Keywords are independently selectable, so that they can both be included in the same report if desired.
    • Collection and Clip Comments can now be included in the report.
    • Collection and Clip Notes can now be included in the report.
  • Reports for a specific collection can now include clips from nested collections as well. The inclusion of data from nested collections is optional, but the data is included by default.
  • The Collection Report can now be run from the Root Collection node, allowing a report to include all clips in all collections in the entire database.
  • Collections now show the full nested collection path rather than only showing the collection name of the deepest level.
  • Filter Dialogs have been added to most text-based reports, making them much more flexible and customizable.
  • The content of all text-based reports can now be edited manually.
  • The content of all text-based reports can now be exported to Rich Text Format files.
• Clip Data Export is available in more places.
  • When requested from a Series Node, all clips from all episodes in that series are included.
  • When requested from the Root Collections Node, all clips in all collections can be included.
  • Clips in nested collections can be (optionally) included.
  • Full collection path data is included, instead of listing only the most deeply nested collection’s name.
• Play All Clips has been improved.
  • “Next” and “Previous” buttons have been added, making it easier to skip and repeat clips during Play All Clips.
  • Clips from Nested Collections are now included, following the final clip from the root collection. (Press “Cancel” to stop these clips from being played.)
  • Full Collection path information is displayed during Play All Clips.
• The Notes Editor has been improved.
  • You can insert a date/time stamp into a Note by pressing the Timestamp button in the Note Editor toolbar or by pressing Ctrl-T.
  • Notes can be exported to Plain Text files.
  • Notes can be printed individually.
  • You can search for text within a note.
• A new tool, the Notes Browser, has been added. (Tools > Notes Browser) The Notes Browser is designed to allow you to review your analytic notes (analytic memos) easily.
  • You can review and edit all existing notes in a single interface.
  • You can easily locate a note in the full Database Tree by right-clicking on the Note in the Notes Browser tree and selecting “Locate Note.”
  • You can load the Clip that a Clip Note is attached to by right-clicking the Clip Note in the Notes Browser tree and selecting “Load the Associated Clip.”
  • You can create a filterable, editable, exportable, printable report containing all (or selected) Series Notes, Episode Notes, Transcript Notes, Collection Notes, Clip Notes or all Notes in the entire database by right-clicking a root node in the Notes Browser tree. That is, right-click “Series,” “Episode,” Transcript,” “Collection,” “Clip,” or the root Database node in the Notes Browser tree and select “Notes Report.”
  • You can search for a word or phrase across all notes in your database using the Note Search tab of the Notes Browser tree.
• Saved Configurations from Filter Dialogs now save more data. Almost all Report Settings and Options data is saved as part of a Filter Configuration now.
• Full Collection Path data is now shown on the Keywords tab in the Data Window.
• You can now import Transcripts that are in Plain Text format in addition to importing RTF files. At present, this only works for files in English, or at least for files that do not include characters outside the English (latin-1 encoding) character set. Users who require import of non-English files should continue to use RTF import instead of plain text.
• Transana-XML files are now exported with the “*.tra” file extension instead of the “*.xml” file extension. (It will be possible to import these files directly into QDA Data Miner’s August 2007 release.)
• On the Mac, Transana Program Settings are now accessible via Transana > Preferences, rather than through the Options menu. (This is more consistent with the standard Mac interface.)
• Several bugs have been found and fixed:
  • A variety of problems were discovered regarding the interaction between time codes in the transcript and the clipboard. On the Mac, copying text that included a time code from a transcript to the Mac clipboard caused Transana to crash. On Windows, pasting text with time codes did not work correctly, leading to display problems. Also, this could lead to problems with time code sequencing.

    To prevent these problems, the cut/copy operation now removes time code data on the Mac before text is placed in the clipboard. On Windows, cut/copy allows time code data (so it can be transfered to an external application) but paste removes time code data.

  • Starting with release 2.11, you could not move or change the Sort Order of a Clip that had Clip Notes attached.
  • If your Visualization seletion started at 0.0 seconds, you could not zoom in on a selection in the Visualization Window.
  • If you changed the Starting Point on one of the Maps or Graphs and had Vertical Grid Lines enabled, the initial grid line was being drawn at 0.0 rather than at the specified starting point.
  • If you turned off Color Output on one of the Maps or Graphs, then closed it, the next Map or Graph you created would not receive proper color assigments then the Color Output option was re-enabled.
  • Video Playback could get very rough and choppy if too complex a Keyword or Hybrid Visualization was displayed.
  • If you had a blank note, one without any text in it, this caused problems for database export.
  • A some obscure problem with color during RTF Export was fixed.
  • There were some character encoding issues with the various Maps and Graphs, particularly mouse-overs and filter dialogs, when non-English characters were used in keywords, collection ids, or clip ids. These encoding problems have been resolved.
  • Some difficulties with renaming and deleting object containing non-English characters in the object IDs were fixed.
  • In the multi-user version of Transana, deleting a Keyword in the Keyword Manager did not properly trigger the update of the Keyword Visualization on other computers.
  • On the Mac, File > Printer Setup and Transcript > Printer Setup did not function. These menu items have been fixed.
  • On the Mac, if you tried to search Help, the Help system crashed. This has been fixed.
  • The Mac-Intel version of Transana had problems with non-English prompts and non-English database names. These Unicode problems have been resolved.
• We were unable to get updates for the Dutch and Russian translations in time for this release. The Dutch translation has been dropped until we can get an update. The Russian translation, while incomplete, has been retained in the single-user version of Transana on Windows, as removing it would make it impossible for people who used it in previous versions of single-user Transana on Windows to access their data properly.

  If you would be interested in volunteering to update either of these translations, or to do a translation for another language, please contact us.

Transana Version 2.20 includes the following changes:

• The “copy and paste” (non-“drag and drop”) method of clip creation has been streamlined. The “Select Clip Text” button in the transcript toolbar (which triggered a “Copy” action) has been eliminated. You no longer use “Paste” to create the clip, but instead use the “Add Clip” right-click menu option for collections or clips in the data window.

  You can see a demonstration of the revised methods for creating clips in the Clip Creation ScreenCast.

  • On Windows:
    • You can highlight text in the transcript, then right-click a collection and select “Add Clip” to add a clip to the end of the clip list. (This replaces “Select Clip Text” and “Paste”.)
    • You can highlight text in the transcript, then right-click a clip and select “Add Clip” to add a clip in that position in the clip list. (This replaces “Select Clip Text” and “Paste”.)
    • You can highlight text in the transcript and drag it onto a collection to add a clip to the end of the clip list. (This is unchanged.)
    • You can highlight text in the transcript and drag it onto a clip to add a clip in that position in the clip list. (This is unchanged.)
  • On OS X:
    • You can highlight text in the transcript, then right-click a collection and select “Add Clip” to add a clip to the end of the clip list. (This replaces “Select Clip Text” and “Paste”.)
    • You can highlight text in the transcript, then right-click a clip and select “Add Clip” to add a clip in that position in the clip list. (This replaces “Select Clip Text” and “Paste”.)
• Quick Clip creation has been refined. The “Quick Clips Mode” option has been eliminated on OS X and has a more limited scope of influence on Windows than in previous Transana releases.
  • On Windows:
    • You can highlight text in the transcript and drag it onto a keyword to create a Quick Clip. This option is similar to the creation of regular clips. “Quick Clips Mode” does not affect this method of Quick Clip creation. (This is new.)
    • If “Quick Clips Mode” in the “Options” menu is checked, you can highlight text in the transcript, then drag a keyword from the data window onto the transcript. (If “Quick Clips Mode” is not checked, this action will assign the keyword to the ‘ . “transcript’s parent episode or clip.) Some have argued that this is a more ergonomic action than the option above. (This is unchanged.)
    • You can highlight text in the transcript, then right-click a Keyword in the Data Window and select “Create Quick Clip” from the menu. “Quick Clips Mode” does not affect this method of Quick Clip creation. (This is changed only in that you do not need to select “Quick Clips Mode” any more for this option to be available.)
  • On OS X:
    • You can highlight text in the transcript, then right-click a Keyword in the Data Window and select “Create Quick Clip” from the menu. (This is changed only in that you do not need to select “Quick Clips Mode” any more for this option to be available.)
• Transana’s Audio Extraction code has been replaced with all new code. Therefore, the Mac release of Transana is now a full release, not an Alpha Test release.
• Transana’s Media Player code has been significantly upgraded. As a result, we now support a number of additional media formats:
  • QuickTime *.mov video and *.mp4 video now work with Transana on both Windows and Mac.
  • Windows Media *.wmv video and *.wma audio now work with Transana on Windows.
  • Additional audio and video formats MAY work, depending upon format, platform, codecs, and individual installations. Just give it a try. If it works, please report the details (format, platform, etc.) to me via e-mail.
• New Visualizations have been added. Visualizations are selected by going to the Options menu and choosing a Visualization Style.
  • The Keyword Visualization shows how an Episode or Clip has been coded.
  • The Hybrid Visualization shows both the waveform and keyword placement information.
  • A Filter Dialog has been added to the Visualization Window, allowing customization of the information included in the Keyword Visualization.
• Series Keyword Graphs have been added, allowing you to look for change over time in the distribution of coding across Episodes in a Series.
  • The Sequence Graph shows keyword usage across Episodes in a Series.
  • The Bar Graph shows total keyword usage across Episodes in a Series.
  • The Percentage Graph shows the same data as the Bar Graph, but in a normalized form.
• You can now export select data from Transana to a tab-delimited text file suitable for import into SPSS, Excel, and other programs. See the”Clip Data Export” page in the Transana Manual for more information.
• A Text Search box is now included in the Transcript Toolbar. This allows you to search for text in the currently-loaded transcript.
• You can now merge Keywords. If you conclude that two of your keywords really represent the same concept, simply rename one to match the other.
• The Batch Waveform Generator has been improved to make it easier to select multiple video files from the same folder.
• Several configuration options have been added to the Keyword Map. You can now configure the height of the bars and the amount of whitespace between items, and you can choose to have grid lines displayed. The “Time Range” tab on the Filter Dialog was changed to “Options” when these additional options were added.
• You can now print the Keyword Map in Landscape format on the Mac. There used to be no way to specify this, but now you can. (We replaced Printer Setup with Page Setup on the Keyword Map report screen.)
• The Clip Properties dialog and the Keyword List Edit dialog now retain size changes within a given Transana session. This was requested by several users with very long keywords.
• Deleting a Keyword or a Keyword Group no longer clears the Transcript or Clip you are working on from the Transana main display.
• If you are running Transana-MU on the same computer where you host your MySQL database, you can now see the work of others working on the same database. Transana-MU will see that you are connecting to”localhost” and will prompt you for the name for your computer used by others.
• Several bugs have been fixed and other problems resolved.
  • You can now select text in a Transcript from right to left or from bottom to top. In the previous release, Transana cleared selections that were not made in a left to right, top to bottom manner.
  • When creating a clip from another clip, if no time code preceded the transcript selection, the new clip was given the incorrect start time of 0:00 rather than the correct start time of the original clip’s start time.
  • If you have a time-coded Transcript that exceeds your video file, you could still create clips without valid media in previous Transana releases. The clip start and stop times would be invalid, and such clips could not of course be loaded and played. This caused a host of problems. Such clips can no longer be created. If you currently have such clips in your database, please delete them.
  • If you loaded a Clip and put its transcript into Edit mode, then pressed the Edit Keywords button in the Transcript Toolbar, errors occurred and you could lose your edits. The underlying conflicts that caused this have been fixed.
  • If you tried to add a Transcript Note while you had a transcript in Edit Mode, you would see a strange error message when trying to save your transcript, and the changes would not be saved. (If you immediately re-entered Edit Mode and saved, no data would be lost.) This bug has been fixed.
  • Sporadic character encoding issues during XML Import have been resolved.
  • If an Episode or Transcript is deleted, Clips that have been created from it will be orphaned. In previous Transana releases, you could not edit the properties of these orphaned Clips.
  • Transana-MU’s Record Lock Report now automatically clears the Transana Main Screen, preventing the current user from retaining legitimate record locks, which if cleared by the Record Lock Report could present problems with saving.
  • If you left Transana-MU idle too long, you could lose your connection to the database. Recovery was not smooth, and people sometimes lost edits to transcripts. Transana now more aggressively tries to retain its connection to the database.
  • A change in Transana 2.12 caused problems reporting errors connecting to the Transana database in Transana-MU. Database connection error messages are reported correctly during program startup again.
  • In Transana Message Server version 2.12 and earlier, the Database Host/DNS field was case-sensitive. This meant that two Transana-MU instances could connect to the same host and database but not be able to see each other due to case differences. This has been corrected with Message Server 2.20.
  • Microsoft has apparently changed the way they encode their RTF documents in the latest version of Word, particularly on the Mac, rendering them incompatible with Transana’s RTF Import code. Some adjustments have been made. However, I doubt that our updates are comprehensive, and some problems may persist. If you have difficulty importing RTF documents into Transana, please contact me.

Transana Version 2.12 includes the following changes:

• A bug prevented people using Transana in languages other than English from creating Quick Clips. This has been fixed.
• A bug prevented people from inserting additional time codes in segments of transcripts that contained the “>” symbol. This was fixed.
• MySQL was imposing a limit of 1 MB on Transcript objects. This was causing problems importing large RTF files and dealing with very long transcripts. If the 1 MB limit was exceeded, database corruption occurred, rendering the Transcript object unusable. It could also not be deleted. The size limit has been increased to 8 MB.

  If you experienced database problems because of this bug, I can repair your database. Please contact me for assistance.

• SRB error messages were not being properly reported during file transfer. This problem has been fixed.
• The installer on the Mac was not functioning properly for users with Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger). Transana appeared to install, but would not run. This problem has been resolved.
• In the multi-user version, the Transana Message Server was treating database names as if they were case sensitive. Thus, if one user connected to “Transana_Data” and the other connected to “transana_data” on the same server, they would share data but the Message Server would not recognize them as being connected to the same database, so they did not see each other’s changes. This has been fixed with the release of a new Transana Message Server.

Transana Version 2.11 includes the following changes:

• To make a selection in the Visualization Window, you can now click on the starting point of your selection and hold down the Shift key while clicking to select the ending point. This allows easier modification of a selection in the waveform. Click once a the start, and use repeated shift-clicks until you find the correct ending point.
• There are new ways to control the video position from the Visualization Window.
  • When the Visualization Window has the program focus, you can use cursor left and cursor right to move the visualization cursor one pixel. (The amount of time this movement represents depends on the length of the current video, the width of the visualization window on screen, and the level of zoom of the visualization window.) If one pixel would be less than a single frame of the video, the video position will shift by one full frame.
  • If you hold down the Shift key while pressing the cursor keys, you move the video in one second increments.
  • If you hold down the Alt key, the video moves in 1/2 second increments.
  • If you hold down the Ctrl key, the video moves by 1/30th of a second, or one frame under the NTSC standard.
• You can now create clips using an open coding approach. That is, there is now a mechanism for creating simple clips quickly and easily in the early parts of an analysis. See the “Quick Clips” page in the Transana tutorial for more information about this feature.
• A number of enhancements for the keyword map have been implemented:
  • As you move your mouse over a colored band in the keyword map, the name and duration of the clip(s) represented by that band are displayed in a hint popup.
  • Left-click a band to load the appropriate clip and close the keyword map.
  • Right-click a band to load the appropriate clip and leave the keyword map open.
  • If multiple clips overlap on the keyword map, this is now indicated by a multi-colored band.
  • You can select what keywords are included or excluded from the report (keyword filtering).
  • You can alter the order that keywords appear in the report (keyword ordering).
  • You can alter what clips are included in the keyword map (clip filtering).
  • You can specify a time range within the Episode for display. This makes short Clips in long Episodes much easier to see and interpret.
  • You can save and re-load “Filter Configurations” for the keyword map, allowing you to create reusable report templates.
  • The keyword map now displays bands in 23 colors, up from 12. (A couple of the greens can be a bit difficult to distinguish on a poorly adjusted monitor. Sorry about that.)
• When loading a clip through the Episode Clips tab and the Selected Clips tab in the Data Window, the appropriate clip record is highlighted in the Database Tree tab, making the manipulation of the identified clips more convenient.
• During Transcription, you can now save your transcript by pressing F12.
• Database loading has been optimized. One multi-user database used for testing showed a decrease in loading time from 35 seconds to 0.33 seconds.
• A few new colors have been added to the Transcript Font options.
• Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Ny-norsk translations have been added. (We offer our sincere thanks to Dan Jacobsen for this.)
• Numerous bugs, most of them obscure and unreported, have been fixed. Some of these were never public, but occurred when we upgraded wxPython. Others can be observed in the 2.10 release series.
  • Field length limits are now enforced on all Properties forms. (If you had multiple clips that had the same first 100 characters in the Clip ID, bad things could happen.)
  • If the user clicked on the time code symbol when making a selection for a clip, the transcript cursor could get “caught” between the time code symbol and the time code data. If you see a clip that starts with time code data (the “<” and “>” characters with numbers in between), it is likely that the clip has the wrong clip start time.
  • Creating a clip from within another clip was fixed.
  • Problems detecting Time Codes on the Mac during RTF and Transana XML import were fixed.
  • There was a problem with some style creation on the Mac, making it difficult to select some font colors.
  • There was a problem updating the Video Root directory with some legacy databases.
  • The Chat Window now reflects changes in interface language.
  • Database Export now works in languages other than English.
  • Editing or removing Clip Keywords via the Keywords Tab caused ugly error messages if the Clip Transcript was in Edit Mode. The error messages are much clearer now.
  • Keyword Group error checking has been improved. Case differences are now ignored. Illegal characters such as parentheses and colons are now prevented better.
  • Keywords with colons (“:”) embedded in them could not be removed from Episodes or Clips. This has been fixed.
  • Occasionally, a Clip would be prematurely terminated following Pause in the Play All Clips routine. This has been fixed.
  • In Transana-MU, Clip Transcripts would not re-load properly following Multi-user edit conflicts.
  • In Transana-MU, changes in Episode and Clip Keywords by one user were not being reflected on the Keywords tab of other users. If user 1 was viewing the Keywords tab when user 2 made changes, then user 1 made changes, user 2’s changes would be lost.
  • In Transana-MU, drag-and-drop keyword assignment was not reporting keyword assignment failures due to record locks. Thus, a user could believe a keyword had been assigned when in fact it hadn’t because of a record lock problem. Cut-and-paste keyword assignment reported the error awkwardly.
  • In Transana-MU, if one user is editing an object’s properties, including the object’s ID, when another user saves an object properties edit that changes the selection in the database tree for the first user, the wrong tree node on screen will be updated when the first user saves for all users. (The actual data objects will be saved correctly in the database. Only the database tree on screen will be incorrect. Restarting Transana-MU resolves the problem.) This problem has been corrected by ensuring that the current selection in the database tree is not altered when other users make changes that affect the tree.

Transana Version 2.10 includes the following changes:

• Transcript loads and saves are now much faster. We see speed improvements of 95% in transcript loads. Please note that a transcript must be loaded once to be converted before speed improvements will be observable.
• A multi-user version of Transana based on the Open Source code is now available. This brings all of the improvements seen in the single-user version of Transana since version 1.24 to the users of the collaborative version.
• Transana now supports Unicode, more or less.

  All of the source code for Transana has been updated to handle Unicode, and this has led to a number of improvements in Transana, such as the ability to handle Unicode media file names. However, technical problems outside of our control limit this to some degree.

  The multi-user Windows version uses UTF-8 encoding, so supports use in most languages. The single-user Windows version requires the explicit specification of an encoding due to problems with the integration of the embedded MySQL database. We’ve enabled encodings for Russian, Chinese and Japanese. We tried to add Korean as well, but were foiled by a bug in the wxPython Styled Text Control, which is the basis for our Transcription Window.

  The Mac OS X versions of Transana are limited in their Unicode implementation due to internal problems with the wxPython Styled Text Control. Therefore, use in many non-Romance languages is limited to Windows at this time.

• Transana (on Windows) now includes a Russian translation, thanks to Viktor Ignatjev, and supports Cyrillic character encoding. The single-user version on Windows now has explicit language modes for Chinese and Japanese data, though we do not have translations of the Transana prompts in those langauges yet.
• Some of the logic for clearing Transana’s windows when the user deletes a data object was revised. For example, deleting a Clip no longer clears the Transcript you are currently working from.
• Additional waveforming routines have been added to the Windows versions of Transana, allowing wave extraction for media files that contain Unicode characters. In addition, some *.avi files created on a Mac now work on Windows. We continue to work on bringing these improvements to the Mac.
• Transana now works with Storage Resource Broker version 3.3.1. Also, the way Transana connects to other users’ SRB data was revised to make video sharing easier.
• Numerous bugs, most of them obscure and unreported, have been fixed.
  • Clip notes would disappear when clips were moved. (They would re-appear when Transana was restarted. No data was ever lost.)
  • Problems with clip sort order following the deletion of some clips in a collection were resolved.
  • Problems with Episode Date Taped and with Core Data Date were resolved.
  • The Series Keyword Usage Report on the Mac was fixed to properly display Search Results nodes.
  • In Windows, visual feedback when dragging and dropping Search Results Collections and Clips has been improved.
  • Moving clips that are keyword examples caused the link to the keyword example to be broken until Transana was restarted. This has been fixed.
  • Clicking on the Visualization window no longer ignores the Auto Word-Tracking setting.
  • SRB folders are now displayed properly on the Mac.
  • The Refresh button now works for SRB file lists.
  • Cancelling a file move between the local file system and the SRB no longer causes the source file to be improperly deleted.
  • Using the File Management tool caused Help to be unable to find the Help files. This has been fixed.

Transana Version 2.05 includes the following changes:

• A “Delete Database” function has been added.
• Numerous improvements have been made in handling fonts during transcription:
  • Support for font size has been added to the Transcription component.
  • A default font face and font size can now be specified for new Transcripts.
  • The font dialog has been completely rewritten. This is especially significant on the Macintosh, were you can now properly select fonts.
  • A new model for font formatting has been implemented. You can now alter some character formatting characteristics without accidentally changing others. This is significant when editing transcript selections where some font characteristics could be mixed within the selection.
• Support for Danish has been added.
• Numerous bugs and issues have been fixed:
  • Several RTF Import features have been improved. RTF files created on the Mac can now be imported. Font Formatting problems have been resolved.
  • Ctrl-S no longer moves the cursor position during editing on the Mac.
  • Clicking in the Waveform no longer crashes the program when a language other than English is selected.
  • The Search Dialog no longer allows the illegal specification of “()”.
  • Ctrl-A now sets the video position to “0:00:00.0” when pressed in a video positioned at less than “0:00:10.0” seconds.
  • Leaving the Clip ID off a new Clip now has a better error message.
  • When using the “Select Clip Text” button to create Clips, you can now select “Add Clip” as well as “Paste” in the Collection’s right-click menu.
  • The Database Selection dialog box sizes properly for languages other than English.
  • You can now use the Delete key to remove keywords from the Episode Properties dialog, the Clip Properties dialog, and the Edit Keywords dialog.
  • “Save Transcript As” now prompts you before overwriting an RTF file.
  • The Transcript Cursor is restored following Font selection or editing.
  • Transcripts can now include “{“, “}”, “/”, and “\” characters.
  • “Print Transcript” now includes edits that have not yet been saved.
  • You now get a warning message if you try to select a media filename that includes characters not found in English. (I have been unable to resolve the problems that currently prevent Transana from being able to actually work with such files.)
  • The style of the line numbers no longer changes when the 33rd character format style is defined.

Transana Version 2.04 includes the following changes:

• Transana 2.04 introduces the “Select Clip Text” button on the Transcript toolbar in both the Macintosh and Windows versions of Transana. You can now create a clip by highlighting the desired text in a transcript, pressing the “Select Clip Text” button in the transcript toolbar, then right-clicking the desired target collection and selecting “Paste” from the popup menu. Please see the tutorial and help pages for more details.
• The mechanism for editing the properties of currently-loaded transcripts and clips was improved.
• Search results are now displayed in reverse chronological order rather than alphabetic order.
• A bug in previous Transana 2.0x releases that kept episode keywords from being deleted when an episode was deleted was fixed. The only known side effect of this bug is that Transana XML files exported from databases where episodes with keywords have been deleted will require minor editing before they can be re-imported.
• Dutch and Swedish translations have been added.

Transana 2.03 fixes the import of Conversation-Analytic transcripts that use the “>” character, which were not displaying properly. It fixes another RTF import issue, and changes the default font for transcripts to 10 point Courier New from 12 point Arial. This fixed-point font is considered more useful to some transcribers.

Transana 2.02 again fixes bugs. The major change with this version is that Windows Me and Windows 98 Second Edition are now supported.

Transana 2.01 is primarily a bug-fix release. The only significant change in functionality is that you no longer need to be so careful to exclude time codes at the beginning and end of you selection when creating Clips. Now, time codes at the start and end of the selection are excluded during Clip creation.

Transana Version 2.00 includes the following changes:

• Well, everything, actually. Transana has been completely re-written from the ground up. But the rest of this list will be dedicated to what’s DIFFERENT from Transana 1.24.
• It is now easier to create and work with multiple databases, allowing you to create different databases for different purposes. In fact, when you first start Transana 2.0, you are asked to select a database. If you don’t have one already, just type in a name for your database and it will be created.
• The Transcription component has been completely rewritten. All known bugs and major annoyances in the old Transcription component have been resolved. However, the feature set was not expanded to support images, tables, spell checking, or other features that have been requested over the years. (However, the changes we implemented make some of these possible in a way they weren’t with the old component.) There are some new limitations in the new Transcription Component, such as a maximum of 256 formatting styles, and the (temporary) inability to alter font size. Ultimately, from my point of view, the new Transcription component represents a major improvement over the old one in terms of the ease of transcription.
• Shortcut keys have been added for Jeffersonian Transcription Symbols, Ctrl-Cursor Up for Rising Intonation, Ctrl-Cursor Down for Falling Intonation, Ctrl-H for Audible Breath, and Ctrl-O for Whispered Speech.
• You can now move Clips as well as copy them. To follow Windows’ conventions, drag a Clip to move it, Ctrl-drag a Clip to copy it.
• “Cut”, “Copy”, and “Paste” menu items have been added to the Database Window’s right-click menus. This allows an alternate to Drag-and-Drop, and is useful when you have a lot of objects in your database.
• During “Play All Clips”, the Clip Keywords tab is now automatically displayed in the Data Windows. This helps the researchers see an overview of the keywords used in the Clips within the Collection being played.
• Search Results now act a lot more like Collections. You can view reports on them, Play All Clips for them, move Clips around, rename things, etc. This allows you to see if what your search has produced is meaningful before converting the Search Results into a Collection, and allows you to do more analytic manipulation of Search Results to see if you come up with something analytically meaningful.
• You can now add Notes to Transcript Objects. Just right-click a Transcript in the Database Window and choose “Add Transcript Note”.
• The “Keyword Map” has been added to Episode Objects in the Database Window. The Keyword Map is a graphical representation of where keywords have been applied to an Episode. (This used to be available only as a stand-alone add-on for the multi-user version.)
• Iterative Coding is now possible. That is, you can now make Clips from other, larger Clips.
• You can now set a “Video Root Folder” in Program Settings. This allows for easier sharing of data and video.
• Database Export and Import have been added. You can now export your Transana Database to a Transana XML document, and you can import that Transana XML document on another computer or into another Transana database.
• The tutorial has been edited extensively to make it easier to follow.
• The menus have been reorganized and Program Settings and Options have been consolidated. Note especially that most options have been moved to the Option menu; the Transcriber Settings dialog was improved and was moved under Program Options; and “Change Database” was moved to the File menu.
• Transana is now ready for non-English translations. Note that French, German, Italian, and Spanish language support is provided. Danish, Dutch, and Swedish translations are almost complete. Norwegian and Polish translations are in the works. Transana is immediately ready to accept translations in Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Polish, Russian, and Swedish. Many, though not all, other languages can be implemented relatively easily as well. We are looking for volunteers to do translations.

Transana’s File Management Utility can now access Storage Resource Broker servers running SRB version 3.1

One bug was discovered and fixed. Creation of a Clip during the transcription process rendered the insertion of Time Codes in the Episode Transcript after the end of the Clip impossible. The error message stated you could not insert the time code.

Transana Version 1.22 includes the following changes:

• The MPEG-2 and AVI Video formats are now fully supported. Transana 1.22 can create waveforms for these video formats without the use of an external program to perform Waveform extraction.
• The File Management Utility now works with SRB 2.0 servers.
• Several “issues” (bugs) in Transana 1.21 were discovered during the Transana 1.22 release testing process. I can only conclude that these bugs are obscure and/or subtle, as no one reported them before I found them.

Transana Version 1.21 includes the following changes:

• The File Management Utility has been modified to allow users to access Collections on a Storage Resource Broker that belong to other SRB Users, when permission has been granted in the SRB.
• The File Management Utility Help button has been repaired.

Transana Version 1.20 includes the following changes:

• Transana’s Search capability has been improved. You can now specify more complex searches, and can use parentheses and the NOT logical operator in specifying searches.
• Support for Nested Collections has been added, allowing greater flexibility in organizing Clips.
• Clips now understand “Sort Order”, easing the process of Case Development and allowing more control over Collections.
• More Shortcut Keys have been added to aid Transcription:
  • Ctrl-F will “Fast Forward” the video by 10 seconds.
  • Ctrl-A will “Rewind” the video by 10 seconds.
  • Ctrl-D will pause and restart the video without using Transana’s “auto-rewind” feature.
  • Ctrl-B will Bold text.
  • Ctrl-I will Italicize text.
  • Ctrl-U will Underline text.
• Analytic Keyword Enhancements include:
  • Keyword Definitions can now be given to Keywords
  • Keyword Example Clips can be assigned to Keywords
  • You can now copy Keywords between groups via drag-and-drop
  • You can now edit Keywords and move them from one Keyword Group to another
  • The Keyword Summary Report lists all keywords with their definitions
  • The Keyword Usage Report for a Series lists all Keywords used for all contained Episodes with summary counts.
  • The Keyword Usage Report for an Episode lists all Keywords used for all Clips created from that Episode with summary counts.
  • The Keyword Usage Report for a Collection lists all Keywords used for all contained Clips with summary counts
• Media Format Enhancements include:
  • Waveform Support for *.mp3 and *.wav audio files
  • Additional video and audio formats, such as MPEG-2 and AVI, supported without Waveforms
• Configuration Enhancements include:
  • You can now set up and use separate databases for separate projects
  • You can now change the Waveform Directory
• Multi-user version (Transana-MU) Enhancements include:
  • When one user changes the Data Tree, all users see the change immediately and automatically
  • Multiple users can share Waveforms
  • Users can connect from outside Network Boundaries with properly configured servers (although they must have a copy of the video files available locally because of bandwidth issues)
  • “Chat” feature to facilitate real-time collaboration over a distance

Transana Version 1.11 includes the following changes:

• Relationship between Episode and Clip
  • Database window renamed “Data Window”
  • Database Tree placed on the “Database” tab
  • All Clips created from an Episode listed on the “Episode Clips” tab in Start Time order
  • All Clips that contain the currently-highlighted Episode Transcript section listed on the “Selection Clips” tab
  • Double-click a Clip on the Episode Clips or Selection Clips tabs to load that clip
  • All Keywords assigned to the currently-loaded Episode or Clip displayed on the “Keywords” tab
  • Right-Click a Clip on the Database tab and select “Locate Clip in Episode”, and Transana will load the originating Episode and position the video at the ‘ . “Clip’s beginning point
• Keyword Assignment
  • Clip Add/Properties screen widened
  • Assign a Keyword by dragging it from the Database Tree to the Episode or Clip Transcript
  • Edit Keywords for the loaded Episode or Clip via the Data Window “Keywords” tab (see above)
  • “Edit Keywords” speed button added to the Transcript Window Tool Bar
  • Episode Keywords assigned to new Clips as “default” keywords
• Presentation Mode
  • Full-screen video only playback
  • Video and Transcript only playback
• Miscellaneous
  • Insert a Time Code by pressing Ctrl-T in the Transcript
  • Ctrl-Right-Click in a Transcript to play from the selected point to the end of the current Episode or Clip
  • File | New clears all windows
  • Transcript Selection that crosses time codes preserved following transcript-right-click playback
  • If you have not entered an Episode ID when you select a Video File while adding an Episode, the Episode ID will default to the Video’s File Name
  • Transcription Notation Help added (Jeffersonian Symbols)
  • Manual updated
  • Tutorial updated
  • Several bugs discovered and fixed

Transana Version 1.10 includes the following changes:

• Transana now runs under Windows XP
• Transana-MU, the multi-user version is now available
• New Database structure with numeric keys
• A “Collection Summary Report” is now available, which includes Clip Video and Transcript information
• Notes are now resizable and scrollable.
• New Waveform creation system with a functioning progress bar
• Media Types allowed in Episode Definition have been refined
• File Management has improved error checking, trapping, and messages
• “Yes to all” option added to deletes in File Management
• WCER’s SRB instance is the default SRB rather than SDSC’s
• SRB to SRB file replication is now supported by File Management
• File Management SRB Upload speed improved by 66-100%
• “Auto-arrange” option added, supporting multiple monitors and non-default media player sizing
• Help Screens for Keyword Management and all Add/Properties pages have been added
• User can now access Keyword Management from the Episode and Clip Add/Properties screens
• Dublin Core Metadata for video files added, accessible from the Episode Add/Properties screen

The initial Transana release