CATEGORIZE MEDIA DATA WITH A TRANSCRIPT

Categorize Media Data With a Transcript

Once you’ve created a Collection, you are ready to Categorize media data. This tutorial ScreenCast demonstrates how to categorize a media selection in Transana. This is also known as creating a Standard Clip.

Categorizing Media Data with a Transcript

The first step in categorizing media data with a Transcript is to make a selection in the Transcript.  Scroll down to and select (highlight) a segment of your choice by clicking the start of the transcript text, holding your left mouse button down, dragging to the end of the sentence, and releasing the mouse button. 

Transana uses time codes to link the transcript with the media file. When you make a selection in a Transcript, Transana will use the time code preceding your selection as the media selection’s staring point, and it will use the time code following the Transcript selection as the media selection’s ending time. This has two implications:

  • If you don’t already have time codes in your transcript matching the spots in your media file where you want your selection to start and end, you may need to insert additional time codes into your Transcript prior to making your selection.
  • When making your selection, you should be careful not to include the leading time code or trailing time codes in your selection. Otherwise, you are likely to get more of your media in your selection than you intend.

Clips can extend over several time-coded segments of your Transcript; simply make a Transcript selection that spans multiple time codes.

If you want to make a clip that includes all of the Transcript text between two consecutive time codes, you don’t need to actually select the text. Just place the transcript cursor somewhere in the text segment you want. When Clip creation is triggered without a text selection, Transana will automatically select the text between the time codes on either side of the Transcript cursor.
With the Transcript selection in place, double-click the Collection where you wish to place your Clip. (If your Collection was not already expanded in the Database Tree, you may need to double-click a second time.) This will trigger Clip creation. You should now see the Add Clip dialog box:
Enter an appropriate title for the clip in the Clip ID field.

Notice that your Clip is automatically assigned any default Keywords that you assigned to the Episode from which this Clip was created. We can add more codes to the Clip here if desired.

Click OK to complete the Clip creation process.

Analytic Memos

It’s now a good idea to create more analytic memos. No action in Transana should be considered finished until you have written about it in an analytic memo.

Right-click (Ctrl-click on macOS) the Clip you just created and choose Add Clip Note from the popup menu. Name the new Note for your document and enter your initials as NoteTaker. Press OK.

Press Ctrl-T on Windows or Cmd-T on macOS to insert a date-time stamp in the note. You might want to write about why you made the selection you did, why you included the coding you did, how you see this clip fitting in with your overall analysis, and any questions you might have, among other issues.