Loading Audio Into Express Scribe
In this lesson, we will show you how to download your audio into Express Scribe, which is an audio player.
An audio player is a program that is used to allow you to listen to audio files on your computer.
The first thing you need to do is download your audio.
Please download the audio file here: Download Practice Audio File
So, go ahead and download it. I saved mine to the desktop so that it’s easy to find.
Next, you’ll need to download Express Scribe. There is a free and paid version of Express Scribe. What I am using is the paid version, but except for a few different features, they’re very similar.
You can find it at www.nch.com.au/scribe.
So, go ahead and download it, install it, and come right back to the course.
Next we’re going to extract our audio file sample because it is a ZIP file and Express Scribe will not load audio that is in a .zip format. We will need to convert it to an mp3 format, which is very easy. Simply download the sample audio file here: Download Practice Audio File
Once it has downloaded, you’ll need to right click on it and select “Extract All”. This will create an identical version of the folder that is unzipped and in an mp3 format.
Once you have your unzipped mp3 audio file sample we’re going to upload it to Express Scribe. We find this way to be quick and easy. We simply go to the file, right-click on it, and then press Open with Express Scribe.
This will then cause Express Scribe to open if it isn’t open already and load your file. The green bar at the bottom tells you approximately how fast the file is downloading. Sometimes, if the audio file format is different than the normal MP3 and WAV files, then this way doesn’t work as well.
If I right-click on a file, and it doesn’t give me the option to open with Express Scribe, then I will load it right inside Express Scribe. It’s easy to open a file within Express Scribe. Just click on the Load button. This will then let you search for the file and upload it through Express Scribe. So, now you know some of the basic ways to upload your audio into Express Scribe. Next, we’ll go through how to set up Express Scribe.
Why do we recommend Express Scribe?
- It is quick to download and install
- It can play both audio and video files
- You can assign keyboard hotkeys for a variety of functions
- It’s very easy and quick to set up foot pedals for playback
- It supports a wide range of audio and video formats
- You can dock your analog or digital recorders to load recordings straight away
- You can connect it to your FTP to load files directly
- You can email transcripts from the software straight to clients
- It works with several different office software like MS Word
- It works with transcription speech recognition software
How to Use Express Scribe to Transcribe Audio/Video Files
- Begin by downloading Express Scribe
- Install the software
- Once installed, understand the controls using the screenshot above.
- To set up global hot-keys, go to Options > System-Wide Hot-Keys
- Or set up a transcription foot pedal if you have one
- Drag and drop audio/video files into the player
- Or go to File > Load Dictation Files and browse to your file location
- Once loaded, use hot-keys or foot pedal to control playback
- Default hot-key to play the recording is F9 and to stop is F4
- By default F7 is assigned to rewind, and F8 to forward.
- Press and hold F7 to rewind and F8 to forward.
BONUS TIP: How to use Express Scribe for efficiency? In Options > Playback, set “Auto backstep on stop (ms):” to 2000 or 3000, so that every time you pause, it goes back 2-3 seconds, which makes your life so much easier.
Watch Video Tutorial Below: