Working With Timestamps
In this lesson, we’re going to learn how to timestamp as you’re transcribing a file.
Each company and client will have different ways of styling their timestamps.
For this, you’ll need the Course Style Guide: Download Course Style Guide
You don’t want to manually type the timestamps every time because it’s going to be tedious.
To automatically insert timestamps, use the Copy Time feature of Express Scribe. It’s definitely a time saver.
Click Options> Hot-Keys
Click Add > Command > Copy Time > Change and Press a Key or a Key Combination (For example: F11)
Click OK.
To copy the time from Express Scribe, press F11 (or any key you’ve selected) then press Ctrl+V.
According to the style guide used in this course, we set timestamps apart with a line, italicize the text, and put brackets around them.
So, for each new timestamp, go to a new line, click CTRL + I for italics, put in an opening bracket, and then the timestamp, and the closing bracket.
In our style guide, we also specify to put timestamps in natural places, if possible, and if within a few seconds of the required time.
So, if I’m supposed to timestamp every 30 seconds, but a sentence ends around 00:01:32, instead of strictly at 00:01:30, then I’ll go ahead and put the timestamp there at 00:01:32, to make the transcript cleaner.
If there’s not a good place to break, go ahead and put a dash at the end of the sentence, then add the timestamp and jump down a couple of lines and put a dash at the beginning of the next sentence.
You can see how I put a timestamp in the middle of a sentence with dashes when there wasn’t a good stopping point around the one minute mark. This now shows the document when it’s completed.
A lot of the timestamps aren’t exactly at a 30-second mark, but they’re at a natural stopping place. So, it’s less than a few seconds from a 30-second mark. As you do the practice file, don’t worry if your timestamps don’t exactly match mine as everyone’s will be slightly different. Let me add in a quick note about timecoding.
Timecoding is what you do when you’re working with videos that have the time burned on the video. Some clients will let you transcribe a video and timestamp the transcript using the burnt-in timecode.
A burnt-in timecode is the time you see embedded on the video
A burnt-in time code usually doesn’t start at 0:00:00:00.
So how do you synchronize the time on the video with the time on Express Scribe?
1. Open Express Scribe.
2. Click Options> Display.
3. Set Position and Duration Format to hh:mm:ss.t (with leading zero).
Load the audio, right-click it, then hit Dictation Information or Ctrl+I.
Under Time Offset, enter the time you want to start the audio with then click OK.
The main difference is that a video often doesn’t start the time at 00:00:00. So, you have to offset the time. You simply right-click on the file, select Dictation Information, and then, in the Time offset bar, put in the beginning time of the video.
This will make it so that your timestamps match the time on the video. When you’re timecoding with Express Scribe, you may find that your time may be slightly off. This is because videos have frame rates that you can’t be as precise within Express Scribe.
For the most part, this isn’t a big deal, but if you’re doing heavy video timecoding, you may want to look at another audio player, such as Start-Stop, which lets you select the bitrate to match the video. Well, now you know how to timestamp, which will come in handy.
To practice time stamping a bit more, you can use these resources which contain practice audio files and templates: