If you have already transcribed your first audio or video, then it is time to edit it.
Transcribing video or audio files can be a time-consuming and tedious chore.
ScriptMe does all the hard work by using AI to automatically transcribe spoken to written language, adding timestamps, and identifying separate speakers.
However, you might want to edit your transcription file to:
- Highlight important information
- Format the text according to your house style
- Name speakers
- Leave notes or comments for future use
ScriptMe provides easy-to-use tools to do all those things and more.
Let’s run through everything you need to know to edit your transcripts with confidence.
Getting to know the ScriptMe online editor
Before we get into how to edit a transcription, let’s first get a quick overview of the editor, including all the most important settings and tools:
Next, we divide the edit page into 3 important areas.
- Header area
- Playback controls area
- Content area
1. Header area
Under Shortcuts you’ll find handy keyboard shortcuts to speed up your workflow. For example, you can undo or redo using Ctrl + z and Ctrl + y, respectively.
Occasionally, you’ll want to collaborate or share your transcription projects with team members. By clicking Share, you can generate a shareable link that will allow others to see and edit the transcription.
If you want to add the transcribed text to the video as subtitles and have full control of timing and see the subtitles on the subtitle page, you can do this by clicking the Convert to subtitles button.
In most cases, you’ll need to export the transcription in another format for easy sharing or to use in a project. When you click Export, you’ll find options to export the transcription in SRT, Word, and other formats.
2. Playback controls area
This is the playback control window where we can control the video/audio playback.
You can use the play/pause button (or use shortcuts) to control the playback.
You can use the rewind and fast forward buttons to move 5 seconds forward or backwards in the media file.
The progress bar shows how far into the video/audio file you are. Here, you can see we are at 0.001 seconds. You can also move the indicator to go to any other point in the video.
Clicking the New timestamp button will create a new timestamp in the transcription file.
This is useful to add text that the AI missed or break up the transcription into smaller parts.
If the timestamps and audio are out of sync for whatever reason, you can fix it with the Starting timecode button. If you click the pencil icon, you will see the popup below. To realign your timestamps, just choose the correct fps, enter the starting time, and click Change starting timecode.
For example, if you have a video inside Avid Media Composer, Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro X, Resolve, or other video editing software. You will like to use the transcribe inside those as markers, or if you want to write a manuscript for editors, you will need to see the starting timecode of the media file and use the Change starting timecode to have the same starting timecode for the clip inside ScriptMe as well as inside video editing software.
For example, if your media file has the starting timecode 00:00:33:08, you need to set that same time inside ScriptMe. This is because the default starting timecode in ScriptMe is 00:00:00:00.
By adjusting the Playback slider, you can change the playback speed from 0 to 2x. Slowing the playback speed down can make it easier to edit the transcript while listening to the audio. On the other hand, you can quickly review the transcript by speeding it up.
Shortcuts for changing playback speed are CTRL+Arrow up and CTRL+Arrow down.
To translate your transcription, you pick the target lang from the Language menu.
3. Content area
There is a playback window to the top left where you can watch the video alongside the transcription.
Right below the video, you can add comments. This is useful if you work in a team to update others on your progress, give your thoughts, or ask for opinions on the transcription.
In the main part of the window, you’ll see all the transcribed text. In addition, ScriptMe will automatically create timestamps where it detects pauses or breaks between speaking.
It will also automatically number each speaker and assign them to the correct timestamps.
As you play the video/audio file, ScriptMe will follow along by highlighting text in the transcription window so that you can see where you are. This is also where you will be editing the transcribed text.
How to edit a transcription using the editor online
Immediately after logging in, ScriptMe will take you straight to your video dashboard.
Here, you’ll see a list of all the files you’ve transcribed before.
If you want to learn how to transcribe your first video using ScriptMe, you can follow our step-by-step guide here.
Editing the text
First of all, we’ll use the playback tools to move through the video until we find text in the transcription we want to edit. ScriptMe will highlight words as they appear in the video in purple colour.
We can play, pause, rewind/skip at any time, and use the progress bar to go to a specific point in the video.
You can also click with your mouse cursor on a word to have the player jump to that word faster than a second.
You can change the playback speed by making it slower or faster using the slider control our shortcuts.
As you can see in the example below, the word choice is highlighted at the 19.17 second mark.
ScriptMe will permanently highlight any words in red that the AI has marked with a low confidence score.
This means that there is a high likelihood that the word was detected wrongly, either because it doesn’t make sense or because of unclear audio.
Add timestamps
Next, we can also create timestamps at any point in the video. You can do this by clicking the New timestamp button or place your cursor before a word and press ENTER. So, to edit our transcript, we’ll place our cursor before “You’ll” in the fourth sentence:
And, when we press ENTER, you’ll see a new timestamp created at around 55 seconds:
We can edit the transcription text anywhere and at any time simply by moving the cursor to where you want to make changes. Then, make your changes like with any text editor by typing or using commands like SPACE or DELETE.
Contextual toolbar
Next, we can bold and highlight text as well as add a comment. To do this, just select the text and then use the options in the contextual toolbar
Your text can look like this.
Change speaker name
Finally, we can change the speakers’ name by clicking on the Speaker link under the timestamp and then selecting which speaker we want to change.
A popup will show where we can type in the speaker’s name. Press Save when you are done.
Now, our final result will look like this.
As easy as that, you can go through and edit your entire transcription.
ScriptMe will do all of the hard work for you. All you need to do is format and polish it to perfection using simple and intuitive tools.
If you have any further questions or queries, please fill in the form on our contact page.