#2 Segmentation

[stockdale]

It would be nice to be able to automatically segment an
audio file. The transcriptionists I work with think it
is a real pain to have to work through an audio file
inserting breakpoints before they even start transcription.

At the moment I get round this by stating a new
transcription in Transcriber and imediately saving the
TRS file after I've opened the audio file. I open the
TRS file in Microsoft Word and run a simple Word Macro
macro that prompts me for the length of the file in
seconds (i.e. endTime value at the top of the TRS file)
and then asks for a segmentation period (I generally
use 5 seconds). The macro then runs a loop inserting,
for example,
<Sync time="5"/>

<Sync time="10"/>

<Sync time="15"/>
etc. until the endtime is reached.

The transcriptionist still has to enter some new
breakpoints or adjust others by dragging the boundary
line at the bottom of the screen, and he or she still
has to insert turns, but this still saves a lot of
work, particularly when speech turns are longer i.e. 15
seconds to several minutes or more rather than a series
of short exchanges of a 3 or 4 seconds seconds.

So what I'm requesting is an option to segment the
entire file with breakpoints using user-defined value.
If the option was selected this automatic segmentation
would occur immediately after starting a new
transcription and selection of the audio file.