BlogPost:Creating matching transcripts of screen capture videos

In this post I am going to explain the way I am creating matching transcripts for the screen capture videos I am watching.

A recent topic of discussion in the blogosphere is a way to make screencast viewing and searching easier. Any method which would transcribe a video and also timestamp the words in the transcript can provide a lot of benefits to viewers of the video.While trying to fully transcribe the videos, I found that my average transcription speed was 1:4 where 1 = number of minutes of video and 4 = number of minutes it took me to transcribe it. Thats way too much time!

So I came up with quick'n'dirty^TM transcripting... couldnt resist adding the trademark sign :-)

I simply run the video in a visual basic .net application, and type as fast as I can into a textbox so that I can get about a fourth of all the words spoken in the video typed in. As one might expect, I try to get important or key words and leave out the more common words .This has the benefit of taking only a single pass, which is a lot less tiring than transcribing all the words. It is also a good way for me to learn all these new technologies since I am not quick enough as a learner to grasp everything on the first viewing. So anyway it would usually take me at least a couple of viewings to understand the concepts. Now I have the added benefit of having indexed the video, so next time I can jump right to the most important/interesting point in the video :-)So this is a way for me to learn stuff using screencasts and as a result also help others hopefully.