InqScribe News Archives
InqScribe 2.0.4
Hot on the heels of the last point release, here’s InqScribe 2.0.4. This version fixes a couple more bugs for Windows users and also updates the built-in bug reporter to send us a bit more information about your current preferences and keyboard shortcuts. This saves us having to ask you for that information, and saves you from having to tell us, when you submit bug reports or feature requests. A win all around.
(You knew you could submit reports and requests from within InqScribe, right? Check the Help menu.)
posted November 18, 2007
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InqScribe 2.0.3
We released InqScribe 2.0.3 today. This is primarily a bugfix version; you can see the list of changes here.
Several of you have been using a beta version of 2.0.3 that expired last week. We apologize for any downtime between the expiration and this release.
posted November 05, 2007
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InqScribe 2.0.3 beta 2
We’ve been working on a 2.0.3 release that cleans up a number of reported bugs in InqScribe. The latest beta is available for brave and hardy souls to explore. The usual warnings about beta releases — backup your data, beware of crashes — apply.
A list of changes in the beta is available if you’re curious whether you need to try this release. If you are interested, download 2.0.3b2 for OS X and 2.0.3b2 for Windows here.
posted August 27, 2007
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Looking for InqScribe work?
If you’re a transcriber who uses InqScribe, and are looking for job opportunities, please contact us if you would like us to pass your name on to folks looking for transcribers. Please send us email.
posted June 12, 2007
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InqScribe 2.0.2
We’ve released InqScribe 2.0.2, a free upgrade that addresses a couple of known issues. This update fixes registration problems that some Windows users experienced if they had certain Asian language packs installed. It also improves InqScribe’s robustness when working with internally inconsistent WAV files.
If you’re using InqScribe 2, we recommend upgrading to this version.
posted May 25, 2007
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About that Courtesy License
If you’ve downloaded InqScribe recently, you may have noticed that it comes with a built-in evaluation license that expires on May 1. Remember that you can request your own personal evaluation license if you’d like a longer evaluation period.
Some quick background: InqScribe runs in three basic registration modes.
- Unregistered. When you first download InqScribe, this is how it behaves. This is a limited “see what InqScribe can do” mode: you can’t save transcripts or export data.
- Evaluation. Anyone can request a free evaluation license that unlocks all of InqScribe’s functionality. Evaluation licenses are time-limited and eventually expire, at which point InqScribe reverts back to unregistered mode.
- Licensed. Once you purchase an InqScribe license, InqScribe runs with full functionality.
Now, if you have downloaded InqScribe 2.0.1 recently, you may have noticed that it is already running in evaluation mode. If you check the Show Registration Status menu item, you’ll see that there is a “Courtesy License” already installed that expires May 1, 2007.
We put the courtesy license in because we distributed a bunch of InqScribe CDs at a conference a few weeks ago. Since the conference participants might not have had access to the web to request their own evaluation license, we provided one.
Since the courtesy license is about to expire, some people might worry that we’re saying you have to finish your evaluation of InqScribe by May 1, no matter when you happened to download it. That’s not the case: anyone can request an evaluation license via our website, and the license you request will expire roughly 4 weeks from when you request it.
posted April 29, 2007
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Using InqScribe & Morae to study student software use
Here’s an interesting example of an educational researcher using Inquirium’s InqScribe to make a subtitled movie of classroom footage. The students are using [ESRI’s ArcView GIS](http://www.esri.com/arcview/] to study plate tectonics in a unit developed by Northwestern University’s GEODE Initiative. The video was captured using Techsmith’s Morae, which records screen video of software use and integrates it with web cam footage of users.
This example highlights how InqScribe allows users to control the location, size, and style of subtitles. Note that in this case, the author is taking advantage of InqScribe’s support of custom QuickTime text descriptors to control the font appearance (i.e., software actions are bold blue, student movements are bold yellow).
For an illustration of how to use QuickTime Text tags in InqScribe, see our FAQ on making subtitled text scroll.
posted April 20, 2007
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InqScribe 2.0 Released
Inquirium announces the immediate release of InqScribe 2.0, our cross-platform solution for transcribing, annotating, and subtitling digital media files. New features include:
- Automatic backup of unsaved documents
- Improved foot pedal support
- Support for embedded time code tracks and reel names
- Export to Spruce STL, Subrip, or Final Cut Pro XML format
- Anamorphic video display at 4:3, 16:9, or 2.35:1
- New transcript-specific settings
- More keyboard shortcut commands
- Native Intel support on Mac OS X (Universal Binary)
InqScribe 2.0 is a free update for owners of InqScribe 1.5. Available immediately for Mac OS X and Windows, InqScribe is on sale for $69 through May 15, $99 thereafter. Academic, student, and site licenses are available on request.
Designed for researchers, transcriptionists, and film and video professionals who work with extensive audio and video data, InqScribe features a flexible editing environment, QuickTime and Windows Media support, foot pedal support, customizable keyboard shortcuts for controlling media playback and inserting repetitive text, and a range of import and export options. InqScribe transcripts contain embedded timecodes that allow instant access to arbitrary times within the media file. Extensive subtitling support make it easy to generate captioned media from transcript files. Unregistered versions of InqScribe have limited functionality; users may request free, time-limited evaluation licenses to explore the full capabilities of the application.
Inquirium creates compelling problem-based environments for learners and innovative information analysis tools for teachers and researchers. As professional educators, designers, developers, and researchers, we bring a unique combination of skills to the design of any learning environment. We have a deep understanding of how people learn, as well as the experience and technical capacity to design and develop robust software solutions for a variety of learning contexts.
posted April 15, 2007
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InqScribe 2.0 debut at AERA
At long last! The InqScribe 2.0 golden master is off to the CD production house! Look for 2.0’s debut on this site in about a week.
Like last year, we will be handing out hundreds of free demo CDs at the American Educational Researcher Association conference in Chicago. We actually have a couple of sample InqScribe files and movies on the CD that you can’t get anywhere else.
If you can’t make it to the conference to snag goodies, you can always download the software from our web site: www.inqscribe.com.
2.0 will be a free upgrade for anyone with a 1.x license.
posted April 04, 2007
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InqScribe and DVDs
InqScribe doesn’t support transcription directly from DVDs. If you catch me in marketing spin mode, I’ll tell you this is a good thing, because typical InqScribe use involves lots of little seeks and jumps around the media, and those seeks and jumps are an awful lot faster when you’re working with a file on a hard drive than when you’re working with optical media. (Nonetheless, DVD support is on the wish list for a future version.)
But whether it’s for performance reasons or simple necessity, if you need to work with DVD-based content, your best bet with InqScribe is to “rip” the DVD to a local hard drive file. And to that end, Lifehacker has a great article describing how to do this for both Mac OS X and Windows. The article talks about copying DVDs to an iPod, but to do this, you’re basically ripping the DVD to a MPEG4 file, which is what you need for InqScribe. Just skip the iTunes step.
posted February 27, 2007
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Good customer service
A series of coincidences has me thinking about customer service today:
Joel Spolsky just wrote a nice article on what he calls the Seven steps to remarkable customer service. (For the most part, I agree with what he says, though trying to get a phone company to be able to anticipate and address customer problems seems pretty impossible.)
I’ve been taking care of the front line customer service for InqScribe over the last few weeks.
We were talking internally about how to handle customer service.
In any case, we’ve gotten a number of nice compliments recently on our customer service. Mostly it seems that people are simply pleasantly surprised when we respond within a day to their request. It’s certainly not always possible, but we try. Simply getting a quick response by a real person seems to be as important for a small software company like us as a mega corporation like Citibank.
Second, people seem surprised when we can actually help them solve the problem. Again, we’re not always successful, but if there isn’t a solution in the tool, we try to come up with a workaround. Which brings up another reason for us (as principals) to do customer service: user feedback.
Being a small company, we can’t quite afford to have a customer service department. But echoing some of Joel’s themes, to me rather than being a necessary evil, customer service is an opportunity for a conversation with our customers. It is feedback on trouble spots for the tool, as well as feedback on how they’re using the tool. By having our key design and development staff involved in customer service, we are essentially perpetually conducting user testing and focus groups, all of which inform the refinement of the tool.
posted February 19, 2007
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Auto-saves coming in InqScribe 2.0
It’s so easy to forget to save when you get sucked into a rhythm of transcribing or video analysis. Everyone has their own techniques, but I like to save files with progressively numbered names, so that I have older versions in case I need to go back to a previous incarnation, or in case the latest file gets corrupted, e.g. “ClassAlpha_v1.inqscr” and “ClassAlpha_v2. inqscr”. I do this with all of my software work: Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop, etc. Each day gets a new name, and I’m in the habit of hitting Command/Ctrl-S every 5 minutes.
To make life a little easier, we’ll be adding an auto-save/auto-backup feature in InqScribe 2.0, to be released shortly (You can buy now, and upgrade for free). But don’t let that stop you from saving frequently!
posted January 22, 2007
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