Click here to return to the main FAQ page.
First download the current Transcribe! version that's appropriate for your computer, free to existing users.
It will recognise the license key you already have (if you have one).
Here is the download page.
If that means you are now running a more recent version than the ones referred to above,
then you don't need this page, so you should go back to the main FAQ.
The key difference with these older versions is that we used to use Quicktime for handling video on Windows and Mac, but starting in 2016 we transitioned to using GStreamer. That's why we have this separate FAQ for the old versions. Later we transitioned from using GStreamer as a separately installed library, to including it in the Transcribe! download.
On Windows and Mac, Transcribe! 8.5 and earlier uses QuickTime for video display, which means that on Windows you must install QuickTime if you haven't already - it's a free download from Apple, click here for information about installing QuickTime on Windows. If you are having trouble using a video with Transcribe! then the first reality check is to see if it plays ok in QuickTime Player. If it does then Transcribe! should be able to play it too, and if not, then not. It is possible to install plugins for QuickTime to enable it to play additional formats.
On Linux, all versions of Transcribe! use GStreamer for video display. If you are having trouble using a video with Transcribe! then the first reality check is to see if it plays ok in GStreamer - try the default media player on your system, e.g. Parole or Totem, which use GStreamer. If it does then Transcribe! should be able to play it too, and if not, then not. It is possible to install plugins for GStreamer to enable it to play additional formats.
If Transcribe! cannot read some particular video then there are two options. The preferred option is to install a plugin for QuickTime to enable it to play the format in question, if there is one available - you can search for QuickTime plugins on the web. The second choice is to use other software to convert the video to a format which QuickTime can handle. Converting the format is also useful if the video plays, but jerkily. Transcribe! needs to control the playback speed very precisely in order to synchronise the video with the audio at any speed you choose, and some video formats work better than others for this purpose.
If you are using software to convert video from one format to another, or to copy video from DVD, then you may be able to choose what format to use for the resulting video. Try H264 encoding with frequent iframes - perhaps 1 iframe in every 10 frames.
If you are still having problems then of course another option is to update to Transcribe! 8.6 or later which uses GStreamer instead of QuickTime and which may well work better. However you do need to be running Windows 10 or Mac 10.10 or later, for this.
Starting with version 8.6, Transcribe! uses GStreamer for displaying video. On Windows or Mac you may see a message telling you that GStreamer is not installed - in this case you will need to install GStreamer if you want to handle video. This is easy and free. There is more information about GStreamer below.
When Transcribe! exports video it uses a format which is portable and should play smoothly in Transcribe! itself and indeed in other programs - mp4 with H264 video and aac audio, with at least one "key frame" (see below) in every fifty frames. I mention this because this is the video format you should try to obtain if you have any choice.
GStreamer can handle an impressive variety of video types but if it can't read some particular video then you would have to convert it to a different format, such as the format described above. Search the web for a video format converter which can handle the video you've got. Alternatively if you are downloading videos from a website then try different settings for the downloader.
If a video plays jerkily then use Transcribe!'s "Export Video" command to copy it, then load the copy. This works because Transcribe! itself functions as a video conversion program, exporting in a portable format as described above.
GStreamer is an open source media handling library. On Transcribe! for Windows version 8.6 - 9.1 & Mac version 8.6 - 9.0, you can optionally install GStreamer which will allow Transcribe! to:
Note 1: The current version Transcribe! 9.20 or later has GStreamer built-in so if you can run this version then download it and use it (free to existing users). For this you will need 64-bit Windows 10 or later or macOS 11 or later.
Note 2: On Linux you need to have GStreamer already installed or you can't run Transcribe! at all, and this has been the case since version 8.2 in 2011.
Note 3: Many people will not need to install GStreamer. If you're not bothered about video, and happy with the very wide range of audio file formats which Transcribe! can already read, and are happy to export audio in wav or aiff format should you need to, then you don't need GStreamer.
Note 4: GStreamer is "free" sofware, both in the sense that you can download the source code if you want to, and in the sense that it doesn't cost any money.
Note 5: Transcribe! used to use QuickTime for displaying video. QuickTime is now obsolete and Transcribe! 8.6 or later does not use it at all. This does not mean that there is any problem playing QuickTime files (mov files) in this version of Transcribe!. Obviously I cannot promise that any particular audio or video file will play ok, but GStreamer does play QuickTime files and in fact this version of Transcribe! can usually play the audio from such files without even needing to install GStreamer at all.
For your comfort and convenience, we (Seventh String) have prepared suitable GStreamer installer downloads for you. These are in fact cut-down versions of the standard GStreamer distributions - we have removed plugins which Transcribe! would not have any use for, in order to save space and download time.
Click here for our GStreamer installer for Windows
Click here for our GStreamer installer for Mac (note that we do not advise using the "homebrew" installer)
You can install the official GStreamer instead if you want to, though this can be risky as the GStreamer people change things from time to time, sometimes in incompatible ways. So we recommend that with Transcribe! you use the version we provide.
If you have installed one version of GStreamer and then want to install another, then it is essential to delete the previous installation first. That means you should delete:
Windows: C:\gstreamer (or other location depending on where you chose to install it).
Mac: /Library/Frameworks/GStreamer.framework (on your System Disk - note this is not the same as the Library subfolder you will find in your Home folder - you won't find GStreamer there. To find the Library folder on your system disk: select "Go to folder..." on Finder's "Go" menu, and type "/Library".)
Note 1: If you have already installed GStreamer then you don't need to install it again when you update Transcribe!
Note 2: After installing GStreamer you will need to restart Transcribe! in order for Transcribe! to find it.
Note 3: You can always check whether GStreamer is installed correctly by looking at Transcribe!'s "System Info" command (on the Application menu or the Help menu) where you will find a message about GStreamer.
If you want to know more about GStreamer, you can find their home page here.
This might happen because the track is in a format which Transcribe! doesn't read. Here are some suggestions.
First, if you have the file on your computer but Transcribe! can't handle the format, then you may be able to make changes to your system to fix this. For example:
If this solution doesn't work then see this FAQ.
If you are running Transcribe! 8.5 or earlier: Yes on Windows and Mac, but not Linux. On Windows you will need to install QuickTime (it's a free download from Apple), click here for more info.
If you are running Transcribe! 8.6 or later: Yes on Windows, Mac, and Linux. On Windows 8.6 - 9.1 and Mac 8.6 - 9.0 you will need to install GStreamer. See above for information about GStreamer.
If you are running a more recent Transcribe! version than that: See the main FAQ page.
Use the Export Video command on the File menu. It's useful for creating videos with speed and pitch alterations, but the time-offset slider in the Video Viewer means that you can also use it as a very quick and simple way of correcting synchronisation errors.
If you are running Transcribe! 8.5 or earlier on Windows or Mac then make sure you have the latest version of QuickTime. On Windows, that would be version 7.7.9, released 7th Jan 2016,
click here for more info. Also see "Special note about YouTube videos with Transcribe! 8.4 on Windows 7" at the bottom of this page.
If you are running Windows 10 or Mac OS 10.10 or later, then you can use Transcribe! 8.6 or later which uses GStreamer for playing video,
See above for more info about GStreamer.
If this doesn't fix it then it can sometimes happen that although other software can play a video smoothly, Transcribe! cannot.
This is because Transcribe! has to use a different way of playing the video, as it needs to control the playback speed very precisely in order to synchronise the video with the audio at any speed you choose. Some video formats work better than others for this purpose.
These problems relate to the way in which the video is encoded and you will probably be able to improve matters by using a different encoding.
See this page
for more information about video formats and how to use them with Transcribe!.
If you can run Transcribe! version 9 then first do the update (free to existing users) which
you will find here along with the system requirements. You should also delete the
separate version of GStreamer which you installed, as current versions of Transcribe! have GStreamer built-in.
See above for information about GStreamer. If you can't run Transcribe! 9 then read on.
Look in Transcribe!'s "System Info" command (on the Application menu or the Help menu), where you will see a message about GStreamer, either to report what version was found, or possibly to say that it wasn't found. On Windows and Mac, the version which we distribute works pretty reliably, whereas some other versions don't seem to work so well with Transcribe!.
So what you should do is try the version of GStreamer which we distribute here, see above about GStreamer.
Then restart Transcribe! and check your System Info again.
Transcribe! 8.4 and earlier for Windows uses QuickTime (if installed) for video and other purposes (and does not use GStreamer).
This is a free download from Apple. It's very useful with Transcribe! because it allows Transcribe!
to display videos, to read various sound file formats not otherwise readable, and to export compressed M4A
sound files (On the Mac, QuickTime is already included).
Apple no longer offer this download (QuickTime for Windows 7.7.9, released 7th Jan 2016), so
you can download it by clicking here.
NOTE: when installing the latest version of QT you will need to select "Custom install", click on "Optional QuickTime Features" and select "Entire feature will be installed...". This is needed for Transcribe! to be able to communicate with QT.
You will need to reboot the computer after installing QuickTime, before Transcribe! will be able to find it. If you look in System Info on Transcribe!'s Help menu, then you will see a message telling you whether QuickTime was found, and what version.
Apple have announced (April 2016) that they are no longer updating QuickTime for Windows. The last-ever version of QuickTime for Windows is version 7.7.9, released 7th Jan 2016. This means that there are a couple of security vulnerabilities in QuickTime which will never be fixed (see
here
and here).
Both of these weaknesses would only be an issue if you download malicious content and open it in QuickTime. Reading the advisories, my impression is also that they would only affect mov files though I'm not an authority.
Just to put this in perspective, this means that you can get into trouble if you download mov files from malicious hackers. But then, you can get into trouble if you download any kind of file from malicious hackers, because QuickTime is far from being the only software with security vulnerabilities.
Transcribe! up to version 8.5 uses QuickTime (if it is installed) for reading some sound file formats (such as m4a) and for displaying video. If you have installed QuickTime on Windows and now choose to uninstall it then Transcribe! will no longer be able to read some sound files (so you would have to convert them to some other format to use them with Transcribe!) and will no longer display video.
The best solution is to update to Transcribe! 8.6 or later, which does not use QuickTime at all, either on Windows or Mac.
Because Apple are discontinuing the QuickTime API. That doesn't mean that QuickTime files (mov files) will stop being supported, and Apple might well continue to call their bare-bones media player "QuickTime Player", it just means that under the hood Apple are using different technologies to handle these files. GStreamer can of course read QuickTime (mov) files.
I have recently (autumn 2016) been getting a small number of reports from people using Transcribe! 8.4 on Windows 7, of videos downloaded from YouTube which play very jerkily, even though they never had a problem before. After some investigation, I think that the reason is that YouTube is delivering more HD (high definition) videos than before, or possibly has altered the format it uses for HD videos. But do not despair, there are solutions.
First, of course, you should look at Transcribe!'s "System Info" on the Help menu, to see what version of QuickTime you have. Make sure you have the latest which is 7.7.9, see here.
Probably the simplest solution is to update to Transcribe! 8.6 or later on Windows 10, however I quite understand that many people are perfectly happy with Windows 7 and don't want to do that.
Otherwise there are two solutions, one is to use the regular (not HD) version of the video, the other is to convert the format as already mentioned. To help you decide, here are some test files. These are all versions of the YouTube video www.youtube.com/watch?v=FO7V9vNTiyE, downloaded using YouTubeInMP4 (which no longer exists), either regular mp4 or HD.
For format conversion I used Transcribe! 8.6, because the Export Video command in this version always produces a portable and friendly format: mp4 with H264 video and aac audio, with one I-frame (key frame) in every 50, no B-frames, and a bitrate similar to the original. If you have a computer capable of running Transcribe! 8.6 or later then you could use it as a video format conversion utility in this way, or alternatively there are countless video editor programs out there which can do this.
My result with these four files on Transcribe! 8.4 on Windows 7 is that they all play fine except the unconverted HD version, which is very jerky. If you have the same result then there is a reasonable chance that you can solve the problem either by using the non-HD version of the video you are interested in, or by format-converting the HD version. Though of course I can't promise, as every video is different.