So last week was first time I used Nuendo’s Dialog Transcription feature for a real project. The Fast mode was fine for my purposes and transcribed 30 minute long content in about 5 minutes. ( I tried the other models … Balanced/Accurate… too slow for me). However having transcription built in is very nice!
I understand that currently (Nuendo 14) the functionally was built with ADR workflows in mind, but it could be applicable for many other tasks… especially for podcast content, audio books, radio work etc. I use external transcription services for this all the time ( ie daily) but having the transcription in Nuendo, linked to the the audio file, will be way more useful if we can get a few more features.
1: Currently ( I think ) a transcription can only be viewed in the Marker pane , one sentence at a time. Right off the bat I 'd like a Transcription pane where a selected event ( which has been transcribed) shows the whole transcription. I’d like the project cursor to locate to wherever I click in the transcription. Even better I’d like selected text-content in the transcription to be selected as a range in the audio event ( to be cut-out, or saved as a region)
2: It’s very important to be able to search through a transcript to find important points. REALLY important. So yeah… transcription search.
3: I’d like to be able to make text corrections in the transcript (just for quality of life reasons) .
4: I’d like to be able to edit a transcript to include speaker names. (although auto speaker ID in the transcription model would be magic! (ie Speaker 1, Speaker 2 etc)
5: I’d like to be able to select Tracks/Events as Transcription sources ( not just outputs ). If multiple tracks are selected the transcription should automatically transcribe a mix of the tracks.
6: I’d like to be able to view and interact with multiple transcription panes at the same time.
7: Export of Transcriptions as a time coded TXT/RTF/PDF to share with others.
Voted. Totally agree on all points. @ltf3
I’m curious though how your system responds to the many markers that are created by the transcription. My Mac Studio M1 Max with 32gb never has any issues.. except this. It slows downs when zooming in and out. Do you also experience this and if not what system do you run?
I using an old iMac Pro , OS 15.4.1 Sequoia, 32 GB RAM Intel based. So pretty vintage!
My sources were 3 approx 1 hour interviews each on their own track , so each had a Transcription Marker track with around 150 Transcription cycle markers.
I didn’t get any noticeable speed issues that got in my way. Pretty seamless.
I then used the transcriptions/Marker Pane to find the desired content to Copy/Paste into tracks for the production.
On the whole not that great in this use-case. I still had a third Party transcription in play for collaboration with others ( Simon Says), but that gave me a basic idea where each grab was ( via the Simon Says timecode ) and the Marker Tack helped me locate the audio.
Good experiment though. I hope SB extend the usability of the transcription feature. I mean, what fraction of users are there that actually do ADR seriously? Don’t get me wrong, an ADR suite is fantastic, but I’d hazard a guess that there are more people who could leverage transcription. workflows in other ways.
I know some people hate when it’s said, but if it’s going to take a while to figure out what features to include just copy the competition and get it done sooner rather than later. I begged for Steinberg to just “copy” functionality for PT groups/VCAs for example but alas they went their own way. Same with other functionality as well.
For a lot of my work the production audio, i.e. sound recorded on set or on location, makes up a huge amount of the final mix. Because of that most time I spend is often on the production-sound editing process. I can spend 75% on that and the remainder is mix, addressing client notes and exporting deliverables. And on some content it’s all about finding those alternate words, for hours on end.
Really hard to see why I would continue editing dialog in Nuendo now.
There’s life in the old dog yet! ( ie PT). That is a very comprehensive implementation! Drag and drop the text from the Alt takes? That’s excellent.
My request list didn’t include adding transcription to the timeline because I honestly thought that would be seen as too big of a jump from where we are currently ( nowhere really ). But Avid show an awesome example!
Text- Video editing is now table stakes for every NLE, Transcription service, Podcast platform, so it’s time for SB to see if they’ve got what it takes!
I’m with Mattias though… just copy Pro Tools.. Someone there has really thought about what is required to actually make a difference.
