The Conceptual Model

Transcriva's "conceptual model" is very simple. Just as "Address Book" users manage "Contacts" and "Groups", and iTunes users manage "Songs", "Genres", "Albums", and "Artists", Transcriva users manage a few conceptual "things" as well:

Folders

Folders behave as you'd expect. You can use folders to organize your transcript library. Folders can contain transcripts and other folders.

Transcripts

A transcript, obviously, is the main focus of Transcriva. A transcript is made up of its entries, people (voices) involved, and an associated media clip.

Media Clips

Media clips are associated with a transcript (they're the thing you wish to transcribe). A media clip can be on your Mac, your local network, or somewhere on the web.

Note: Transcriva does not store a copy of the media clip anywhere. Instead, it "references" the media clip's current location. This is covered more thoroughly in the section titled "Media Clips".

Entries

An entry is a passage of text within a transcript. Any text within a transcript must be within in an entry. This is the smallest organizational unit in a transcript and is intended to encompass small bursts of text. A sentence, a phrase between brief pauses, or the start of a new person speaking. For example: one entry contains Bob speaking a sentence, the next contains Jane's reply to Bob.

Entries are always time-coded. When an entry is created, its time code is set to the time within the transcript's media clip that the play head is currently playing. In other words, if while playing back your media clip, someone speaks at one minute, thirty-one seconds into the clip, and you create an entry at that time (to begin typing the speech), the start time of the entry you created will be 1:31.00. This time can be adjusted for better accuracy if necessary.

People

A "person" in Transcriva represents a unique voice in the media clip. For example, if you are transcrbing an interview between "Bob" and "Jane", you would create both of these people within your transcript and, each time you create an entry, you'd create the entry as the person speaking it. This allows you to attribute speech to the speaker.

Not all transcripts will have multiple people associated with them. For example, if you are recording only your own voice (taking notes or personal dictation), there is no need to create any speakers. In this case, the entries will not display a person - they're merely entries with no attribution.