Getting Started – Configuring Your Pedal with Express Scribe

As Tara mentioned in her post about the basics needed to get started as a general transcriptionist, Express Scribe is our audio player of choice because it's free, but it's also the one we all use, even though we have other software, because of it's functionality as well.

After last week's poll on using a pedal, I thought this would be a good time to talk about setting up your pedal and customizing your setiings. If you're using a pedal, such as the Infinity IN-USB-1 (which is not necessary when you're first practicing but does help with productivity once you get going), you can follow the directions provided on the Express Scribe site to set up your pedal.

There are a few settings you'll want to look at and adjust for your preferences. For example, on the Foot Pedal Control screen (under Settings), there is a check box for "Quick tap on play pedal locks play on." I prefer to push the pedal to play and let go when I want to stop rather than tapping it on and off. However, I am admittedly not the fastest typist, and you may find that it works better for you if you're faster.

There are a few other settings on the Playback screen (also under Settings) that you'll want to adjust whether you're using a pedal or the hotkeys to control your audio. As you can see below, I've set my "Auto backstep on stop" to 2000ms. This is about 2 seconds, so when I let go of the pedal, the audio steps back approximately 2 seconds for when I'm ready to start playing again. In my opinion, this is the most important of the settings, and so far 2000ms works for all three of us. On the other hand, I haven't been able to find rewind and fast-forward settings that I'm entirely happy with, so I recommend you play around with those until you find what works for you.

Timestamping Files with Express Scribe

Sure, you could spend big bucks for a program that is specifically designed for timestamping, but it's probably not necessary for the average transcriptionist. If you just need the basic ability to be able to insert the current audio time of an audio file into a transcript, this can be done very easily with Express Scribe.

You first should start by setting up a shortcut in ES to copy your current audio time. Open ES and go to Settings> Pedal and Hot Keys.



Click on Add, and then you have to hit the combination of keys you want to use to copy the time. I use Ctrl + T, so I hit that combination, but you can selet any combination that works for you personally.



Finally, you have to select what that combination of keys will do within ES, so select Copy Time and then OK to save it.



Now you have a universal hot key that will copy the current audio time from Express Scribe even if you're working in Microsoft Word. When you're ready to insert a time stamp, you'll simply place your cursor where you need it to appear in your transcript, hit Ctrl + T (or whatever shortcut you assign to it), and then Ctrl + V to paste in the timestamp.

It will probably need some formatting depending on the formatting instructions you have from your client, so check back for a short tutorial on how to record a macro that will reformat it when you paste it in!