Transcribing interviews is a time-consuming and often tiring task. Voicewalker is a small free program, making the task easier. The program plays audio and video files in whatever tempo and with the amount of repetitions suitable for your typing speed. With Voicewalker you will no longer have to manually play and pause the dictaphone/MP3-recorder. Rewinding and fasting forward in the recording will also not be necessary.

The first time you use Voicewalker, you should set the tempo, so that it suits your way of typing. Usually this takes a few adjustments before reaching a perfect match.

The program divides the audio or video file into 'steps' with a fixed starting- and ending time. The standard is steps in 4 seconds, but variations can be set. 'Offset' is a value indicating where the next step begins in correlation with the preceding. With an offset of 1,1 second, the program will skip 1,1 second ahead in the audio file and play a new step. If the length of the step i 4 seconds, as seen in the illustration, the new step will repeat 2,9 seconds of the previous step. 'Pause' gives the opportunity to automatically create intervals between the steps. Furthermore it is possible to repeat a step for as many as 5 times ('loops'), before the program will move on the next step.

'Jump' is used to jump back and forward between steps - equalling to rewinding and fasting forward in the recording. This function is easily operated with the function keys.

How to get started

Voicewalker was developed at University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of Linguistics, and can be downloaded for free from the URL: http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/projects/transcription/tools.html

You have a choice between Version 2 (for WAV-audio and MOV- and AVI-video) and Version 1 (only WAV-audio), and you can also download a manual for the program.

Create a folder for the program package, and download it ('save file'). The package is a compressed file with the name vwalker.zip. Double-click it to unpack. Then double-click the unpacked file setup.exe, and follow the instructions on the screen.

Run Voicewalker, choose a file to play, and adjust the program so that it suits your typing speed.