EVERNOTE AND OTHER FREE TRANSCRIPTION HELPS FOR DOCUMENTS AND AUDIO
©Copyright 2012 by Donald R. Snow
Sections of the Class Notes
This page was last updated 2012-05-10.
Return to the Utah
Valley Technology and Genealogy Group Home Page or Don's Class Listings Page.
WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION
- Instructors are Donald R. and Diane M. Snow ( snowd@math.byu.edu
and dmsnow34@gmail.com ) of
Provo, Utah and St. George, Utah.
- These notes with the active Internet links are posted on http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
. You can put an icon on your desktop to go to it immediately.
- Tip: holding down the Control Key while clicking on a link opens
the link in a new window, so you don't lose your place where you
were.
- Announcements
- Register for an LDS account -- go to https://apps.lds.org/sign-in/go/login.jsf
-- Same user name and password can be used at FS, nFS, FS
Indexing, and ward and stake websites at http://www.lds.org
.
- Use your LDS account to generate a helpful 9-Generation
Pedigree Fan Chart of your FS data -- http://www.createfan.com/
-- Can also generate fan charts for anyone in FS, if you know
their PID (their FS Personal Identifier number), by
going to http://www.treeseek.com
.
- Sign up for the new interface FamilySearch Family Tree
- Go to https://familysearch.org/invite/familytree_tab
and register there with your LDS account. This is in addition
to registering for an LDS Account and you only have to do this
once.
- Now when you sign in on https://www.familysearch.org
with your LDS account (upper right hand corner), you see
a new tab "Family Tree" next to the FS logo which gives
you to the new interface for your
data in nFS -- called FamilySearch Family Tree (FS FT)
- On this interface editing is easy and you can edit
things you didn't submit yourself; you can also enter
URL's for sources and images. FamilySearch says this
interface will be used by everyone by the end of 2012.
- 1940 US Census was released last month (2 Apr 2012) and
images are now posted several places including http://1940census.archives.gov/
-- To find people before the index is finished you can first
find the Enumeration District at http://www.stevemorse.org
.
- Help index the 1940 US Census -- Sign up with your LDS account
at
http://the1940census.com/?cid=fsHomeT1940Plt
- This class will discuss and demo some freeware programs for help
with notes and transcribing written and audio items
EVERNOTE
- Freeware program for notes and files, has many features including
synchronizing your notes between computers and at an online website
- Download from http://www.evernote.com/
- Evernote helps and video tutorials -- http://www.evernote.com/about/video/
- Features of Evernote
- Can set up: (1) Up to 250 synchronized notebooks,
and (2) as many local (non-synchronized) notebooks as you
want, so you can have, for example, a general notebook for all
FH notes, one for transcriptions of FH letters, and a local
notebook for passwords and personal info. Easy to move
notes from one notebook to another
- Sync'd notebooks are stored both on your computer and online
at the Evernote website -- https://www.evernote.com/Registration.action
-- so they are available to you anywhere you can get to the
Internet, including on mobile devices
- Local notebooks are only on your computer, so they are private
- Either type of notebook (synchronized or local) can be backed
up to a flash drive or elsewhere and imported into Evernote on
another computer; can export any notes or notebook in various
formats, e.g. text or html
- Notes can contain text, images, URL's, videos
- Notes can be tagged in categories so clicking on a tag
shows you all notes with that tag
- Usage button shows you how much of your free space you have
used in the 30-day cycle -- seems to includes plenty of space
for many notes
- Can edit notes and titles of notes at any time; has an undo
feature so deleting part of a note is recoverable, but not if
you delete the entire note
- Has a spell checker for editing notes
- Searching -- can show and/or search all notebooks or
only selected ones; shows search results highlighted; searching
for "win" (no quotes) brings up results with "Win",
"Windows", "wind", etc.; searching for "Utah Valley" (in
quotes) searches for that exact string; has
global find and replace
- Has OCR capabilities on pdf's you save so they are
every-word-searchable, but you don't see the entire OCR file,
i.e. the words are stored in the index when you search for them
- Has easy way to clip parts of a website to save with the URL
-- freeware browser add-ons Print
Friendly and Clarify
- Demo of Evernote
TRANSCRIPT
- Freeware program to help you transcribe images of documents -- you
read and type what you see
- Does NOT do handwriting recognition
- Download from
http://www.jacobboerema.nl/en/Freeware.htm -- website also has
instructions and helps
- Features
- Has two panels, one to show image of handwritten document and
one for you to type what you see
- Pressing Enter at end of typed line moves both the document
and the text line down
- Can set spacing to suit the document being transcribed
- Can move the image, enlarge it or make it negative to view it
better
- After you have typed the document you can copy and paste the
text into any program you want
- Demo of Transcript
AUDACITY
- Freeware open source program that does audio recording and editing
- Download program from http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
- Audacity Manual and video tutorials at http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Main_Page
- Features
- Program is very comprehensive and does many things with audio,
but you can use the basics fairly easily
- Can record mono or stereo by microphone or by line in from a
device such as a tape recorder
- Has input monitor to show input volume so you can set it
appropriately
- Has record and playback start and stop buttons like a tape
recorder and can set timer to stop it after given time
- On playback you can jump to various parts of the recording to
edit, delete, copy, amplify, decrease volume, splice in sections,
etc.
- Can apply labels to mark where sections start or end in
the audio file
- After editing you can export the edited file in various
formats, e.g. wav or mp3, and you can include metadata about the
file
- Demo of Audacity
LISTEN N WRITE
- Freeware program that helps you transcribe audio recordings; you
listen and type what you hear -- has playback and text editor
together
- Does NOT automatically transcribe the audio
- Download from http://www.softoxi.com/listen-n-write.html
- Listen N Write video tutorial -- http://www.softoxi.com/listen-n-write-video-trailer-screenshots.html
- Features
- Requires audio to be in digital .wav or .mp3 format so it can
be played on the computer
- Can control audio playback with function keys so you can keep
your hands on the keyboard
- F5 starts and stops audio and can be set it to pause a
specified time interval, e.g. 4 seconds
- F6 can be set to skip backwards a specified time interval,
e.g. 3 seconds
- F7 can be set to skip forwards a specified time interval, e.g.
3 seconds
- Demo of Listen N Write
CONCLUSIONS
- These are very helpful freeware programs for notes and
transcribing images and audio; for many other freeware
programs for family history see Don's Freeware
Notes
Return to the
Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Users Group Home Page
or
Don's Class Listings Page .