TRANSANA and Chapter 5 Getting Started - Online Resources

[Pages:43]TRANSANA and Chapter 5 Getting Started

(also incorporating Data preparation from Chapter 4)

In Chapter 4 the handling of multimedia is discussed in terms of direct and indirect analysis, modes of transcription and transcription assistance. In Chapter 5 to help get you started, we discuss productive things you can do in the early stages of setting up a `project' in software. Experimenting with these processes where relevant in your chosen software will help to become familiar with useful entities in the software. See all coloured illustrations (from the book) of software tasks and functions, numbered in chapter order.

Sections included in the chapter:

Creating the software project - Transparency - Getting organized - Importing data ? Cross referencing - Literature management - A framework of memos.

Sections included below: 1. Introduction to Transana 2. Getting started with Transana, installation, making a Transana project 3. How to transcribe using Transana? Transcription as an analytic act

Preparing Data for Working in Transana

by David K. Woods, Ph.D., Transana's Lead Developer

1.1 Introduction to Transana

Transana is sophisticated qualitative analysis software for visual and auditory data, including video files, audio files, and still images. Transana offers a wealth of features designed to facilitate the process of making sense out of such data.

Transana has also added the capacity to analyze text-only data since the original publication of this book. While this web documentation focuses primarily on the analysis of media and visual data with Transana, please be aware as you read these pages that Transana also allows you to work with text-only data - in ways that are very similar to the methods described for working with media data.

When working with media-based (audio and video) data, a transcript can serve as an important tool for navigating and segmenting data into meaningful sections. Different researchers transcribe very differently, ranging from using the transcript as simple map that describes and indexes the media data in a convenient, searchable form, through verbatim, descriptive or analytic transcripts, to conversation analytic transcripts using Jeffersonian Notation, and beyond.

It is possible to work without a transcript in Transana, but having transcripts makes in-depth analysis of multimedia data easier in a number of important ways.

For example, Transana allows for the selection, categorization and coding of portions of visual and auditory data as part of the analytic process. Researchers can select small or large portions of their long video or audio files or large image files, and they can identify analytic significance in several different ways, depending on their theoretical orientation, analytic style, and qualitative methodology.

The program provides a number of text-based and visual reports, maps, and graphs for making sense of the coding and categorizing that researchers do. For example, the Keyword Map shows coding across the time-line of a media file, and the Library Keyword Sequence Map applies this same visual layout standardized across media files, allowing researchers to explore changes in patterns of coding across files. The Search function allows researchers to explore relationships between codes applied to segments of text data, media files and still images. The Collection Report presents important visual and textual information about portions of the data that have been grouped together by the researcher. In these reports, Transana keeps researchers as close to their original data as possible; the original text, video, audio, and image files are usually only a click or two away.

Transana facilitates the complex analysis of complex multimedia data in a variety of unique, innovative ways. Transana allows the synchronization and simultaneous display of multiple media files to facilitate understanding in data-rich environments, such as classrooms, which cannot be adequately captured with a single video stream. Transana facilitates using multiple simultaneous transcripts to allow researchers to look at several analytic layers within their data simultaneously. Transana pioneered collaborative qualitative analysis, allowing multiple collaborators to share the same data at the same time, seeing each other's work in real time, even over a distance and between Windows and OS X computers.

1.2 Download Transana

Transana is available through the Transana web site at . There is a free Demonstration Version of Transana, and there are several different versions of Transana available for purchase.

? The Standard version of Transana is designed for researchers with straight-forward needs regarding the analysis of media data. This version is designed to meet the needs of researchers new to working with video and audio data, and can be an excellent tool for teaching qualitative analysis of media data. This version reflects Transana's origin as software for the analysis of media files only, and it forgoes some of Transana's advanced features that researchers with relatively straight-forward media data don't require.

? The Professional version of Transana is designed for researchers with more complex analytic needs. This version allows researchers to analyze multiple simultaneous media files. It allows researchers to use multiple simultaneous transcripts to analyze their media

files in sophisticated ways. It allows researchers to add text-only and still image data to the analytic process in order to enhance the analysis of their media-based data. ? The Multiuser version of Transana allows research teams to work together, sharing the same data at the same time. It supports text, still image, and multimedia data, including all of the advanced analytic features of the Professional version. This version facilitates collaboration in the analytic process, enabling research teams to work together, even over a distance.

? The Computer Lab version of Transana is designed for use in computer labs, where confidential data should not be stored on the computer being used for the analysis. It includes the same feature set as the Professional version.

Transana's free Demonstration Version is probably sufficient to experiment with Case C (Coca Cola Commercials) data set that is discussed in Using Software in Qualitative Research. However, the Demonstration Version limits the amount of data you can explore at one time, preventing you from loading all of the data files available in the case. The analysis described in these web pages is therefore limited to just five of the media files to accommodate people who do not have institutional access to one of the paid versions of Transana.

The

demonstration

version

of

Transana

is

available

at

You can purchase any of the paid versions of

Transana through the Transana Web Site by starting at the Purchase page at

.

Whatever version of Transana you choose, you can download Transana for either Windows or OS X, depending on the operating system on your computer. Please make a note of the location on your computer where you save this downloaded file.

1.3 Obtain the Case C (Coca Cola Commercials) data set

You can download the appropriate data for Case C, the Coca Cola Commercials, [here].

It's probably easiest if you create a separate data directory for the data files, in your "My Video" on Windows or your "Movies" folder on OS X, or somewhere in your "Documents" folder. It is generally advisable to store all of the source media and image files for a single project in a subdirectory of its own (or a set of nested directories for larger projects) rather than putting media files from several projects together in the same directory. Because research video files can take up a lot of hard drive space, you may find it necessary in the future to move or delete data files from old projects as you bump up against the limits of the size of your hard disk. Maintaining separate directories also makes tasks like backing up the media files, moving data files to another location (such as an external or network drive), or sharing project data with colleagues easier.

1.4 Transana's Analytic Philosophy Regarding Media Files

For discussion on the use of visual data and the technological connections with methodology see Silver and Lewins Chapter 4 pages 96-98

There is a debate to be had about retaining video materials alongside the transcriptions. Project design decisions whether or not to use video or audio data may concern volume of data, depth and type of analysis and epistemological or ethical issues. Audio can provide crucial information about inflection, which can be critical to correctly interpreting the meaning of words that were spoken. It can sometimes be difficult to tell the speaker's true meaning from a transcript but much easier to tell by listening to the original media data. Video can provide information about body language and posture which provide subtle, but sometimes essential, information about a participant's meaning, intent, or emotional state. Depending on your research questions and analytic focus, you may not require that type of information during your analysis, but it's also quite possible that there will be some passages where hearing what was said and how it was said will allow you to avoid a misinterpretation of your data that reading a transcript alone would produce. Retaining the media data reduces the chance of such a misinterpretation of the data.

Transana, as much as possible, maintains a connection to the original media data, making it possible to see (for video) and hear (for audio and video) the original media data from many points in the program with as few clicks as possible. Granted, it used to be that such analysis was difficult and time-consuming, but tools such as Transana make it easier than it's ever been to retain the full richness of media data. We strongly advocate retaining the media files as part of the analytic process whenever possible. In fact, this was one of the driving forces behind Transana's original development.

1.5 Test the Data Format

Transana supports Rich Text Format and plain text files for text-only data. If you have data in other formats, you should be able to use your word processor to convert the files to Rich Text Format. If you have pdf documents, you will also need to find a program to convert them to Rich Text Format to bring them into Transana.

There are many, many ways to create video and audio files. Transana supports a wide range of popular video and audio formats. Unfortunately, not all media formats are compatible with all computers or with Transana. Therefore, Transana includes a Media Conversion Tool that is often useful if you have media files that are not compatible with Transana or with your computer. (The Media Conversion Tool is disabled in the Demonstration version of Transana due to media format licensing concerns.)

The Coca Cola media files in Case C are in MP4 format using "h264" video encoding and "aac" audio encoding. This is a common video format that should work on both Windows and OS X computers using the QuickTime Media Player. What this means is that if you are using the Case C media files, they should work for you without any further preparation or media conversion. You can stop reading this section if you don't want to know about the details of media file construction and conversion.

If you are using your own data, you may wish to test one of your media files by following the instructions for adding data to Transana in the next chapter. There is a good chance it will just work with Transana. However, it is also possible you could run into problems playing your files within Transana if they are not in a format that is compatible both with Transana and with your computer. For example, WMV and WMA files do not play on Macintosh computers without installing a helper program. MPEG-2 video files require the installation of a piece of software called a "codec" on both Windows and OS X computers. Neither of these issues has anything to do with Transana. Flash Video, in FLV files, is popular on the Internet, but is not compatible with the media players Transana uses on either Windows or OS X. Some researchers find that High Definition video with large screen images such as 1920 by 1080 pixels doesn't work very well for the purposes on analysis, as the video is too large and too demanding of their computer's resources. If your video doesn't play in Transana, or it doesn't play smoothly, video conversion allows you to change the media format, lower the resolution, and reduce the video bitrate, which often solves the problem.

There are a number of ways of handling media compatibility issues, requiring varying degrees of knowledge, technical sophistication, and expertise. Transana's Media Conversion Tool is often a good option to try first, as it tries to make the conversion process as easy as possible. It won't work in every situation, but it does a pretty good job with many of the common problems that can arise, and it's very easy to use.

To start the Media Conversion Tool, go to Transana's Tools menu and select Media Conversion. Use the Browse Button to select the media file you'd like to convert. If the Media Conversion Tool is able to understand the file, as indicated in the Information section of the form, change any settings you'd like from their defaults, then press the Convert button to start convert the file. As a general rule, we recommend a video size with a width of 800 or less, and a video bitrate of 2,500 kbps or less. (When in doubt, though, try the default values!)

Media conversion can require some patience, whether it is being done using Transana's Media Conversion tool or another program. It is not, however, as insurmountable a problem as people sometimes think it will be. If you have long media files, your conversions will take time, but so will other analytic tasks such as transcription and analysis. Transana's Media Conversion tool can convert multiple media files at once on computers with multiple CPU cores with minimal conversion time penalty, meaning you can often convert several media files in essentially the same amount of time as the longest file alone would take to convert.

If you have a number of media files to convert, try to develop the habit of starting a conversion every time you'll be out of your office for a sufficient block of time (when you teach, eat, attend

departmental meetings, or go home for the day, for example.) Often, you will find that you can convert files faster than you can analyze them. Another trick is to set your laptop to work on converting media files whilst analyzing already-converted files on a desktop computer.

2.1 Install Transana Locate the Transana installer you downloaded in section 1.2 of the last chapter. Double-click this installer file to start Transana's installation process, and follow the screen prompts. (We won't detail the steps here, as they differ depending on your operating system, they are spelled out in the installer process, and they are pretty standard.) NOTE: If you are on Windows, please make sure the free QuickTime Player, available at , is installed on your computer. Transana requires the QuickTime player, and will not start up correctly if the QuickTime Player is not properly installed. 2.2 Create a Project Database and Start Transana The first step for doing any analysis of media files with Transana is to create a project database. When you start Transana, you will see Transana's introductory splash screen, followed immediately by the "Select Database" dialog box. (If you're on Window and don't see this, reread section 2.1 about installing the QuickTime Player.) If you want to work in a project you've worked on before, you can select that project's database name from the drop-down list of existing projects. If you want to start a new project, type a new database name in the dialog box. (If you are using Transana's Demonstration version, you must use the database named "Demonstration.") Please note that the database name must be a single string of characters. You can use letters, numbers, and the dash and underscore characters, but you should avoid most non-letter symbols. Spaces are not allowed in the database name. Press OK.

You should now see Transana's Main Screen for a new project.

Transana's main display is made up of five sections.

At the top of the screen is the Menu. Some operations in Transana are triggered by selecting items from these menus. As a general rule, these are operations that affect the whole program, although the Document menu provides some exceptions to that rule.

In the upper right corner is the Media Window. This is where video is displayed, and where audio and video playback can be controlled directly.

The window in the lower left portion of the screen is the Document Window, where text documents and media transcripts are created, edited, and displayed. Transcripts can be linked to media files so that a highlight in the transcript moves forward as the media file plays, and so that a selection can be made in the transcript and the corresponding portion of the media file played.

The upper left portion of the screen is the Visualization Window, where different types of information such as a waveform of the video's audio track and a graph of coding for text and media file can be displayed in a visual format.

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