By Brady Betzel
One of the most underpromoted features in nonlinear editing is editing from a script. Avid Media Composer’s ScriptSync has been the gold standard for years. Over the past few years, as AI-based transcription has become more popular, there have been a few other options popping up.
Recently, Adobe Premiere Pro has added AI-based transcription included in the cost of the Creative Cloud price. However, the transcriptions are mostly for subtitles and captions. Digital Anarchy’s Transcriptive Rough Cutter is an amalgamation of AI-based transcription and Avid’s ScriptSync that can be used inside of Adobe Premiere Pro and over the web. Transcriptive Rough Cutter costs $199 for a permanent license plus 8 cents per minute transcription costs (or 4 cents/minute transcription costs if you prepay). The web-only version of Transcriptive Rough Cutter is $160/year or $19/month.
Transcriptive Rough Cutter has two versions: Premiere Pro Extension Panel and web-based. The main event is the Premiere Extension Panel, but the web-based version is a very interesting option for producers who don’t want to work inside of Premiere, or even for editors who want to work on the road without being inside of Premiere.
For this review, I used Adobe Premiere Pro 2022.
Digging In: Extension Panel
In the vaguest terms, Transcriptive Rough Cutter allows users to upload clips to the cloud for transcription, and minutes later, a script is created that can be used to build a rough cut or stringout. The script is timecode-stamped, and if you click on a word or sentence, it will jump to that point in the video. With the Premiere Pro Rough Cutter license, you can also download the PowerSearch panel to search all of the scripts inside of the project. And just for clarification, Premiere Pro’s built-in transcription service creates a script from an edited sequence, but it does not create a script attached to individual clips. Essentially, as mentioned earlier, Premiere Pro’s transcription is primarily marketed to users who make captions or subtitles once their sequence is complete.
Once I downloaded and installed the Transcriptive Rough Cutter extension, it was easy to upload clips for transcription. There are even a few tutorials you can watch to get you started. I would watch these before you purchase, but I like to jump in headfirst to see how easy it is without reading instructions — not only because I’m a glutton for punishment but because I am a firm believer that design should be as simple and basic as possible.
After creating a free account at transcripitive.com, I loaded a video of my middle son, Sawyer, and clicked Transcribe. I had credits in my account, so I was ready to go, but if you don’t, you will need to have a credit card linked to your account and either have credits or be ready to purchase them. When I clicked Transcribe, Rough Cutter began the process: export and upload FLAC audio of the clip to the AI transcription service (which you can pick), wait until it is complete and, once finished, a transcript will pop up in the Rough Cutter Premiere Extension window. For my sample, I used a six-minute clip, and the process took just under six minutes to complete. So if you are calculating the time it will take to transcribe clips, I would guess that real-time speed is accurate.
To get started, you need to wrap your head around how you want to edit. If you like to mark ins/outs and edit as you go through the script, then you will want to use the shortcuts Control+i or Control+o for ins/outs and then Control+8 or Control+ to insert them into your sequence. This is kind of the assembly way to create a rough cut, but from a script. The other way to create a rough cut would be to strike words/sentences/paragraphs throughout the transcript and then click the Strikethrough button, which is an S with a line through it. This will strike entire stanzas or paragraphs in the transcript, so if you want to strike only part of a paragraph, then you will need to split it using the Cmd/Alt+Shift+down arrow. For more keyboard shortcuts go here.
Once you have gone through the entire script, you can click Create Rough Cut. After a few seconds, your new sequence with “_roughcut” will appear in your project window. And if you have multiple rough cuts with the same prepended text, you will see “_roughcut1,” “_roughcut2” and so on. That’s really it. It’s an interesting way to work. Once you understand the keyboard shortcuts, I could see flying through scripts and getting to a great starting point much quicker than watching hours and hours of dailies or interviews.
Transcriptive Rough Cutter: Web App
While I didn’t pay to use the full version of the Transcriptive Rough Cutter web app, I did try uploading a clip to the web and working that way.
Originally, I was trying to share my Transcriptive Rough Cutter work from within Premiere Pro by clicking the Share icon [t], but it kept saying I needed to clear my ins/outs (Control+u). This cleared everything up for me. Obviously, the upload speed is highly dependent on what you pay for/have access to, so I won’t comment on that too much. But once the file is uploaded, the web app version of Transcriptive Rough Cutter transcodes the audio and video for use, which only takes a few seconds. Then I clicked Transcribe, and I was off and running. To be honest, the online transcription felt faster than when working inside of Premiere Pro. It took under a minute to process a 3:30 clip. Keep in mind the free version doesn’t allow you to mark the script, but it is a great way to view clips with a script. To update a script from Premiere Pro to the web app, you simply click Share > Send to Web > Send Transcript Only. Then it’s done, and the web version is updated.
Since Premiere Pro recently added AI-based transcription for captioning and subtitles, I had a bright idea to use the free AI transcription from Adobe and try to link it to the Transcriptive Rough Cutter extension by cutting a clip into a new timeline with matching timecode. I was able to bring the .txt file back in, but I needed some more advanced help to finish the workflow. Luckily, Jim Tierney at Digital Anarchy has written awesome step-by-step instructions on how to do this.
As you can tell, Adobe definitely didn’t make it as easy as it should be, but they are Adobe and can do whatever they want in their own app. Regardless, I was able to finish the workflow using the “Align” feature I built into Transcriptive to work with the Adobe Premiere Pro Transcriptions. It’s a little cumbersome and probably not worth the time you save by paying the 4 cents per minute through Transcriptive, but it’s an option.
Summing Up
In the end, Digital Anarchy’s Transcriptive Rough Cutter Adobe Premiere Pro extension and web app are great ways to get script-based editing into Premiere Pro. If you are an Avid ScriptSync expert, Rough Cutter works in a similar way but comes at script-based editing from a different angle.
One way that Avid’s Script Sync works well for me, when editing interviews, is to add a bunch of the same interviewee’s transcripts together in date then timecode order. This helps me mentally stay focused on one character but also makes it easy to search for ideas and thoughts. Transcriptive can do something similar by laying out all the interviews for one person in a timeline. You can bring up that timeline and see all the interviews in their timeline order. This also makes another case for a great assistant editor. To take this idea even further, Digital Anarchy has a tool called PowerSearch, which indexes your project’s transcriptions, captions, clips and markers. It then allows you to search for keywords projectwide. Think of it like a Google search inside of Premiere Pro. It takes a little processing time to get it going if you incorporate it into an existing project, but it works well — similar to Avid’s PhraseFind search function. PowerSearch is included with the purchase of Transcriptive Rough Cutter.
Transcriptive Rough Cutter, PowerSearch and the web-based Transcriptive Rough Cutter options for keeping groups of producers and editors up to date with interviews and script-based edits. In theory, you could have an assistant editor simultaneously transcribe multiple clips at once and have a story producer doing a script-based rough cut that could be ready for the editor on the first edit day — saving time and money.
If you are an old Avid editor like me, and you really like working in Avid’s ScriptSync and PhraseFind, then Digital Anarchy’s Transcriptive Rough Cutter and PowerSearch are a great alternatives that help bridge the gap in transcript-based editing inside of Premiere Pro. In fact, I started to like the way Transcriptive works a little better.
Brady Betzel is an Emmy-nominated online editor at Margarita Mix in Hollywood, working on shows like Life Below Zero and Uninterrupted: The Shop . He is also a member of the Producers Guild of America. You can email Brady at bradybetzel@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @allbetzroff.
