Import Transcriptions as Markers into Premiere Pro

Hi, I've been working in documentary filmmaking for a while and I've always wanted to be able to do text-based search of my interviews inside Premiere Pro. I transcribe my interviews using Inqscribe and would like to import them as markers into Premiere Pro. I recently asked the Adobe Support service and I was told that that couldn't be done.

After a few days doing some frustrating research, I've come up with a method that finally meets my demands. I share it here for those who might find it helpful. Also, I encourage developers at Adobe and outside to build a tool that simplifies this tedious process.

1. Transcribe the interview using Inqscribe. Export the transcript as a tab-delimited text. You can select also to export out points, duration and speaker names. Up to you.

2. Open the file in Text Edit, select all, and copy.

3. Open a blank workbook in Excel and paste it. You shold see the values correctly separated by columns. Since Inqscribe uses a dot (.) to separate seconds and frames, you need to change it into a colon (:). To do that, just select the whole column or columns that include timecode values, click Edit/Find/Replace and replace the dots (.) for colons (:).

4. Open a Google Drive Spreadsheet with the following columns: Name, Type, Marker Name, Comment, Start, Duration, Color.

Paste the excel columns (Transcription text and Start timecode). You can also paste, if you exported from Inqscribe, the Speaker Name and duration of every mark you want to create. The Name, Type and Color columns wil remain blank. Fill them with the desired names (I copy/paset the ones in row 2). Also, you can copy the 00:00:00:00 Duration to the whole Duration column.

Once done, download the file as a Tab-separated value (.tsv)

5. In premiere, export the sequence of your interview media as a Final Cut Pro XML

6. Use Marker Import to merge the .tsv with the XML file (you can free download this app from here, at the bottom of the page: Cut Notes - Digital Rebellion

7. Open your .tsv file in Marker Import. Then select the XML you just exported from Premiere and click Import Markers.

Note: if Marker Import doesn't let you open the .tsv file, just change its extension to .txt

8. Import the XML file back to premiere. And that's it.

Please, if you have any questions or you know of a simpler way to do this, please let me know.

Thanks.