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Forum Discussion
Audio transcription malfunction, hard line breaks partway across every line
Recently when I have copied .wma audio transcripts from Dropbox to a Word document, the text inserts a hard line break on every line of the page about 2/3 horizontally across the page, with breaks la...
Problem is not resolved, it's the same as before.
Also the suggested copy paste workaround doesn't work in Windows. Hard line breaks still there, it won't copy more than a screenload of text no matter how much is highlighted, and now it includes all the time stamps!
I pay for a Dropbox subscription and this feature should be functional as it was before. Not happy about this. Cleaning up the formatting in an hour long transcript has become an ordeal.
DBX_Pedro
Community Manager
Community ManagerHi halfpenny,
We understand this is taking more time than what we expected.
Our team is on it and looking into the issue.
We’ll update you as soon as we have news.
Thanks for your patience.
I've got an update that may shed more light.
I just tried to transcribe an mp3 file and the same thing happened with the line breaks. I did notice that the transcript in Dropbox has inserted numerous time stamps every few seconds in the middle of someone speaking, which did not happen before. In fact I can't remember if time stamps ever used to appear in the Dropbox transcript.
In effect, those time stamps in the transcript translate as hard line breaks when the transcript is copied from Dropbox to a Word document.
So there are 2 problems: 1) the inappropriate number and placement of time stamps within the Dropbox transcript, which makes for very choppy reading in Dropbox while listening to the audio, and 2) the conversion of the time stamps to hard line breaks when the transcript text is copied from Dropbox.
Are the time stamps a recent addition to the transcript feature?
I also tried opening a shorter audio file in Dropbox and have same problem with the insertion of frequent time stamps every few seconds in the middle of someone speaking.
Also, I am pretty sure that a previously saved audio file, once transcribed, retained the original transcription when reopened, without re-transcribing all over again with the time stamp insertions, which is what I now see happening in my saved audio files.
Just another observation. I believe that there used to be a time limit of about an hour in length to transcribe audio files. I know because a couple of months ago I had to split a long, almost 2 hour audio file into two parts before it would transcribe. Recently, around the time the current problem began, it seems that the transcribe limit has expanded beyond an hour. Is that another update to the transcribe feature that could be related to the current problem?
EDIT: It seems the time limit is nominally over an hour so it really hasn't changed.
Yet more observations. In reviewing my latest audio upload and transcript, it appears that the excessive time stamps in the transcript also result in frequent gaps of several minutes and more; i.e. a lot of missing text. Previously, such gaps were short and infrequent.
Also the transcript auto scroll display is significantly mismatched to the audio. Every time the scroll advances, the displayed text doesn’t match the audio playback. This also seems to be related to the time stamps.
