Future Development

We're always thinking about what features to add to Transana in the future. Here are some ideas under consideration. If you have additional features you'd like to see, contact the developers. If you are willing to fund development, see the Funding page to read about how to do this.

Currently under development or consideration

Writing Tools

- Research journaling, so there's a place within Transana to record analytic reasoning and conclusions.

- General improvements to the transcription component:

• Support for embedded images
• Easier font formatting (in Transcript Toolbar)
• Text background color specification
• Support for tables (not currently possible)

- Add formatting capacity to Notes

Analytic Tools

- The collection map. Create a report that displays a set of nested collections visually as a graphic, like the keyword map.

- Add text search capacity to the Transana search engine.

- Expand search options to include such things as proximity searches.

- Add the capacity to work with text without an underlying media file

- Add the capacity to work with still images, including being able to code part of an image, and a lot more.

- Add the ability to make clips from media that has not been transcribed or time-coded, based on a selection in the Visualization window.

- The ability to track what users have made what changes, especially in the multi-user version.

Time Code issues

- Develop a mechanism for using SMPTE time code instead of the current time code mechanism where available.

- Add an episode property for specifying video start time so that human readable time codes can reflect time of day rather than merely time elapsed from start of video file.

Collaboration Tools

- Selective export. You could choose to export a specific collection, and Transana would build a Transana XML file that would contain all of the clips in that collection along with all of the series/episode/transcript records those clips were drawn from.

- Data sharing bundles. This would combine a selective export data file with all of the appropriate video files into a ZIP archive. This would enable researchers to more easily share a data set with colleagues.

- Improved import routines would allow Transana users to import Transana XML files into an existing database, rather than having to create a new database for each import. (There are issues around duplicate record naming that need to be resolved.)

- Developing "Collaborative Remote Control" for Transana-MU, where one person could control another person's copy of Transana from a distance.

Other

- Audio recording tools, allowing live episode capture and audio notes.

- Localize date fields on episode properties and core data forms.

- Allow for alternate visualizations. There are a number of ways of representing sound visually, and other forms may have certain advantages such as making it easier to tell who is speaking.