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

- Add support for multiple simultaneous transcripts, presented in a split Transcript Window. (for Transana 2.30.)

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

Analytic Tools

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

- Add clip transcript 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

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.

Multiple Camera issues

- Add support for multiple video camera setups, where there are multiple videos of the same events, allowing multiple views of the same event. This will require a mechanism for synchronizing multiple sources.

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

Other

- 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.