Type or paste a script and align it with the audio

Sometimes you have the words before the recording - a script you will read, or one you wrote for a voiceover - or a transcript from elsewhere that is better than a machine's. You can give Rooster that text instead of transcribing.

Type or paste a script

1. In a project's script pane, press Start typing. It is there whenever the project has no transcript yet and is not being transcribed, with or without a recording.
2. Type or paste the script. Each line becomes a paragraph; blank lines are ignored.
3. Press Use as transcript.

You cannot type over a transcript Rooster made from the recording: correct that one instead. See Correct the transcript.

A typed script has no timings

Rooster does not yet know when each of your words is said, so it cannot cut, seek or make captions from them. The script pane says so. You have two ways on:

• Align with audio keeps your text and gives each word the time Rooster hears it in the recording.
• Transcribe again - the circular-arrow button in the script's header, when the project has a recording - replaces your text with what Rooster hears. Rooster asks first, because your typed paragraphs and any speaker labels on them cannot be brought back.

Align it with the recording

Press Align with audio under the notice. Rooster listens to the recording with a local engine and matches your words to what it hears; the first time, it downloads its speech model. Your text stays as you wrote it.

When it finishes, a note says how many paragraphs now have times. A paragraph Rooster did not hear stays untimed and is listed, so you can check it. Cuts, seeking, corrections and captions then work on everything that was timed. One Undo, ⌘Z, takes the alignment back.

Alignment needs a recording with speech in it, and a local engine: the Cloud API engine does not report the times of individual words. If your words barely match what was said - the wrong video, or notes rather than a script - Rooster leaves the script unchanged and says so.

Edit the text later

Typing on a typed script does nothing, to avoid accidents; press Edit text under the notice to reopen it. Editing an aligned script removes its timings, so align it again afterwards.