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Supports qualitative research with video & transcripts

Help Guide for Users

Useful tips and pointers

Here you will find ideas and solutions to specific tasks that you might wish to accomplish with DOTEbase.

Important things to note?

  • DOTEbase looks for projects and transcripts created with DOTE.
  • A DOTEspace is the central organising unit
  • Transcrips cannot be edited in DOTEbase. Use the Transcript Editor in DOTE instead.
  • Media cannot be added in DOTEbase. Use the Media Manager in DOTE instead.
  • Projects cannot be created in DOTEbase. Use DOTE instead to manage Projects.
  • DOTEbase stores a local cache of the watch folders in every DOTEspace. The DOTEspace Crawler searches all watch folders and updates the cache at startup and when changes are detected.
  • Changes made to a DOTEspace, clip or collection are immediate and irreversible. There is no undo mechanism. The exception is the Canvas, which has undo/redo functionality.
  • Transcript Clips added in DOTE to any Transcript in a watch folder will be detected by the DOTEspace Crawler when the Transcript is saved.
  • All data and meta-data used by DOTEbase is unencrypted. Use your own software/hardware encryption.
  • All data and meta-data is local to the computer. Nothing is uploaded to the web or cloud.

What DOTEbase is...

  • It is a tool to support qualitative analysis.
  • It is a set of flexible, assembled spaces consisting of locally distributed media and transcripts.
  • It is a tool that supports commenting on clips of media and transcript.
  • It is a tool that uses data and meta-data that is transparent and non-proprietary.

What DOTEbase isn't...

  • It is NOT a tool for quantitative analysis.
  • It is NOT a closed database.
  • It is NOT a web tool.
  • It is NOT a cloud-based tool.
  • It is NOT a miracle that uses AI to do analysis for you!

How can I use DOTEbase to support my qualitative analytical practices

There are lots of ways to use DOTEbase to support what you do and also to encourage you to try new methods of doing qualitative analysis. See our list that outlines some of them. We are always open to new uses of DOTEbase or ideas for new tools. Let us know by email or on one of the DOTEbase channels on our Discord server.

How do I setup my audio-visual media and transcripts for use in DOTEbase

It is important to remember that DOTEbase feeds off of individual projects created in DOTE. One cannot add audio-visual files and text transcripts that are not already prepared with DOTE. The reason is that there isn't any relevant metadata in a file or document on its own. Hence, one must at a minimum create a project with a blank transcript in DOTE in one of the watch folders that are tracked by a DOTEspace. New Projects and Transcripts can be created at any time; as long as they are in one of the watch folders, DOTEbase will find them and add them to the relevant DOTEspaces. Media can be added and more Transcripts can be added to that DOTE Project or edited; DOTEbase will track all the changes.

How do I backup my DOTEspace?

There is no dedicated autobackup system yet in DOTEbase, but you can manually archive the whole DOTEspace as follows:

  • Select FILE/EXPORT from the menu bar to export the DOTEspace.
  • Select the DOTEspace you wish to archive from the drop-down list.
  • Select all checkpoints, autobackups, colllections data, Canvas data, clips etc.
  • Export to a safe location on your file system. Give it a clear name with a date + time stamp.
  • Then you can safely import the archive at a later point.

How do I add a whole tier with media clips to the Canvas?

One can Send individual Clips to the Canvas, but there is also a way to send a whole Tier of Media Clips to the Canvas.

  • Open the Media Clips Organiser.
  • Right click on a designated Tier.
  • Select Send Tier to Canvas.
  • Open the Canvas for that DOTEspace.
  • All the clips in that Tier will be listed next to the Canvas and can be dragged and dropped.

What to do if you run out of devices when activating your paid license?

If you have no more devices available on your license, then you may have to deactivate some of the devices for DOTE and/or DOTEbase. DOTE and DOTEbase share the same license, and each uses one device per installation. Thus, installing both uses two devices from your quota. See License Activation for more help.

How to determine which objects are being tracked live in different tools?

There is an indirect way to get some idea of what clips or tags are being tracked live by DOTEbase. If one makes a Project and/or Transcript unavailable in the DOTEspace panel, then this will directly and immediately change what is displayed in Tag Manager, Collections Browser, Collection Viewer, Search and Canvas. Thus, one can determine visually which clips attached to a Project and/or Transcript are relevant to Tags, Collections, Searches or a Canvas with a specific scope.

How to track authorship of clips?

DOTEbase does not support natively an authorship meta-data structure, but users can create their own using a user-defined field (UDF) when creating or editing a clip. If a user-defined field is created with Name set as "@author" and Value as the name or initials of the author and this is done consistently, then one can Search for this value of the named UDF to find all Clips authored by Value. For example, a UDF with Name: "@author" and Value: "Jane Smith" would be searchable by selecting a UDF Search Target with the term "@author" PLUS Add Criteria with a UDF Search Target and a search term "Jane Smith" to narrow down. Just searching for "@author" would return all clips by all authors.

Why add transcript clips in DOTEbase and not in DOTE?

One can add Transcript Clips in DOTE, but there are more sophisticated tools in DOTEbase for managing and organising Tags, Clip Presets and Colour Swatches.

How do I start using DOTEbase with lots of video and/or audio files?

If you are starting from scratch and have not yet used DOTE to create Projects (and blank Transcripts) from a corpus of audio-visual data, then you need to prepare the data in a form that DOTEbase understands. DOTEbase cannot just work with raw video or audio files that are stored on your file system, for example grouped in one folder. It needs to generate meta-data locally and a place on your file system to store that meta-data so you can easily move, copy and share the Projects, Transcripts, Annotations, Clips, Canvas, etc. that you create.

For each discrete event that has been recorded in audio-visual file(s), a DOTE Project has to be created. Currently Project creation has to be done in DOTE. As long as the Project created (generating a copy of the media file(s) and a blank transcript, etc) is stored in one of the DOTEspace watch folders, it will automatically appear in the relevant DOTEspace in DOTEbase. We plan to implement a function to create Projects from media files directly in DOTEbase, and possibly a batch function that can do that for all media files in a folder based on the media filenames.