Using Audacity for audio transcription - how to tell app to "left arrow"?

I’m trying to figure out how to use Audacity for transcribing interviews. Dedicated transcription software allows a recorded interview to speed up, slow down, pause, play, skip back, skip forward, go to beginning, etc. Often it works with an external controller, like a foot pedal.

I don’t need all of that, I just want to be able to be in one app and tell Audacity what to do in the background - either play/pause or skip back a short time.

I’ve figured out the Pause (sort of).

I don’t want this macro to work in every app, just my typing app. I’m using Mou, a Markdown savvy text app, so I’ve created a Group for Audacity, and told it that it’s only available in Mou and Audacity. I then created a macro triggered by a hot key (Ctrl-Shft-Space) and said for it to
Select Menu Item in Audacity
Select: Transport ⇢ Pause

This works, provided everything is set up just so. It brings Audacity to the front when I’m typing in Mou, makes the menu selection, then sends it back again. I’d prefer for it to just work in the background without bringing Audacity forward, but oh well.

However, I can’t figure out how to get the skip back function to work. It is not available as a menu item, so I cannot select it. WHEN Audacity is in the front AND the track is selected THEN when you type the left arrow, it skips back 1 or 2 seconds. I can’t figure out how to pass the left arrow keystroke to an app in the background.

So my question is:

When I’m in a given app and Audacity is running but not in front, how do I tell Audacity to skip back (a left arrow keystroke) - preferably without bringing Audacity to the front?

Bonus question: can I use the Fn key as a trigger, e.g. Fn-left-arrow? And Fn-Space to trigger the Pause/Unpause macro?

Thanks!

Hey There,

Audacity is not in any way scriptable, therefore you can’t do much with it in the background.

It has very little support for transcription.


Best Regards,
Chris

Rats.

So much for that.

Is there another audio app that might be more suitable to my needs that you know of? I don’t want to add these interviews to iTunes if I can possibly avoid it.

Thanks…

Sorry, I'm not familiar with transcription software.

If your media will play in QuickTime 'QuickTime Player 7' might work for you; it's fairly scriptable.

I don't know if it works on Yosemite though.

-Chris

You might take a look at AudioNote. It is a great app for recording speech, allowing you to enter notes that are linked to the sound track. Don't know about its scripting support though.

Thanks to all of you.

It looks like this is going to take deeper research.

In the meantime, the Keyboard Maestro macro works well enough to get me to the end of this project. I’ll need to do more research before the next one, though…

Cheers!