Fanscribed helps people transcribe their favorite podcasts into text, by fanning out the work involved to fans of the podcast, and making the transcription process fun and interesting!

Below are some preliminary install notes. If something doesn't work for you, please open an issue for it: https://github.com/fanscribed/fanscribed/issues/.

• Linux, MacOSX, BSD, or similar POSIX environment.
• Latest Python 2.7 and python2.7-dev
• Latest git
• Install virtualenv 1.5.1 or higher. Recommended: also install virtualenvwrapper.
• Install mp3splt

Using virtualenv, change to your favorite project directory, create a new isolated environment, and activate it:

$ virtualenv -p python2.7 fanscribed
$ cd fanscribed
$ source bin/activate

Or, using virtualenvwrapper:

$ mkvirtualenv -p python2.7 fanscribed
$ workon fanscribed
$ cdvirtualenv

Clone the Fanscribed repository, install prerequisites, then install Fanscribed in develop mode. Note: the pip command will download and install some dependencies, which could take a couple of minutes:

$ git clone https://github.com/fanscribed/fanscribed.git
$ cd fanscribed
$ pip install .
$ python setup.py develop

Create a sibling directory to hold transcript repositories used during development, and other needed directories:

$ cd ..
$ mkdir repos audio repo_templates

Optional, but recommended: clone an existing transcript repository to use as a testbed (instructions for creating new transcript repositories forthcoming):

$ cd repos
$ git clone https://github.com/readnoagenda/376.git localhost:5000

The name "localhost" is used for your local clone, because Fanscribed selects the repository to use based on the hostname you're connecting to with your web browser.

Move back to your Fanscribed working copy, and create an INI file used to run the web service:

$ cd ../fanscribed
$ cp development-local.ini.example development-local.ini

Start the Fanscribed web server in development mode:

$ paster serve --reload development-local.ini

If you are using the system Python on OSX, you may get a version mismatch error about "zope.interface". Upgrade the package in your isolated environment to correct that problem:

$ pip install -U zope.interface

Browse to http://localhost:5000/, and you should now see a rendered copy of the transcript you cloned above.

If you browse to the "Edit" page, or begin playback on the "View" page, you'll notice that the audio associated with the transcript loads from an external website.

Follow these steps in a separate terminal session to serve the MP3 from your development server:

• Go into your local working copy (repository) for the transcript.
• Type cat transcription.json to view metadata about the transcript.
• Copy the value for "audio_url" to the clipboard.
• Go into the "fanscribed/static" directory in your Fanscribed working copy.
• Run wget [paste URL here] to download the MP3 file.
• Go back into the transcript's working copy.
• Edit the "transcription.json" and change the "audio_url" value from "http://[remote_server_here]/[filename].mp3" to "http://localhost:5000/static/[filename].mp3".

• Commit the change:

  $ git commit -am "Use a local copy of audio"

• Reload the page in your browser, and begin streaming audio. You should notice a considerable improvement in speed.