Frequently Asked Questions:

The latest version of the software is free to download from our Downloads page. The same software installation is required for all Editions of DOTE.

Once you have downloaded the latest version of the software, read the instructions to install it on your desktop computer.

If you have already installed DOTE, you could try our Lego demo project, which illustrates the functionality of the software with multiple synced media sources and seven different transcripts. You can download it from our Downloads page.

To use the premium features of DOTE, you will need to purchase or order a license in our webshop and then apply the license key in DOTE. Contact us if you are interested in purchasing Edition licenses in bulk for your department or institution. Researchers and students from low- and middle-income countries qualify for a discount of 50% of the original price of DOTE Pro. We only offer discounts for individuals. If you qualify for a discount, you will receive a personal coupon for one-time use in our web shop. Please determine whether you currently reside in a Middle or Low Income country using World Bank designations (scroll to the bottom of the page to view country list): World Bank Middle and Low Income Country List Apply for discount

We offer DOTE Masterclasses upon request for instituions or research groups. The Masterclasses can be online or onsite depending on the reqeust. All inquires about Masterclasses should be directed to the DOTE team.

The DOTE software comes in several Editions, some of which need a license to unlock features. More details are available on our pricing and comparison page.

To unlock the premium features of DOTE, a license key is required. The license key is an encrypted hash string that identifies the license holder. The software checks our license server to ensure the integrity of the license key and to match it to our database. Once DOTE has been unlocked with a license key, an internet connection is not required to continue using DOTE.

DOTE is most definitely a secure local desktop application. This is a deliberate decision by the designers. NO user data created by the software is stored on, or sent to, the cloud or any other online location. In fact, we strongly recommend for a variety of good reasons that you do not try and use your own cloud service to store the projects and transcripts. Therefore, a user cannot access their projects and transcripts via a web browser or a cloud-based version of our software. No one can.

We provide a comprehensive online help guide. It is regularly updated with new information, tips and corrections.

We have produced a number of informative video tutorials to help you get familiar with the incredible functionality of DOTE. They are available on our YouTube channel.

We run our own DISCORD server with some public channels for DOTE users. There are private channels for DOTE Pro and DOTE Pro Community users.

DOTE does not support importing legacy transcripts using a built-in convertor. This is partly because there are many features of our software that have no parallel in other software. We plan to build convertors if there is a strong demand, but they are finicky and will only convert features such as underscore and timecodes. See also our video tutorial on how to import and conform transcripts from published sources.

In this release, we do not natively support annotating the timeline/video. However, one can hack the comments/metacomments and subtier type system to add annotations on the timeline using sync-codes. See our upcoming video on how to do this. Note that that comments can be made on a shared transcript if you follow this video tutorial.

DOTE is designed to support script-based systems of transcription, including Mondadaian conventions (score-based within a neighbourhood). It does not support a score-based system, such as ELAN. We plan to develop built-in support for a micro-score-based system, which will be interchangeable with the score-based systems that we do support.

DOTE is designed to support the manual art of transcription. We do not believe that reliable automatic recognition of spoken conversation and social interaction in natural settings is possible in the foreseeable future. And anyway, transcription is analysis, which is a profoundly human endeavour.

The DOTE software itself does not collect any data on users. It is a local desktop application that stores project and transcript data only on the user's computer. When purchasing a license on the webshop to activate a specific Edition of DOTE, the username, email address and affiliation given by the purchaser are stored securely on our license server. The DOTE software can securely access the license information to confirm the validity of the license holder. The license key is encrypted with a high-level encryption algorithm. The webshop and license server are all maintained with a high-level of security by the IT services of a public university in Denmark, and therefore conform to the GDPR. The webshop uses Google Analytics to anonymously track page views and browser country location.

DOTE does not support storing your projects and transcripts in an encrypted form for everyday use on a local machine. The data is as safe as your computer is. If you decide to export and share projects and/or transcripts created using DOTE, then be aware that the exported file is not encrypted by default. If it contains sensitive data (eg. in the video or transcript), then it is up to you to encrypt the file yourself with a secure password before sharing or uploading. This is easy to do with desktop software, such as 7-Zip or a built-in archiving software application (Windows/macOS).

DOTE was developed by the BigSoftVideo Team. It was conceived in 2017, prototyped in 2018 and developed in fits and spurts from 2020 to the first release in October 2022.

We released v1.0 of DOTE in October 2022. Minor updates and hotfixes will be be released on a regular basis. After thorough beta-testing, we will release a brand new version (v2.0) with many new features (and maybe some breaking changes).

The core software is free to download and use. One can create, edit and publish a short, basic transcript using the free edition. This is especially useful for students learning to transcribe. However, given that the software has been developed by researchers (in their own time) and paid software developers over more than two years, the investment in time and labour has been enormous. The fact that we achieved this in a very difficult funding climate is a miracle. We would like to continue developing software for qualitative research, but this will only be possible if we can generate an income stream. We have other free software available, developed by the BigSoftVideo team, but we can no longer support such development. So if you like DOTE, then please support us and buy an Edition license, and take part in the conversation. The incentive is also that there are some really powerful premium features in the paid Editions.

Because DOTE is sold through a university webshop in Denmark, then Danish taxes and administrative overheads are deducted. Most of what is left comes back to VILA and BigSoftVideo to finance further software development.

Besides creating DOTE, the BigSoftVideo team has developed virtual reality software (AVA360VR) to better organise, annotate and analyse 360-video data recorded in complex settings (see our video intro). Moreover, we developed a technical implementation in virtual reality (BreachingVR) of Garfinkels' tutorial experiment using inverting lenses (see our published article). The team is also engaged in other projects that are not public yet, such as software (360mash) to recam and anonymise video data, including 360-video.