Effectively, only three CAQDAS — ATLAS.ti, HyperRESEARCH, and Qualrus — handle multimedia data in a way that is useful for the analysis of this kind of data, as they allow for the coding of video and audio sequences. NVivo only allows to link to multimedia data, that is, only entire picture and/or videos can be coded categorically. It therefore quickly reaches its limitation, when you work extensively with audio or video data (Lewis 2004: 461)
If you exclusively work with video or audio data, you might want to consider the freeware Transana, which performs all desirable coding and transcription functions.
| Linking to Multimedia Files | Coding Parts of Pictures | Coding/Transcribing of Video/Audio Data | Handling of Compressed Files | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ATLAS.ti 5.0 | yes | yes | yes, but inconvenient Window handling1 | all that are supported by Windows configuration |
| E6 | … | … | … | … |
| HyperRESEARCH 2.6 | yes | yes | yes | all that are supported by Windows configuration |
| Kwalitan 5.09 | no | no | no | none |
| MAXqda 2 | no | no | no | none |
| N6 | no | no | no | none |
| NVivo 2 | yes | no | no | none |
| QDA Miner 1.0.15 | no | no | no | none |
| Qualrus 2.0.4.0 | yes | yes | yes | all that are supported by Windows configuration |
| TAMS 2.50b5 | … | … | … | … |
| Non-CAQDAS benchmark programs | ||||
| InfoRapid Search&Replace 3.1e | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| Transana 1.22 | yes | yes | yes | all that are supported by Windows configuration |
Lewis, R. Barry. 2004. NVivo 2.0 and ATLAS.ti 5.0: A Comparative Review of Two Popular Qualitative Data-Analysis Programs. Field Methods 16 (4): 439-464.
1While coding, the Video Window is in the background. It therefore cannot be maximized during coding.