There’s only one thing worse than meetings, and that’s having to pay attention and take accurate notes. That explains the rise of AI-powered transcription services to some extent – it makes more sense to make robots transcribe boring things than it is to put ourselves through the stresses of doing it all by hand.
No matter whether you’ve recorded only the audio of your meetings or you have video files to work from, there are now automatic transcription services that can help turn that media into searchable text documents for a modest fee. They’re great for turning any audio into text; you can even use them to automatically transcribe subtitles for videos that sync with what’s happening on-screen.
Some services will charge you for minutes per month, and others will charge for a certain number of uploads. Many are entirely automated, while others offer a mix of human skills and automatic transcription that can produce results quickly or accurately, depending on what you need.
But that’s not important. What’s important is that the early days of the robot revolution are here, and you might as well involve AI and robots in your work tasks while they still bend to our will. Here’s how to make a bot transcribe for you.
Otter.ai
Website: http://www.otter.ai
Cost: Free tier, paid plans from $10 (+-R200) per user per month
Otter.ai is an AI-powered transcription and note-taking platform that accurately converts spoken content into text. With real-time transcription capabilities, Otter.ai empowers you to follow conversations as they happen, making it valuable for meetings, interviews, lectures, and more.
The platform also distinguishes between speakers, labeling their contributions for easy identification. There are both web and mobile applications which support on-the-go recording and transcription, and a collaborative editing feature lets multiple people review and refine transcripts. You can search for keywords, add tags, and integrate Otter.ai into popular video conferencing apps like Teams, Zoom, Google Meet, and more.
Otter.ai offers free and paid plans, with premium options offering higher transcription limits, the ability to add custom vocabulary, as well as some advanced features. While the automated transcription is usually accurate, specialised terms or accents might require manual corrections. Overall, Otter.ai simplifies transcription tasks, takes accurate notes, and enhances content accessibility by converting spoken words into clear, editable text.
Rev
Website: http://www.rev.com
Cost: No free trial, from $1.50 (+-R30) per minute
Rev is a versatile transcription service that combines human expertise with automation to convert audio and video files into accurate text. With a reputation for quick turnaround times, Rev offers both human-generated and AI-generated transcription options. Human-generated transcriptions take longer to get but are more accurate.
Human transcriptions are ideal for recordings that demand precision, while the AI-generated option provides a faster and more cost-effective solution for transcriptions that are less time-sensitive. You can upload a variety of file formats and content in any of the more than 30 languages Rev has supported since 2021!
The platform’s user-friendly interface allows for easy ordering, tracking, and management of transcriptions. Rev has been found to be useful in a variety of industries, including business, academia, media, and more, making it a valuable tool for automatically transcribing spoken content into accessible, searchable text.
Trint
Website: http://www.trint.com
Cost: Free trial, paid plans from $48 (+-R920) per user per month
Trint is a transcription service that blends automation with user-friendly features to transcribe spoken words into text. Its AI-driven transcription engine transcribes content quickly and efficiently, while an integrated editing interface syncs text with audio for seamless review and correction.
Trint supports multiple languages and offers speaker identification. The platform’s intuitive editing tools enable users to refine transcriptions, add timestamps, and collaborate on projects. Trint caters to diverse needs, from journalism and media to corporate settings and academia, enhancing accessibility and facilitating content creation.
Trint’s versatility lies in a balance between automated transcription speed and the flexibility of manual editing. With customisable plans and pricing, Trint accommodates different usage patterns and budgets.
Sonix.ai
Website: http://www.sonix.ai
Cost: 30 minutes for free, subscriptions from $10 (+-R200) per hour
Sonix combines AI with user-friendly features to convert audio and video from all sources (including meetings) into accurate text. Its advanced AI algorithms enable efficient transcription, offering quick results with a focus on accuracy. Sonix supports multiple languages, and its automated transcription is complemented by an intuitive editor that syncs text with audio, making it easy to review and edit transcriptions.
The standard tier costs $10/+-R200 or so per hour, with more benefits coming at the higher tiers (for example, Premium lowers the per-hour cost to $5/+-R100).
Happy Scribe
Website: http://www.happyscribe.com
Cost: Free trial, from $10 (+-R200) for 120 minutes per month
Happy Scribe is a transcription service that automatically converts audio and video recordings to text. The platform offers multilingual transcription solutions for various content types, catering to different industries and use cases.
Using advanced algorithms, Happy Scribe quickly generates transcriptions, and its user-friendly interface makes reviewing and editing the generated text quite simple. Notably, the platform supports the creation of subtitles, and live editing and reviewing of text derived from uploaded video makes differentiating between speakers in the transcript easy.
You can also add tags to text sections to improve organisation and searchability. Happy Scribe’s affordability and intuitive interface make it one of the most popular transcription options available today.
Transcribe the easy way
By automatically transforming spoken content into editable text, all of these services can help you turn what happened in all of those meetings that could have been an email into readable, searchable text for easy reference.
The fact that it’s automatic and accurate means you can totally daydream while people speak and still produce notes and summaries that are spot on. Or if your media is an interview, you can generate a text transcript that you can search with Word’s Find function, which is easier than scrubbing through audio for that exact thing you want to check.
Any way you slice it, AI-powered transcription services are a major blessing to anyone that’s ever had to transcribe things by hand, and well worth paying for now that AI is clever enough to help.