Transcribing a voice recording

RideForever

Well-Known Member
I have a SONY Voice Recorder that was used to make verbal notes while travelling but now used to record Strata meetings. Does anybody know of a good dictation type software that can convert or use the audio output from either an iMac our iPad to convert to text, say into WORD. Right now, listening to a short bit of audio on the mp4 file, stopping, the repeating/speaking to the microphone / dictation while in a new email message but that is a laborious process.
 

chas_m

Well-Known Member
There's a couple of ways to go about this, depending on how often you need to do this. The easiest way is to use a service like Otter.ai, where you just send them a file of the recording and they do all the work, including differentiating speakers. A plan that would probably suit your needs runs around C$10/month (billed annually), and you might be able to persuade the strata to pay that bill.

There is a free tier that you can use to try out the service, with a limitation of 40 minutes per recording, so I would investigate that first and then upgrade if needed. You can make a digital file out of the recording by simply connecting the recorder to a computer, opening a recording program like QuickTime or Audacity, and playing the file while the computer records it.

Another option is to still do the transcription yourself, but to use transcription software in combination with a hardware foot pedal to stop and start the recording. Take a look at Express Scribe, here: https://www.nch.com.au/scribe/index.html

I'm also reminded that our past president Vicky Vickers used to do transcription for people here in Victoria, but I am not sure if she is retired from that.
 
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