Tips to Use Different Audio Transcription Software

The digital era changed everything in our everyday life. Regardless of the sphere, we start to use different software. Nowadays, it is almost impossible to name a type of business that can be runned effectively without some programs.

And there are a lot of spheres where software is obligatory. Such things as an online business, YouTube blog, filming, music production, interviewing, and others can’t be of high-quality if you don’t use some software.

You need programs to record audio and video, to master and edit all of it. What is more, you need to create subtitles and even transcribe the whole audio to text. It is a compulsory part of the post-production process. In this case, you may use automated transcription software, manual transcription software, hire a professional transcriptionist to your team or delegate it to freelancers or outsource companies.

Each transcription software has its advantages and disadvantages. Moreover, there are a lot of situations and goals when you should choose only a certain type of program to get the most effective result. We have interviewed experts from Transcriberry.com transcription service and asked them to share their recommendations for choosing transcription software correctly.

Transcription Approaches

Before going to software and recommendations themselves, it is necessary to know a bit about types of transcription. They define the purposes of transcribing audio or video to text.

1. This is a kind of approach when you transcribe all audio to text with all the details. It even includes interruptions like “Ugh…”. Such an approach provides the most accurate transcription and helps to represent the manner of speech but needs more time as well.
2. This is almost a similar approach. It includes catching difficult words and the whole sentences of speech. Nonetheless, in this kind of approach, you don’t have to write down pauses and small phrases.
3. This is a more agile kind of transcription that provides more opportunities to edit the final text. The main purpose of this approach is to represent the message that was communicated in the speech.
4. Phonetic transcription. This approach is very different from the one mentioned above. It aims to represent the sounds and focuses on pronunciation.

Understanding the approaches, you can define the most suitable for your certain situation. For example, the verbatim approach is the best for complex projects or data collection, while intelligent transcription is the best for business analysis.

Software Types and Usage

As we have mentioned, there are several types of software. Each type of program can be the best for a certain purpose and transcription approach. Transcription services like Transcriberry use all of the software types according to customers’ requirements. Nonetheless, if you decide to transcribe audio individually, you need to know the differences between programs. Thus, you will make transcription faster and more accurate.

Automatic Transcription Software

Since we live in the era of innovations, we want everything to be automatized. Many people think that automation is the key to success regardless of the sphere. It is a wrong statement. For example, 80% of Rolls Royce automobile creation is manual since this car represents the “elite” status. Moreover, a lot of things in development should be done manually since robots can still make errors.

Speaking about transcription, automatic software is not ideal at all. Since there are a lot of low-quality recordings, some programs can’t make a transcription.

Automatic audio transcription is very good when you choose an edited approach. The reason is that you will always have to revise the automatically transcribed recording. Thus, the edited approach is the best in this case.

You can also use this type of transcription for a verbatim approach since the software will write down all the sounds. However, mind that you will have to do a lot of edits to the document after transcription.

We can divide automatic transcription software into 2 types:

1. Online transcription. In this case, you upload a recording to a web application and start the process. Then, you get the document and can edit it manually.
2. In this case, you have to install a program onto your computer, configure it and then Open the file for transcription. After finishing the process, you can make the necessary edits inside the program and save the final draft. This variant is better since desktop programs provide more opportunities than the web.

Automatic transcription software is very useful for business analysis, publishing, conferences, and podcasts. It is also very useful for YouTube subtitles. It doesn’t need a lot of time and resources, so you can do it easily. Moreover, there are a lot of mobile applications for automatic transcription. If you have to translate a small piece of recording, this could be the best variant.

Manual Transcription Software

As well as automated, such programs can be used on the web or on the desktop. Also, similar to automated transcription, desktop manual software is better and provides more opportunities. At the same time, desktop programs are more secure since you don’t need to have access to the Internet to use them, so your files want to be copied and stolen.

Actually, the web variant of manual transcription software is useful only for small recordings. The reason is that you can’t do manual transcription individually on a high level without a lot of hot buttons and audio configurations. Such kinds of settings can be inserted only in desktop programs since servers for web versions don’t have such a large amount of memory and power.

Manual transcription is ideal for an intelligent approach since you don’t have to write down literally every word. In this case, such kind of software will be very useful for:

• hiring;
• podcasts;
• speeches and conferences;
• business communication.

It is also very good for the phonetic approach since in most programs, and you can choose this type and write with the phonetic symbols immediately.

Conclusion

Whenever you need to do transcription, you can use a lot of variants. There are dozens of automatic and manual transcription programs that provide a lot of useful opportunities. Nonetheless, if you don’t have enough time or skills, the best way is to delegate the task to professional human transcribers. They have all the necessary software and hardware to ensure high-quality transcription. Moreover, such companies as Transcriberry provide guarantees of good results and won’t ask you to pay a fortune for the order.