Transcription is the best way to convert your recorded audio and video into highly accurate, searchable, and readable text. Online transcription companies will give you an exact transcript of what you say, without you having to provide direction on how you would like it transcribed.
1. Create the Best and Highest Quality Recording You Can
Every industry has a style guide, and every company will have a slightly different style guide. If they have more than one product, they’ll have a different style guide per product, but the transcriber has been trained to use their internal style guides.
For example, clean verbatim is an exact copy of what was said, with the exception of the ‘umm’s’ and ‘uh’s’, the ‘like’s’ – in order to have clean transcriptions. If there are pauses for more than 10 seconds, the transcriptionist will know to communicate via a ‘Silence’ tag during that pause because the internal style guide instructs them to do that.
For every transcription company in the industry, the company will have its own style guide per product on how to format the transcription.
All that’s necessary in order to work with an online transcription company is they need to record either via audio or video and submit it to the company.
2. Evaluate Recording Access
You’ll need to evaluate how to send the audio or video recording to the transcription company. You should look for the ease of providing your media to the company that you’ve chosen, along with the necessary security protocols.
With some companies, you can attach the file and submit it via email, with other companies like TranscribeMe, you can upload it directly through their online customer portal, phone app, SFTP, or via API. With other companies, you have to access their SharePoint and upload to their accounts.
Overall different companies have different access points, so be sure to evaluate your access and security needs before choosing a company.
3. Assess What Transcription Product You’re Looking for
Based on your transcription needs, you’ll want to figure out what your final transcripts need to contain and what your requirements are for the project.
Questions to consider:
- Do I need the transcript in a PDF document? Do I need it in a TXT document? Do I need my document in Word format, HTML?
- Make sure that the company that you choose has the output option that you need!
- Do I need it to be completely accurate? Is a draft format with 95% accuracy enough to get the job done? Or am I willing to put in some work afterward to get it to the final stage?
- Some customers only require a basic draft, but they need it very fast.
- Some customers need it to be as accurate as possible in the initial delivery since it’s sensitive material.
- When do I need this document finalized by?
- Longer audio files take more time to transcribe.
- Higher accuracy takes longer to transcribe.
- Multiple speakers take longer to transcribe as well.
- Automated Speech Recognition is almost instant but it doesn’t produce the highest accuracy in a transcript.
- Do I need timestamps on my transcript?
- Some companies don’t offer timestamps at all, so be careful with this one!
Once you have the answers to these questions, it will be much easier for you to ultimately choose the right audio or video transcription service for you because you’ll know what your product specification needs are.
4. Compare Pricing for the Transcription Products You Need
To make it easier for you, we’ve compiled a list of some of the top competitors in the industry for you to do a comparison on similar products, once you know what you’ll need:
- TranscribeMe! – Standard at $1.50/min – Including Timestamps
- Rev.com – Transcripts at $1.80/min – Including Timestamps
- GMR Transcription – General Transcription at $2.55 – Including Timestamps
Important note, based on your needs, all of these providers vary in price in terms of how they sell their products and present them – standard audio and video transcription with timestamps were chosen in this scenario since it is one of the most popular selections on the market.
All other offerings vary, so definitely research and make sure you know all that is included in your final order with any company.