Some Creative Ways to Save Time with Automatic Transcription

How transcriptions can be a real time-saver?

Automatic transcription is the buzzword on the internet today, and many companies have started reaping all the benefits that this advanced technology brings. In simplest terms, automatic or automated transcription is the ability to precisely convert any kind speech into text version. This transformation of audio or video into text has the capacity to improve the features of data mining and information gathering. As the end result of automated transcription, you get the text that you can then further analyze or import into other applications for further research. Precision is the most important aspect of any transcription process.

Choosing a transcription service

Today, there are many providers of automated transcription services, and they all use some kind of special, proprietary algorithm that employs AI technology to deliver precise transcripts. When choosing a transcription service, it is important that the platform of the service is easy to use, the user interface should be intuitive, the process should be fast, and the final transcript should be easy to read and precise. You should examine the parameter called the Word-Error-Rate. This is the metric that is used to asses precision and accuracy of the transcription. Most transcription services also offer the feature of the so-called Custom Dictionary, which enables users to create their own custom vocabularies in order to increase accuracy even more. Better services often boast that they frequently test across all languages in order to lower their Word-Error-Rate across all media types.

When choosing a transcription services, you should know that you are dealing with a sector that is constantly developing. These services use highly advanced machine-learning technology in their speech-to-text engines. The speech technology of today is actively upgrading itself and uses tech such as creation of neural networks and some of the applicable features of natural language processing and natural language understanding. In any case, the final result of your audio, when uploaded and processed through these transcription platforms should be a written text, a transcript that can be formatted into many different file versions, according to your need or software capabilities. When choosing an automated transcription service, you should make sure that it includes the following features, which are considered to be essential for any high-quality transcription platform:

AUTOMATIC SPEECH RECOGNITION

Your automated transcription service should include automatic speech recognition (ASR), otherwise it would not be called automatic, obviously. This is by far the most complex aspect of the platform, and it is often powered by neural networking of the next generation, the so-called deep learning algorithms. This feature is essential today in many apps that use voice search, or offer features such as automatic transcription or automatic subtitles. The quality of the automatic speech recognition is dynamic, and is based on how much effort the company behind it is putting into “training” the neural network. Deep learning systems learn through constant input of verification data, which is still generated or annotated through human work.

GLOBAL VOCABULARY

Your automated transcription service should have the ability to leverage and efficiently use massive data sets. These data sets are used to recognize and process languages, along with all their various dialects and local variants. Any respectable transcription service should be able to process at least 30 languages, and have enough processing power for all the combined vocabulary of these languages.

NOISE CANCELLATION

Noise cancellation is essential when dealing with less than perfect audio recordings. Audio can be of lower quality, with lots of clicks and hissing noises, or the situation itself could be such that there is a lot of background noise. The duty of the automatic transcription service is to efficiently process noisy audio and video without requiring that the original audio has noise cancellation in itself. The platform should have the ability to process the input of the speakers, and eliminate other noises automatically.

AUTOMATIC PUNCTUATION

Everyone who has encountered a long-transcribed text has, at some point, marveled at how important punctuation is. Especially if they encountered a bad transcription, with the lack of commas, question marks, and periods. When you don’t have punctuation, it is hard to tell when one sentence ends and another begins, it is not easy to recognize different speakers. A good transcription services offer automatic punctuation, which, through the use of advanced AI strategically places these much-needed stops at the end of the sentences.

SPEAKER RECOGNITION

Another very useful feature, which makes the transcript much more readable in the end, is the ability to automatically detect the changes of the speakers, and then separate the transcript into different paragraphs, according to the exchange of the speakers. This makes the transcript easy to read, almost like a film script, instead of the wall of text that some lower quality transcription services churn out.

MULTI-CHANNEL RECOGNITION

In some specific cases, there are recordings where each of the participants is recorded in their own separate channel or track.  Your automatic transcription software should have the ability to recognize each channel individually, process them simultaneously, and in the end combine each track into one unified transcript.

ADAPTIBLE API

When considering your ideal transcription services, you should check out the state of their API. This acronym stands for Application Programming Interface. This is basically a kind of a software intermediary, through the use of this interface two applications can “talk” to each other. You service should have a robust interface, that can be further customized in order to boost the productivity of their clients and process more and more volume of transcripts.

Ideas for the use of transcripts

Whichever automatic transcription provider you choose, if it meets the criteria we mentioned above, we are sure it will fit your business needs well. Automatic transcription is not so expensive anymore. This is probably the reason that so many businesses are constantly looking for new ways to save time with transcriptions. There are many industries, fields and business in which automatic transcription could be a great help: SEO, HR, marketing, entertainment, social media etc.

In this article we will mention some ways to use a transcript:

1. Meetings – If you are conducting a meeting, you might want to think about recording it and making a transcription after it. This way, coworkers who couldn’t attend the meeting, could stay up-to date with everything that is news in the company. Also, meeting transcripts are helpful when it comes to training possibilities for the staff, as a follow up or just a reminder for all the things that need to be discussed at some point later on.

2. Coming up with ideas – Maybe you can also try to record your thoughts on tape and transcribe them. When you put your thoughts on paper it will be much easier to systematize them and to show them to people who might consider to develop them further with you and to start some sort of partnership or collaboration. You would be surprised how many ideas and concepts are lurking right under the surface. If you take time to revise your own ideas, you will find that you already have a lot of answers for your own questions.

3. Social media – Another good idea is to record events of your company and transcribe them. You will be amazed how much interesting quotes you can find when you see them written on a piece of paper. You can use those quotes for interesting company tweets.

4. Keywords – You can also check recordings of phone calls or radio broadcasts by transcribing them and searching for keywords that should have been mentioned by the speaker.

5. Broaden your email list – If you are hosting a webinar or a similar event you can offer your audience to send them transcripts of everything that was said at the event. This will be a little encouragement for your audience to signing up to your email list.

6. eBook or guide – if you are hosting a meeting which you recorded and transcribed, you can use some interesting parts of that transcript for your eBook or for instructions on a particular task – like some sort of how-to guide.

7. SEO – If you are a Youtuber or a podcast creator you might want to think about transcribing your episodes and upload them to your website. This will generate traffic to your website, which means that your content will have a higher rank on Google. This ultimately means that your website will be more searchable.

Conclusion

Transcriptions can be a great help no matter what field or industry you are working in and they can simplify by far your everyday work life. We gave you some examples above, but there are for sure also other interesting ways to efficiently use transcripts in your everyday life. The important thing is to find a great transcription service provider. Gglot offer quality transcripts for an affordable price. Transcription are your way to go, if you want to save your valuable time and make your tasks a lot easier. Make sure to check them out!