Tools for Transcripts

Download Transcript for Podcast: What Requires a Transcript? How do you Create a Transcript?

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Download Transcript for Podcast: What tools are needed to create transcripts?

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Transcripts are required anytime there is dialogue and/or important non-dialogue audio. Transcripts may also contain text descriptions of visual information. A quality transcript should include speaker identification and other notations that promote comprehension if the audio can not be heard.  Here are some examples of multimedia types that require transcripts:

  • Videos
  • Audio files, podcasts
  • Narrated slide presentations and slide presentations with embedded media
  • Audio notes in text documents

This is not an exhaustive list of media that require transcripts; thus, be sure to do your research on accessibility requirements before publishing media to the web.  

There are several ways to create a transcript.

  • Modify a pre-made script
  • Listen to the audio and manually type of what you hear into a text document
  • Edit a transcript created by speech recognition software
  • Pay a service

Modify a Pre-made Script

Writing a script before recording anything is good practice for many reasons. In terms of accessibility, it makes it easier and quicker to create a transcript (and even captions.) Simply modify the existing script and then make it available with the video.

Manually Transcribe

If a pre-made script is not available then another method is to listen to the audio and manually type out what you hear into a text document. Of course, this can be time-consuming if the media is long. Luckily, there are online tools that can speed up the process. oTranscribe Links to an external site.is a free web app that allows a user to transcribe an audio file from their computer or a YouTube video. This tool is useful when transcribing audio files because it allows the user to slow down or speed up the audio as they are transcribing. The user can set the tool to a pace that is natural to them, which stops them from having to continuously pause and start the media.

Speech Recognition Software

YouTube

There are many options for speech recognition software that will automatically transcribe audio into text.  YouTube provides free video storage and will create auto-generated closed-captions for your videos.  You can create transcripts from the YouTube videos using a free (beta) website, DIYcaptions Links to an external site.. This will work on any YouTube videos that have captions available.  However, if the captions were auto-generated, you will need to correct the transcripts. Additionally, it is good practice to annotate the transcripts with the identification of the speaker, and any other audio that is important.  (3:15)Video

Video Demo of DIYCaptions Links to an external site.Video Demo of DIYCaption

Download  Transcript:  Video Demo of DIYCaptions

Watson

Developed by IBM, Watson Speech to Text service Links to an external site. will transcribe audio either by uploading pre-recorded audio (.wav files only) or by using a microphone.

Google 

Another option is to use Google's Speech-to-Text transcription Links to an external site. web app.

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