- Here's how to transcribe audio to text.
Whether you want to convert audio, video, or speech-to-text,
there's transcription tools and software
that can automatically do it for you.
We're gonna share the best options, free and paid,
so that you are covered no matter your budget
or your use case.
Now, I'm gonna cover off quite a few options in this video,
so make sure you stick around to hear them
all through to completion
so that you know you're leaving here
with the best option for you.
Okay, the first ones we're gonna look at are free
and you already have access to them right now.
These are built onto your computers and onto your phones
and we can use those to transcribe your speech-to-text.
So, looking at Windows first,
all you need to press on your keyboard
is the Windows key and the letter H
and that's gonna open up a voice typing.
So, with this turned on in any text box,
in any document, in any writing app,
you can just start talking
and it's gonna automatically transcribe your voice
into that application.
And it does a pretty good job,
this is something that's had an overhaul on Windows
fairly recently and now it's definitely usable.
It even supports punctuation and paragraph control as well.
So you can say things like period or full stop
and new paragraph
and it's gonna automatically add those in for you.
If you're on a Mac, you've got something almost identical,
it's called Apple Dictation,
you do need to enable it first in the settings.
So, you're gonna go over to system preferences,
click on keyboard, then over to dictation,
and then you just have to click on to enable it.
Now, the default keyboard shortcut to activate this
is pressing control twice on your keyboard,
but you also have the ability on that screen
to customize up that shortcut too.
And then just the same as on Windows,
you can open up any text document,
press that keyboard shortcut of control twice,
and then, you can just start speaking
and it's going to automatically transcribe
what you're saying.
And again, it supports punctuation and paragraphs as well.
Over on your phone whether you're on iOS or Android,
this process here is exactly the same.
Again, open up any document or any text filled
where you can type into.
Down on the keyboard where that pops up,
you can see a little microphone
that will enable voice typing,
so you wanna press on that
and then when you start talking,
it's going to automatically transcribe
what it is you are saying.
And all of these options here are now really accurate
and do work really well.
It wasn't that long ago
that these really weren't worth using.
Now, you also have this functionality
built into Google Docs and also into Microsoft Word.
So in Word, you just wanna make sure
that you're on the home tab
and then go across and click on a dictation.
You can then turn on or off your microphone
to start and stop the dictation.
Just like the other examples, it does a pretty good job.
In Google Docs, you just wanna go up the top
to the tools menu down to voice typing
and you have a little microphone
pop up somewhere on your screen.
To start and stop the dictation,
you wanna hit that microphone.
And as you can see, it works really, really well.
It actually comes up a lot faster
than it does in Word.
And in my experience,
it's actually a little bit more accurate too.
So again, some great simple options
that you've most likely got access to.
Now if those aren't a fit for you so far,
another great service, which is totally free,
no software to download and install,
it's literally just a website
that you can go to in Google Chrome.
You will need to be using Google Chrome for this one,
but the website is dictation.io.
This is a very simple tool that uses
the Google speech recognition technology or Google AI
to create very accurate transcriptions
from what it is you're saying.
And really, this should be almost identical
to what you'd find using Google Docs
as the back end of the speech recognition technology
should be the same.
So when you head to the website,
you wanna go to launch dictation,
you can specify your language up the top here,
I'm gonna choose English Australian.
And then all we need to get started
is just press start, down the bottom here.
You wanna allow access to your microphone
and then you can just start talking
and it's gonna automatically start transcribing your text.
And once again, you can see that it's fast,
it's accurate, and hey, it's free.
And if we go back from here, back to that main page,
we can actually select voice commands.
Then in here, we can see all the different
speech recognition commands that you've got access to
when you're using this tool.
And you can see that these are gonna work
for a lot of different languages other than English as well.
So we can insert new paragraph,
we can turn on and off listening mode,
we can delete text that was typed
and we can copy the text to our clipboard.
And you can see in here the common commands,
the smileys or emojis and things that you can add in.
There's a ton of voice commands that you can use in here.
So, once you've finished transcribing in this tool,
you can see down the bottom,
we've got a few different options to get this out of here
but the simplest one is just to copy and paste it
to where you want to go.
Now, if you after something
with more features and more controls,
but you still wanna dictate
or you still wanna transcribe your text live in real-time,
then Otter could be a great choice.
And this one offers so much more
than just the speech-to-text features.
It's also a full meeting management
and booking system as well,
but it has the ability in there
to automatically transcribe speech
from multiple people in real-time
and it will automatically detect
the different people speaking.
So, this makes it an amazing tool for businesses
or anyone looking to really dictate
or transcribe their meetings in real-time.
So, once you've created an account and you log in,
you can just got the top right hand corner to record.
Again, you wanna allow access to your microphone
and your speeches automatically starting to transcribe,
again, in real-time as you start talking
or as it detects someone talking.
And you can see straight away here, the accuracy is great,
the speed is fast, it works really, really well.
Now, this is something that I use a lot
when I'm creating videos like this
so that I don't need to check what I've just said.
I can literally glance across at my screen
and I can see what it is I just said.
But also if I made a mistake
and I wanna work out where I can come back
and pick up from when I'm recording,
then I can just glance across at this screen
and I can see where I can just start recording from.
So as far as real-time transcribing, I'm a big fan of Otter.
Now, just this basic functionality alone
is accessible in their free plan
which is what I'm using here for this example.
But if you want the ability
to upload your own video or audio files to Otter as well
and to access a lot of the other meeting features
and booking systems that are in there,
then that's where you want to jump on one of their pro,
business, or enterprise plans.
But it's awesome that you get free access
to be able to record and transcribe live.
Okay, so those are my top options
if you're looking to transcribe
your speech-to-text live or in real-time.
But if you've already got video or audio files
that you want to transcribe, then these are my top picks.
Temi is a great option
for a really fast AI based transcribing service
that costs 25 cents per minute to use.
This, again, is something that we've used quite a lot
and the turnaround time is usually less than five minutes
but they do say the average is five to 10 minutes
on their website.
I really love it in here though,
you don't just have to do one video
or one audio file at a time,
you can actually do things in bulk.
So if you've got a lot of files
that you wanna transcribe fast,
then that's where Temi is awesome.
Now to get started, you just need to create an account.
You will need to add some money to your account,
this is a prepaid service.
Then you can just come up with the top to new order.
Then you can drag and drop your files onto this screen
or you can copy and paste your URLs
for any videos that are public online.
It'll go ahead then and it'll transcribe that video for you
and we can just kind come over here
to view transcript to see the finished product.
Now for this example,
we can see that I uploaded a video here.
I have the ability to play the video
and you can see it highlights the text in real-time
of what I'm saying.
And because this is done by AI,
any areas where it wasn't 100% sure
if that's exactly what I said,
it's actually colored those pieces in orange.
So, it makes it really easy to go through review,
make any changes to the text before you save it out,
before you copy and paste it, or download it.
But in here, you also have the ability
to remove any filler words
from that transcript as well,
just by selecting the little box here under downloads.
But what I also really love about Temi
is there is no monthly fees,
there are no subscriptions or locking contracts.
There is with a lot of other options like this,
you can prepay your credit,
know that it's 25 cents per minute,
and you can go through that as quickly
or as slowly as you like
depending on how much you're using it.
The next option is Descript
and this is one that I am a massive fan of.
Now Descript is, again,
so much more than just a voice to text tool.
This one is actually a full end to end editing system too
for podcasts, for regular videos,
and also for screen recording.
Now in terms of the transcribing piece,
once you sign up for a Descript account,
download and install the software on your computer,
this one will work on both Mac and PC.
You wanna create a new project
and then you can just drag and drop your video
or audio file into the window there.
Now we can see, it started transcribing our video here
straight away, this is a short one minute video.
We can preview the video over to the side
and we've also got our audio wave forms
down the bottom here,
just as you'd see in a normal video editing tool.
Now, the overall transcribing in here again
is really accurate, it's really fast.
And we can see that we've got our text here
over on the side now
as if it was a Word document or a Google Doc.
And all of this is perfectly sync up
with the video over here on the right as well.
So, if all we're after is just the transcript
and just the text,
then we've got access to all of that here now.
So we could save that out, we could copy and paste it out.
We've got the text.
But Descript has so much more in there than just that.
It actually gives you the ability
to edit your videos down
just as if it was a Word document or a Google Doc.
So, we can literally just select some text here on the side,
we can remove that text pressing delete on the keyboard,
and it's actually removed that section from our video.
Likewise, if I wanted to move,
say this sentence down a little lower,
I can right click on it and I can cut that text
and let's just say we're gonna paste it here,
I can right click, I can paste it.
And not only has that moved the text,
it's also moved the corresponding video piece
for that text as well.
So Descript is one of my favorite tools right now.
I really think it is the future of video editing
where you can just do it from text,
making it accessible to anyone.
Now, we do have a dedicated video on Descript
which I will link up in the cards,
covering off on a lot more of the features
than we're going to in this video.
Now, in terms of pricing, there is a free option
which gives you access to three hours of transcribing
and access to full audio and video editing in there too.
But to really unlock all the advanced features
and functionality in there,
and that's where you wanna jump
on the creator plan or the pro plan,
which start at $12 a month or $24 a month,
if you're paying annually.
Now, all of the options I've covered so far
are AI transcribing
which means that they have a maximum accuracy
of around 85 to 90%, depending on the platform.
If you're someone who's looking
for higher level of accuracy, 99% accuracy,
and that's what you don't wanna go past Rev.
So Rev is another tool that I'm a big fan of,
we're personally been using for years
with our YouTube channel.
And we love Rev because of that accuracy,
because it's not using an AI algorithm,
it's actually using a real human
to do the transcribing for you.
Now, Rev does also have an AI option very similar to Temi
which is also 25 cents per minute.
But if you are after the highest level of accuracy,
that 99%, then it's gonna cost you 1.50 per minute
for your transcribing, which I still think is pretty cheap.
You just wanna come up to the top corner
and select place an order,
you get to choose a transcription,
which is what we're talking about,
having an actual human do the transcribing for you.
Automated transcription if you want the AI one.
You can also do captions and subtitles in here too.
We're gonna go transcription.
Again, you can upload directly to Rev,
or you can paste in a URL to a public video link.
So we can see that once our video is uploaded,
it's gonna give us an estimate
on how much this is going to cost,
and it's gonna give us a few other options in here too.
So we have a one minute video,
it says we can get it back in an hour,
probably because it's so short,
but we also have options down here to rush my order
to get it even faster.
Time stamping, verbatim,
and instant first drafts as well.
So here's an example of one of our YouTube videos
that we had captions made for inside of Rev.
Once you're transcribing is done,
it'll send you a notification,
and you can come back in and download the file.
Now, another thing I really love about Rev
is it has direct integration with YouTube,
helping you create accurate captions
and subtitles for your videos,
which can help YouTube understand your content,
which can help your content rank on the platform.
But it also can help people watch and consume your content
if they've got captions enabled.
And with the YouTube integration,
when you link this to your channel, you can come into Rev
and it can actually pull videos directly
from your channel to transcribe
or to create those captions for you.
And once they're created,
it can automatically add them back up to YouTube for you
so that you don't need to do anything.
Which is awesome.
So this is something that we do
for every one of our YouTube videos.
Rev also supports translating your videos and audio
to other languages too.
So it's not just transcribing, it's translating too.
And there's also direct integration with Zoom
for live audio transcribing for your Zoom calls too.
So again, in terms of pricing, 1.50 per minute
for the accurate transcribing
or 25 cents per minute for Rev's AI transcribing.
So we've covered off a lot of options
but there's one more
that I want to give a quick mention to.
These days, there are a lot of video editing tools
and applications
that are starting to bring in transcribing tools
into the editing applications too.
So this is something that Adobe added to Premiere Pro
not that long ago
and there's lots of others as well.
So again, depending on your workflow
and how you're specifically looking
to convert speech-to-text
or convert your video or audio files to text,
if it works for your workflow,
you might find that your video editing application
might already have this built in as well.
So, it's definitely worth a Google search
for your editing tool
and transcribe to see what shows up.
But those are my top methods right now
for converting video, audio, or speech-to-text.
Let me know down in the comments
which one do you think is the best option for you
or what do you think I've missed?
Also, check out the video linked on screen,
I have no idea what it is.
This one is a recommendation
from YouTube for you, specifically.
I hope it's good.
I'll see you in the next one.