are you looking to transcribe your
videos or your podcasts so you can
easily repurpose your content well in
this video we're gonna take a look at
how to transcribe audio to text and the
best options to do it both free and paid
so that you're covered no matter what
your budget is hey it's Justin brownie
from primal video we help entrepreneurs
and business owners amplify their
business and brand with video if you're
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subscribe button and all the links to
everything I mentioned in this video you
can find linked in the description box
below so let's jump into it transcribing
videos or podcast is a great way to
easily repurpose your existing content
or simplify the process of creating
video or blog descriptions now there's a
lot of options out there when you are
looking to transcribe speech to text in
any format ranging from free
transcription software to paid automated
services and manual transcriptions as
well and they can also be big
differences in the accuracy of the
output that you'll receive back as well
as the cost of each option depending on
your project and budget each solution
does have its place why is a mix for
different projects and depending on the
level of accuracy required and how fast
we actually need the transcription
returned to us so in this video we'll
run through our favorite options for
transcribing videos on every budget and
any project no matter how accurate you
need your results and while we're
running through our picks let me know in
the comments if you get your audio or
video transcribed and what your favorite
transcription services are and why
there's new ones popping up all the time
so your suggestion might help the rest
of the community and I'd definitely be
interested in seeing what else is out
there as well so we're going to start
off with the paid services first and
then move into the free options now it
is important to note across all
transcribing options and services that
transcribing works best the clearer the
audio is so ideally you're providing
audio or video with minimal background
noise and no music so just talking
videos ideally to get the best results
now obviously that doesn't cover off
every transcribing solution but wherever
possible try to have your audio on the
spoken paths as clear as possible so
with the paid options in most cases it
is the case of the more you pay or the
more expensive the service offering is
the higher the accuracy of the results
so the
the paid options they really fall into
two categories manual and automated now
in this automated category there's also
two subcategories so you can actually
automate your transcribing through
websites or you can actually use
computer software obviously the websites
are platforms where you just upload your
documents to a website and that will
process everything for you and you'll be
sent back your transcription software on
the other hand is something that you
need to pay for and download and install
on your computer
and run your transcribing through that
that way so I started then looking at
the websites and with the websites
you've got things like Timmy or specs
and how these websites work is that once
you've created an account you can send
through either a link to your video or
you can upload your entire video or you
can upload an mp3 or an audio version of
your video for the website or web
platform to transcribe your audio from
there so generally again with these
software solutions the turnaround time
is normally really really fast as
there's no human element in here you're
not gonna be waiting for someone to sit
there download and play through your
audio or your video file to type it all
out it is all automated so in most cases
with these services you're transcribing
will actually start immediately so
they're really really fast to get the
file back to you at the end but a big
thing to note with these software
platforms or services is that they
really need clear audio to be able to
get better results or good results if
you've got things like background music
or there's a heap of background noise if
the people talking have strong accents
was a lot of wind or anything like that
that's really gonna start to drown out
your audio the spoken parts in your
video then it's gonna make it really
hard for the software to decipher what
you're actually saying but on the plus
side besides being really fast
these software platforms are normally
really cheap so you've got Timmy that
starts at around 10 cents per minute and
you've got specs that starts around 25
cents per minute and there's a heap of
other solutions out there as well but
these two would be my top
recommendations of where you should
start out so for me I'm a big fan of Tim
and I'll use it on projects where
accuracy isn't too important but where
it makes it handy especially on
long-form editing projects like
documentaries or corporate work where
it's handy to have a full transcription
of the videos that you're working on the
videos that you're editing and cutting
down to be able to quickly find things
where did this person say this okay
that's here find that in the timeline
really really quickly so for those sorts
of things where it doesn't matter if
there is a few typos or even a few
sentences that are out of whack in there
somewhere and that's where Timmy is
perfect for those type of projects but I
wouldn't use it if I really needed a
high level of accuracy on the
transcription or if the video as I had
already had background music or a heap
of people speaking in there which is
gonna be too complicated and the results
aren't going to be fantastic
the next option you've got for
automatically transcribing your videos
is to use software that you can install
on your computer now really this
software is just an interface between
some of these web platforms but it will
give you a great amount of control and
in a lot of cases it will also give you
a higher level of accuracy as well now
once again there are a few applications
out there for doing this but the
standout and the best one that I've seen
in a long time is a plugin for Adobe
Premiere Pro so sorry but this is only
for Adobe Premiere Pro users but it's
called transcripted and it's from a
company called digital anarchy so it
sells for $299 which may seem expensive
but stick with me here because this will
give you up to 95% accuracy it can
transcribe 60 minutes of video in around
10 minutes which is insane and because
it's built into Adobe Premiere it means
that the whole exporting and uploading
and everything is automated through
Adobe Premiere and it means once you get
your transcribed video back it's already
inside of Adobe Premiere that you can
use as either markers in your video or
reference points or it makes it so much
easier to find segments in your video
because it can be linked directly with
timecode to your video file so it's an
amazing tool so how it worked as it
connects through to either IBM's AI
engine called Watson or a platform
called speech Mattox now out of the two
of those Watson is less accurate but it
actually gives you 1,000
minutes free transcribing per month and
after that if you're doing a heap then
it's only 2 cents per minute for any
additional transcribing the other option
speech Maddox is the much better
solution now this is where you get up to
that 95 percent accuracy and in all of
our tests it actually works on noisy
video files as well or video files with
a heap of background noise and
background music and I was really blown
away with the accuracy on this and
speech Maddox only works out and around
7 cents per minute to transcribe your
video files so when you're using this
transcript if you can use it to easily
create captions subtitles Word documents
it works with multiple presenters as
well and it is really really fast but
there's a test on both Watson and on
speech Maddox with one of our youtube
videos just to see how it would go so it
had the background music and everything
in there just as one of these complete
videos does and the results were almost
chalk and cheese for any quiet parts
where there was no background music
Watson did okay but across the board
speech Maddox was far more accurate it
was actually much faster to do the
transcribing as well it actually
returned the 24 minute 22 or 24 minute
video back in under a couple of minutes
so that's just crazy so obviously at
that price point of $2.99 for this
plugin
and having an only work in Adobe
Premiere it's a great solution if you're
using Adobe Premiere and doing a heap of
long-form editing projects ones where
literally with the click of a button you
can transcribe your entire sequence or
project that you're working on in a
matter of minutes so it's an amazing
tool for transcribing your edits or your
dailies for things like documentaries
short films long-form video projects or
long-form sales videos but it's much
easier to work off a paper edit with
clients or your team then trying to find
things manually inside of your editing
project but obviously if you're not
using Adobe Premiere Pro or you don't
want to spend the $299 up front on your
transcribing then this won't be the best
solution for you so those are the paid
options that we'd recommend you check
out there there's a couple of free
options as well now obviously as I said
at the beginning the free ones
definitely don't have the accuracy that
you'll have in the paid solutions but
they still might be enough to do exactly
what you want so first off on the free
side is
YouTube's Auto transcribe function now
how this works is when you upload your
video to YouTube it's not always instant
can take up to 12 hours and in some
cases I've heard it taking longer
YouTube will automatically transcribe
your video so once that's actually done
you can log in and you can download that
text that it's actually transcribed from
your video and then copy and paste it
into a Word document or anywhere else
that you want to use it from there so
that's one way when you actually don't
even need to do anything the other way
is to use something like Google Voice or
Siri to do the transcribing for you now
we did do a video quite a long time ago
it's one of the first videos on this
channel I think talking about
transcribing your videos using Google
Voice and Google Docs if you haven't
seen it yet I'll put a link up in the
cards so all we need to do is open up
some sort of text app and notes app or
some sort of word processing app on your
smart phone and instead of typing in on
the keyboard you'll press the microphone
button which is for voice input so all
you need to do then is press that
microphone button hold your phone up to
a computer or something that is playing
through the video that you want to
transcribe and the transcribing will
start now obviously here this is again
really dependent on the amount of
background noise in the area that you're
going to be recording through but also
in the video itself if there is a heap
of music in it then this really isn't
going to work too well but if the music
is pretty quiet or there's no music at
all and minimal background noise and you
can actually get some pretty decent
results so that's using your phone but
in most cases you can actually get
better results using your desktop
computer as well now this is something
that we've found works best in google
chrome and all you need to do is open up
Google Drive create a new Google
document select tools at the top and
then go down to voice typing then all
you need to do is hit that microphone
and then hit play on a video that is
also open on your computer and the
transcribing will start now depending on
how your computer is set up and how your
microphones are set up in some cases you
might get better results playing your
video file through your smart phone and
holding that up near your microphone on
your computer and transcribing that way
one of the biggest things we've seen
with comments on our previous video
talking through this was that if you
have any sort of accent or if your
Google account is
set to English as your primary language
then you may not get good results with
this process or in some cases you may
not have access to the feature at all so
again you need to be using Chrome on Mac
or PC and you need to have your primary
language setting set to English in your
Google account so those are our top
recommendations for automated solutions
when it comes to transcribing so now
we're going to look at the manual option
so these are the ones that are done by a
human and the biggest benefit here is
the higher level of accuracy but the
downside is that generally these will
take longer to do so for this your first
option is to head over to Fiverr or
upwork.com
and list a job and there behaves of
people on there that are willing to
transcribe your video for not a lot of
money but really in our experience we've
found some really really good ones and
really cheap ones and in other cases the
communication has been terrible
and the end result hasn't been that
great either so it definitely can be hit
and miss now there are lots of dedicated
websites to this as well where you're
transcribing will be done by a human and
with some sort of quality control in
there as well and our pick is currently
Rev com so once again how it works is
that you'll create an account with Rev
comm you'll either link to your video
you will upload your video or you will
upload an audio file that you want to
transcribe you'll submit that to rev.com
as a job and within 12 hours you'll have
your transcribed audio or video back to
you so the big big pros with this is
that it is done by a human
so we've already said the accuracy is
much much better there is quality
control in here there is a review
process if you're not happy you can go
back and get them to make changes the
range or the options that you have on
outputs you can request different
versions some with time codes some as
closed captions some as subtitles the
options that you have to receive your
transcribed files back is huge even if
you want a word document that's laid out
in a particular way than they would do
that as well because you actually get to
provide a brief with your project or
task telling them exactly what you want
so the cost for Rev comm is $1.00 per
minute so it's a little bit more
expensive than the other automated
options but given the fact that there is
that quality control that you are
actually getting your audio
video transcribed by a real person that
can understand English and different
accents is huge and your end product is
in most cases going to be a lot better
and also for any video or audio that has
multiple speakers or multiple presenters
all hands down go with Rev comm because
of that much better accuracy the moment
you're throwing in different speakers
and different accents and things it does
make a huge difference even though some
of those automated services did say they
supported multiple people multiple
speakers the output definitely isn't as
good when you've got them in your video
or audio now we do actually have a full
walkthrough on how we use Rev comm for
our YouTube videos and I will put a link
up in the cards as well so as you can
see there's quite a few options out
there to get your videos or your audio
files transcribed either automatically
manually or done through your phone so
for us we really just use a mix of those
solutions depending on what we need the
accuracy that we need and how fast we
need that transcription back so for
something really really quick where if
the accuracy isn't 100% doesn't really
matter we can make those minor changes I
would either use my smartphone or use
Google Docs to do the transcribing or I
would use Timmy for 10 cents per minute
for really large video editing projects
where the accuracy doesn't need to be a
hundred percent but we're going to be
constantly changing and updating those
documents to be able to create new ones
really really fast of the edits as we're
going hold hands down use the transcript
of plug-in for Adobe Premiere Pro and I
would use speech maddox inside of that
and for anything where we 100% need the
accuracy for anything that's going out
public instead of just internal editing
or working with teams then it hands-down
goes to Rev comm so while it does take a
little bit longer than some of these
really fast online solutions I'm happy
to wait because it's not that long but
the level of accuracy and also the level
of formats and control that you have
over the transcribing process is really
second to none and you can really get
almost anything you want created by them
once they've actually done the
transcribing so whether it is a
subtitled captions Word document
formatted exactly how you want it
then yeah it's Reve common and even for
every video on this YouTube channel all
our subtitles or captions are actually
done through Rev comm as well now
transcribing your YouTube content can
also help you boost your YouTube
rankings and put together a video which
is linked on screen that explains how it
works and why you should be doing it and
exactly how we create subtitles for our
YouTube content to help you get started
so make sure you check it out can I'll
see you soon