Writing down words spoken in an audio or video recording is a process known as transcription. While it might seem quite simple, it’s one of the most tedious and time-consuming tasks when done by a person with no prior experience. Although it can be made a tad bit easier by taking advantage of professional transcription software or foot pedals, they are quite a significant investment.
This is why transcription companies were founded – they do the hard work for you, but for a specific price. Professional transcription services are divided into two main categories – automated and manual. Initially, there were only a couple of these which didn’t give you a lot of options.
A lot of new competitors have started emerging in recent years, and it can be quite challenging to choose only one. Fortunately, there are a few key points that you should take note of when making your decision.
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Choosing A Transcription Service
Accuracy
You shouldn’t settle for anything less than 99% as far as accuracy is concerned. Read the reviews of the past users to see if they’re as accurate as they claim to be. You should also steer clear of any company that promises 100% accuracy – this is a sign that they’re not trustworthy since complete precision at all times isn’t possible.
Safety
If you use the services of a manual transcription company, make sure that each employee is required to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Your personal files can easily be compromised otherwise. See how the company can guarantee the full security of both the audio data and the transcripts. With automated services, this is not something that you have to worry about.
Turnaround Times
When you’re short on time, you need to be sure that the company will be able to deliver before the deadline. Most manual services have different options for turnaround times, ranging from 12 hours to a couple of days. Unfortunately, choosing the fastest one can get quite costly at times. A significant benefit of automated transcribers is that every file has the exact same priority at no additional cost.
Rev
Rev is one of the founding fathers of manual transcription/caption companies. It offers both of these services starting at $1/minute at a low turnaround time of fewer than 12 hours for files shorter than 30 minutes. However, this pricing is for the bare-bones option.
If you wish to receive a full verbatim transcript with timestamps and top priority, this number can go up to $2.6/minute. Recently, Rev included an automated transcription option – however, its average accuracy is extremely low at only 80%. It also requires the audio to be without any background noise, overtalk, and without accented dialogue, which is relatively large limitations.
Scribie
Similar to Rev, Scribie also offers both manual and automated transcriptions. Manual service is arguably the cheapest of its kind, starting at only $0.8. However, this price only applies to files that have strictly American speakers, and they come with a fixed turnaround time of 36 hours.
If you wish to upload files with accented speakers, background noise and include all of the available features, the price can go as high as $3.3/minute. Manual transcriptions also have a limit of 20 hours of transcripts per week. Accuracy of the automated service goes as low as 60% for foreign speakers, which, even at its low price of $0.1/minute, makes it not worth it.
Audext
Unlike the previous two services, audio to text transcription service Audext exclusively offers automated transcription, but with a slight twist. Instead of using sub-par technology that produces inconsistent results, Audext takes advantage of the latest advancements in the world of AI to ensure over 99% accuracy each time.
Being 200 times more efficient, it’s able to do so in the shortest amount of time compared to any other service; You won’t have to spend time thinking about which features you don’t want to be included to save money – Audext comes with everything out of the box, even an automatic speaker identification. It also doubles as an online text editor, where you can double-check the result on-the-fly and edit it accordingly.
Why It’s Better
The 60% and 80% averages of the other automated transcribers are ridiculous. You would have to spend hours editing the result for it to be even remotely usable. As a customer, you deserve no less than 99%+, and you deserve it now.
You shouldn’t have to pay additional money in order not to wait for days to get your transcription back, and you don’t have to. Every file uploaded to Audext has the exact same priority and is delivered in a couple of minutes, depending on its length.
The prices are fixed with no hidden costs for added speaker labels or accented audio. Audext even gives you the ability to start off entirely free for the first 30 minutes without any limitations. Once you’re satisfied with the results, you can select the appropriate pricing plan for you. It’s transparent, fast, accurate, and it does what it says.
If you are interested in even more technology-related articles and information from us here at Bit Rebels, then we have a lot to choose from.
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