Transcription Services and Online Events
In the past few years I have been doing more synchronous online events, including adding teleconferences to web based asych events. One service has become critical for me - taping and converting calls to audio files (I use http://www.audiostrategies.com). When I am a participant (not a facilitator or leader) I often take almost-real-time transcriptions, but I can't always do that. So I have been looking for a transcription service for these audio files. I was pointed to iDictate - Secretarial Transcription Services who say: "iDictate is a revolutionary blend of technology and human interaction that enables you to dictate any document using a telephone, fax machine, or dictation device, and then receive the completed job back for editing via e-mail, more quickly and economically (just 1 cent per word**) than with typical in-house staff, and more accurately and easily than with voice recognition software. iDictate provides 24x7 access to a global pool of highly trained and bonded secretarial word processors."
A member of the Onlinefacilitation list reports that the service is "brilliant and extremely fast. The fee, if you upload a sound file is 1-cent per word. The turn around time is 24-hours (or less)." Anyone have any other recommendations of how we bridge between synch and asych with recordings and transcripts?
posted by Nancy White at 2:05 PM
7 Comments:
I have also recently learnt about idictate.com and really like the idea (and the 1 US sent per word price doesn't seem too excessive). In particular, I'd like to experiment with getting documents started by dictating them and having the mp3 file transcribed by idictate. When I write I tend to waste a lot of time backtracking, which is much harder to do when one dictates stuff - so less of a temptation. Anyway, I'll write up an evaluation on my blog if I do decide to try out the service.
As an experiment last year, we decided to record one of our live chats. We recorded the guest and the typist using Call Corder from RaysLab (http://www.rayslab.com/phone_recorder/) and a free teleconference service. The software will digitize the voice and just spill it to a file until you run out of harddrive space.
Because there was a fair amount of talking between the typist and the guest, we had someone clean up the audio so it matched the chat log. Then we split the files up into each question-and-answer pair.
It took a little bit of time to sort out since we had no idea what we would record or if it would work. (I'll give you a link to the results if you want.) Next time, we will do something similar and I think our turn-around should be faster.
Scott Moore
smoore@schwablearning.org
Scott, I'd love a link. Thanks!
Here's the link to the Dr. Sally Shaywitz Online Chat Transcript.
The work the editor did to pull out the uhms and ahs was just amazing. BTW, that's our voice over guy, not me asking the questions.
Scott
Thanks Scott. However, I think there may be a typo. The link was bad. I'll go try some variants!
OK, I found the page with the transcript. The various audio links are embedded through the page.
http://www.schwablearning.org/articles.asp?r=758
The audio IS fantastic. So she was talking and someone was typing for her during the live chat? What a great way to combine media. Lovely!
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