In today’s era of fast and easy internet access, it is vital to make sure that your video content is accessible to people all around the world. But how do you do this? We can give you all the information you need to make sure you can a high-quality transcription of your audio and video files. Once you know how to find high-quality video transcription services with a good turnaround time and proper quality checks, you will start to see that there are ever-bigger advantages to bringing your audio and video content to the wider world.
In this blog, we will discuss some of the Dos and Don’ts of finding video transcription services, how to find the right services for you, and how professional transcriptionists can help meet your needs – whether you need a transcript for a simple video seminar or more complex projects. The world of transcriptions can be daunting at first, but hopefully, by the end of this page, you will feel confident in finding the right transcription type.
What are video transcription services?
Video transcription services are how you get the audio or speech from a video file turned into text files. Text transcript services can be very useful to help you make the most of your audio or video files. There are a wide range of different types of transcriptions that you can request and multiple ways to get transcriptions done. Let’s look in more detail at some of these.
Machine transcription
The most common type of video transcription that people are familiar with is machine transcription, also known as speech recognition. This is often available in a basic form for free online. For example, many people will have used automatic captioning on Youtube and other video websites. There are also premium and paid machine transcription services available for when people want a better solution, some of which include options such as time stamping and an online editor for making changes to the transcription. However, many of these can give poor-quality transcriptions. You may often find that you have to edit a transcription or check for errors if it has been done by a computer, as computers struggle to understand the nuance in audio files. For example, they can struggle when there are multiple speakers or multiple different languages.
Professional transcription services
The other way to get a transcription made from a video or audio file is to use a professional transcription expert. These are linguists who work hard on everything they transcribe to make sure any transcription is as accurate as possible. They will often have many years’ of education in the field, and this can mean that they are a lot more accurate than computers – even the best computer-aided transcribers, complete with large libraries of words and a powerful online editor can be outdone in terms of accuracy by a skilled human transcriber.
What kind of video transcription do I need?
Transcription services can be used on a wide range of video types. Almost any video with an audio file can be transcribed, and have the recorded audio turned into a text file. As for what videos benefit from prescription services, some of the most common are;
Business meetings and interview recordings
Having transcripts of video meetings, phone calls, and interviews can be very useful to help you find the right information from the video. Turning the video to text is a much simpler way to get information to your business partners or employees.
Video media transcripts
Any entertainment media can benefit from a transcript to help with subtitling. Transcripts can also be useful to help put your media online in a way that is more accessible to deaf or hard-of-hearing people, or people who prefer to read information rather than listen.
Video seminars and training materials
Online training and video seminars are becoming more and more popular, so the need for a good transcript is more vital as well.
Vlogs
Another medium that is popular is vlogs or video blogging. Again, if you want to get your content out to a wider audience, transcription services can help.
Advertising and marketing
Advertising and marketing can often benefit from text transcriptions. Not only does it help you get subtitles or translations, it also helps you get feedback on the success of marketing material by using the timestamped text files for reference.
Why do I need video to text services?
There are many different reasons why people may benefit from getting their video content turned into a text transcription. It can be beneficial for a wide range of industries and projects to get text transcriptions of audio-video content. The transcript can often be provided in different file formats too, such as a subtitle format, complete with time stamps, or as text files ready to be turned into other materials. A text transcription can be easily added to a website or blog to provide additional content or let people access materials more easily.
Accessibility
Finding a good video to text service is important for accessibility and ease of access to your materials. It is important to make sure that people who are deaf or hard of hearing can read video content as text since this allows more people to get to your content. This can help increase your audience, find new markets and increase your customer base, and can help open you up to input from people who may not have been able to otherwise.
Subtitling
Getting a video-to-text transcript can be very useful for getting subtitles made. A good transcript can help you get accurate subtitles made at a later date, in case you later realize that you need subtitles made.
Translation
If you find the right transcription option, you can also get your video transcription translated. Most translation service providers can offer these options as they are all skilled linguists. This can help you expand your content to new audiences and markets. Multilingual agencies will also be able to transcribe the video into a range of different languages. A multilingual video transcription service can help you get your content out to a range of different audiences, including common and uncommon languages.
Training
One of the biggest uses for video subtitling is training and employee development. Making sure that you have proper transcripts of video lectures, seminars, and training videos means that you can make sure your employees get the best training from around the world. For example, even if your office is in Prague, you can access training materials from a partner company in San Francisco, and easily upload the finished transcripts to Google Drive or a company website to easily share it . Alternatively, it also means that if you supply training materials, you can increase your market share and customer base for your service.
What is the difference when transcribing video and audio files?
Both video and audio files can be transcribed in a very similar way. Obviously, there is a difference in that audio files do not have the video to back up the meaning, which makes it harder to do an accurate audio transcription, especially if the audio quality is poor. However, if you have clear audio and a simple subject, you will find that audio and video transcripts are largely the same.
How do I get an audio or video file transcribed?
The process of getting audio and video transcribed need not be intimidating or difficult. Most professional transcription services will be able to help guide you through the process, but we can look at the main ways to make sure you get a high-quality text transcription from your video content.
Getting the video right
One of the most important steps to get a high-quality video or audio transcription is to make sure that the original file and recorded audio are of good quality. You need to make sure that there is a clear audio file to transcribe from. This means making sure that background noise is minimal and making sure that the spoken words are clear as this helps to keep the text transcript clear and concise. However, if you want any utterances or misspoken words to be included in the transcript, you can request a verbatim transcription, which includes these.
Include details
Most professionals who transcribe audio-video content are good at figuring out what needs to be included, but there are some basic things that can help. For example, if the speakers are not named in the original file, it can be good to give their names – this helps make sure the transcriber allocates the right vocals to the right person when doing speaker tracking.
Easily submit video or audio for transcription
Many agencies and companies will let you simply upload audio or video for them to make a transcription. They can accept a wide range of video types for transcription. It is worth finding out if someone can transcribe from an uncommon video file type before hiring them though, as some file formats can be difficult to access, considering that many transcription service providers work from home. Making sure they can transcribe your files is vital.
Finding the right transcription service
It can be hard to find the right transcription solution for your business – after all, there are a lot of different companies and professional transcriptionists who offer different things, and you need to make sure you get the great service that you expect for your business.
Consider the language
You will, somewhat obviously, need to make sure you have transcripts made by people who speak the same language as your video uses. If you use a multilingual transcription agency you may even find that you can get someone who speaks the correct regional dialect of your original video, leading to even better accuracy.
If you need multiple languages for the finished transcripts, i.e. if you need them translated, or if you have videos in multiple languages, you almost certainly will want to use a multilingual agency who can help do all of the transcripts in-house. This means that you would not have to find different people for different videos.
The right content type
You may also want to find someone who specializes in the type of content you need transcripts for. Whether it is entertainment media, medical seminars, or business video calls, you may find that hiring an expert helps, especially in fields such as medical or legal where there is a lot of specialized languages used. You can also find people who specialize in altering transcripts for search engine optimization. Getting the best transcription often means hiring the service of someone who understands the content thoroughly, meaning they can transcribe it accurately and avoid having errors or sections left blank.
Native language or second language?
One important thing to consider with transcription is whether or not someone is working in their native language. There are plenty of people who are very skilled and fluent in a second language, but often someone who speaks a language natively will understand more of the nuance and finesse of a language, as well as being better able to understand dialects and accents. If you want to make sure your transcription is as accurate as possible, you may want to find a native language video transcription professional who can help transcribe your content.
How long does it take to get a video transcption?
It is hard to say exactly how long a video transcription takes. The time to transcribe one audio minute can vary depending on the content of the video or audio and whether or not there are multiple speakers. Depending on the subject, the speed of talking, and the terminologies in the piece, each audio minute can take between four minutes and roughly eight minutes. Luckily, many options exist to get a fast turnaround time or an express service if you need the transcription of your files quickly. Before hiring any video transcription or audio transcription service provider, it is worth finding out how soon you will have your audio transcription files completed and returned to you.
Espresso Translations offers multilingual video transcription.
At Espresso Translations we have years of experience working with languages, translation, and transcription. We have a range of linguistic experts ready to offer whatever language service you need. We also offer an express transcription option where you can have a transcription finished within 24 or 48 hours, depending on the task. No job is too big or small, and we have a wide range of experts ready to take on your task. All projects are overseen by a professional project manager too, in case you have any questions during the process. We have a great track record of client satisfaction.
We offer freelance video transcription and can give you a clear quote based on the audio minute length of your piece. From phone calls to seminar audio, or any other files, we can offer a highly accurate and certified transcription service.
Every transcript will be written by our team of highly skilled linguists. We strongly believe that the best transcription content comes from people working in their own native languages, so you can expect a high-quality transcription every time from our experts.
We are also, first and foremost, a translation service agency. We can offer video transcription in over 150 languages. We can also offer translations for video transcripts, whether you need a common language – such as English to Chinese, to drastically increase your readership – or a less common language for a specific market, we can help. We have experts in a wide range of specialized fields as well, from legal to medical to engineering. We can make sure that you get a highly accurate, well-written transcription for all your video needs, and we also offer audio transcription for podcasts, audio logs, or more.
If you want a free quote, get in touch about our transcription services today. Our quotes are no obligation, and we will respond to your quote request within an hour.
