This is a free online program for transcribing audio or video files. It also adds transcripts to video files, as subtitles. It has integration with YouTube and dropbox. It also has automatic speech recognition built in. The speech recognition does not have to be trained.
If you want to use just the speech recognition part, without the full transcribing tool, you can access it here. (To use this, you must be using chrome browser. Just hit record and speak and it will type what you say).
Below are the full instructions for accessing and using the transcribing tool program.
To access the site, click the link below, and create a new account,
Here's video instructions on using the system,
The same instructions are printed below with screenshots.
Below you can see a screen capture of the start page. You will notice that there is a start tab,which refers to this start page. There are also tabs for notifications page and a change password page. On the top of the start page is an entry box for project name. You must give your project a name in order to upload any file. Below the project name entry box, you will see four boxes that allow you to choose different ways to import files into the system, either through uploading from your hard drive, uploading from a YouTube video link (this is just the URL from a particular video page), from your dropbox account, or from your YouTube channel.
(click images to enlarge)
Below you can see a screen capture of what happens when I click the "choose file" button – it searches for a file on my hard drive. I highlight the file, and hit "open".
Once I have chosen a file, I need to hit the "upload file" button on the start page. It will begin to upload the file. You will see on the bottom left of your screen a running tally of how much of the file has been uploaded. It looks like this,
Once your file has been uploaded it still needs to be resized by our system, which can take another minute or so, depending on the size of your file. Once the file has been uploaded and resized, you will receive an email, and you will be able to see the availability notice. Once you click the "notifications" tab; it will look like this,
Now you've come to the screen where you will see where you will do the work to transcribe your file (see screenshot below). By the way all of this works exactly the same whether you are using an audio or video file. On the following screen, let me point out the major components. You'll notice in the center is a standard player with a play button, volume and full screen scaling. This is the player where you will play the audio or video file you have uploaded. You will notice above the player on the left are several buttons that control the speed of the file playing. Controlling the file speed is a major way that you can become more efficient in your transcribing (usually by slowing the player down so that you may transcribe without rewinding very much). You also notice on the top is a "process" button. This is used when you are done transcribing, and you want the system to create the transcript and subtitled file. Under the player you will notice there is a "start loop" button, and an "end loop" button. This is used to define the portion of the file that you are currently transcribing. The player loops between the start and end point, until you have the transcript completed the way you like it. When you hear the transcript, you type it in the text entry box. You probably want to use the "slower" button. Instead of typing you may also use the automatic speech recognition, which will automatically enter the text into the text entry box, based on your voice. To use the automatic speech recognition, first set the start and end loop, but instead of typing, click the "record" button, speak what you hear on your file, and when you are done recording within your loop, hit the "transcribe" the button. You typically want to transcribe between 15 and 50 second loops. Depending on the speed of your Internet access, it can take several seconds, and even up to a minute, to have the transcript returned and entered into the text box. Speeds are faster if you use the chrome browser, and we are currently working on making the transcription faster. Once you have the text entered correctly in the text box, hit the "add/update" button. Then start the process over by defining the next start and end loop.
OK, let me summarize this in a few simple steps,
1. click "start loop" at the point in the file where you want to begin/continue transcribing
2. Click play on the player.
3. Let it play between 20 and 50 seconds
4. Click "end loop"
5. as the audio is playing through the loop, adjust the speed and either type what you hear, or hit the record button and speak what you hear. If you are recording, when you are done, click the "transcribe" button and the text that you spoke will be entered into the text entry box. Once you have the correct text entered in the textbox for the passage of your file that is looping, then click "add/update" button.
6. repeat at step one until all of file is transcribed.
7. once you have all of your file transcribed, click the "process" button .
8. It may take a minute or two to process. You will receive an email when its done. And you will see the subtitle and transcribed files in the "notifications" tab. Click the notifications tab. It will look like this,
9. Click the two "here" links to get either the subtitled video file or the text file with just the typed transcript. You should right click on the links and save the files to your hard drive. You may also save to your dropbox account or to your youtube channel. Note that all files are deleted from our system after 48 hours. The typed transcript includes time-stamps, and will look like this,
