Whether you’re looking to transcribe your long audio files or just to easily transcribe your lecture, the whole process can move faster if you have the right tool on your side! In this article, we’ll discuss how to get a transcript of an audio file and what methods you should use to ensure that you get reliable text.
There are three different ways to transcribe audio:
- Transcribing your audio file yourself
- Have a company make your transcripts
- Use an automated transcription service such as Amberscript
Of course, some methods are faster than others to transcribe audio, while some are more cost effective – let’s dive in to see what one’s are right for you!
| Yourself | Manual transcription company | Amberscript Perfect | Amberscript Direct | |
| Time | 5 hours | 1 week No work yourself | 5 days or sooner No work yourself | 1 hour |
| Price | Free | $100 | ~ $30 | $3 |
How to transcribe your audio yourself?
Of course, it is possible to convert your audio to text yourself. This is completely free and very accurate. The disadvantage of making your own transcriptions is that transcribing audio to text is a very time-consuming and mentally demanding process.
For example, a beginner will spend about 8 to 10 minutes transcribing 1 minute of audio. This is not an ideal option when, for example, you are a journalist. As a journalist, you are often busy making sure that you release the news first.
Making a transcript yourself would is usually fine when you only have a few minutes of content to turn into text but it’s a long process.
But if you’re in a hurry, have a large volume of content to transcribe or simply just want to spend your time on other thing – making the transcript yourself probably isn’t for you!
Recruit the help of a transcription company
It is also possible to have your transcripts made by a company. This is usually 100% accurate and you don’t have to work on the transcription yourself! Though, the disadvantage of having a company make your transcriptions is that a higher price tag is attached.
If you choose to use a company to take over the process for you, you’ll usually have access to a platform where you can send your files. The companies team of transcribers will get to work and produce a transcript of your audio file.
The downside is that having a manual transcription made costs around $2,00 per audio minute and can take at least a week.
How Amberscript’s technology helps to reduce transcriptions time and costs
At Amberscript you can choose our Human-made services and let our team of professional transcribers handle the whole process for you. We use advance Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) technology to speed up the process and reduces the costs. The technology listens to the audio and creates a rough draft that our team perfects to 100% accuracy.
Transform your audio and
video to text and subtitles
- High accurate, on demand service
- Competitive pricing with the fastest turnaround using AI
- Upload, search edit and export transcripts with ease.
Transcribe an audio file using technology
It’s possible to have your transcripts made automatically using Amberscript.
Our speech to text software converts your audio into text in an average of 5 minutes. All you have to do is make improvements to make your transcription 100% correct.
This can be done very easily through our unique editor that ‘glues’ your audio to your transcription. This helps you easily make corrections.
The editor also makes it easy to find certain words in your transcript and play the corresponding piece of audio. Our software can convert speech to text in 39 languages! This includes English transcriptions. This is considerably faster than making a transcript yourself or having it made by a company.
Moreover, using an automated transcription service is a lot cheaper than having your transcript made by someone else. If you have an average amount of content to produce and don’t need to rely on 100% accurate text, this is the best option for you
Conclusion
There are different ways to transcribe an audio file. Each method has its pros and cons.
As seen in the table above manual transcriptions are free, but cost a lot of time. Having a company make a transcription is easy, but a lot more expensive and slower. Automated transcription service is cheaper than having a transcription made by a company and is the fastest option, but you will have to make improvements yourself. The best option for you depends on your wishes and options. But what’s best is that you can get a taste of how ASR works by getting 10 minutes of free transcription time when you sign up for an Amberscript account!