Once upon a time, in an email not too long ago, Dan said, “There is not a magical app that will just do transcribing for you.”
“HA!” I say triumphantly.
A startup called Pop Up Archive, “in cahoots with PRX,” released a tool recently that makes audio files text-searchable and taggable. It’s really just a transcription tool, and there are a few of those out there. But Pop Up Archive sucks in audio files and spits out text files, unlike other tools where you have to dictate the words real-time.
The free account is rather limited – you get to transcribe one hour of audio per month. I ran a few audio files through it, and the transcriptions came out about 80% accurate. Which, let’s be honest, nobody is happy with, but you’re also not gonna get much better from a machine, and certainly not for free.
If you do want a very accurate transcription, I suggest you revisit Dan’s email and use oTranscribe, a charming tool that helps you do it yourself.