Transcription of Black Star Radio talk Friday 21st Feb 2020
Seamus
Morning Mark, morning listeners.
Mark
We’re going to talk about voice transcription software and voice typing. So this is where you don’t have to touch your keyboard – it does it for you and you just talk to it
Seamus
Yes, that’s right. And for a lot of people the act of writing is really quite scary. So, whereas they can talk really well. So with this sort of technology, we’ve got now. We can talk on a computer or into a mobile phone. And we’ve got software that will transcribe as you go.
So there are lots of other reasons for having it but that’s one very good reason for people who are a bit, a bit hesitant about putting things in writing.
Mark
I suppose that’s also for those who can’t type or single finger typists, also vision-impaired or other disabilities where they can’t use their hands tec – sounds like a great idea
Seamus
Yes. Yeah, and there’s quite a few options now so I thought I’d really briefly go through the options, and then I’ll just concentrate on three options that are available that are really modern option so we’ve had voice assistance which are things like Apple Siri, Google Now which came out in 2011 and 2012. Microsoft’s got it’s Cortana which I don’t think anyone likes Amazon’s got Alexa and Google Assistant now so those things can give instructions to computers to tell them what to do, there’s a lot of them out there. But then when you specifically looking at voice to text. We have actually got both Android and iPhone have got voice typing, so you just, I forget which where exactly they are but you can actually just talk into your phone and it will transcribe as you go and that’s fairly accurate.
Seamus
Google Docs has got a similar thing of always typing and so does windows so they are still around, but there’s still times when they’re not quite what you want. And one of the ones that are the sort of pure voice to text ones is Dragon, that’s been around for a long time now, it does cost money, it’s a very very good product very good mature software, but it does cost money.
Seamus
Now, there are three new players that I’d love to talk about today. So the first one is called rev.com. And this was quite revolutionary when it came out of two or three years ago now think, and hence the name Rev revolutionary. It’s got a lot of services, so you can send them an audio or a video file, and they will have humans transcribe it for you, for $1.
Seamus
Now, with that service, it’s a 12-hour turnaround but they guarantee 99% accuracy because they actually get human beings to type it. And that’s actually another thing if you’re a fast typist they employ people to do transcriptions for them from home.
Mark
So this is also good for the hearing impaired, they do use a similar service to this
Seamus
Yes. And we’ll get onto videos in a minute that you can put with Rev, for instance, they will do a service where you send them a video file, they’ll put the closed captions in underneath, which again is very good for the hearing impaired.
Seamus
So they’ve also got a thing where artificial intelligence actually transcribes it for you. And that’s 10 cents per minute, which is amazingly cheap.
Seamus
And it’s very quick, do you get to file back in about 10 minutes. It’s not totally accurate and they don’t give any guarantees for it, because it’s machine learning so if you don’t speak clearly the machine is not going to be able to pick you up.
Mark
I have this experience with Google Maps when you try and get it to go somewhere
Seamus
Yes. Yeah, a lot of them are getting better in that they will learn your voice a bit more so voice typing in Google Docs, for instance, you’ve got to say a few things and then it will learn as he goes, so does Dragon Naturally, by the way, it will learn as it goes and get more accurate, the more you use it because it just gets used to your accent, even people like us who have no accent, of course.
Seamus
Rev.com also does foreign subtitles if you want that – it’s a bit more expensive $US3to $US7 per minute. And it’s got its own recorder so if you want to record something there is a special Rev recorder app that you can download to your phone, you record something, you press one button that sends up to Rev, they take the money out of your credit card account, they transcribe it and send it back to you so it’s a really easy way to do things.
Mark
OK, so we’ve got Rev, what are some of the other ones you were talking about,
Seamus
Well, another one, the one that I really liked is called otter.ai so otter the animal and AI artificial intelligence. Now, one of the things they do is they can transcribe things in real-time, and an actual fact, I’m doing this interview with you now, with my speakerphone on and I’m transcribing in real-time using Otter, and that will go up onto my website later today.
Mark
Hang on so you are recording and typing we are playing at the moment.
Seamus
Yeah, except I’m not typing the Otter itself is typing for me.
Mark
I’ve got a weird vision of this thing with buck teeth going at the keyboard
Seamus
And you’ve actually got to not look at the window that’s transcribing it because if you look at that, you see your speech coming on the computer screen, and it can put you off what you’re talking about.
Mark
Is that why you’re hesitant at times?
Seamus
Nah, that’s just me.
Mark
OK, so that’s otter.ai, how much does that cost
Seamus
That one, you get 600 minutes a month free, which is pretty amazing. and that’s the only one that I know of that transcribes stuff like this free, and immediately. They also do summarise all the keywords that you’ve used in your recording.
Seamus
It’s designed to be collaborating with teams. And it also integrates with zoom. So I think that’s got a big future ahead of it, it’s fairly new out. But it looks like it’s got really going places.
Mark
OK, and that’s two, that’s Rev and Otter, what’s the third one?
Seamus
The third one is called Temi, that’s possibly more accurate than Otter, it’s 10 cents per minute, it’s possibly more accurate than Riv. You can send an audio or a video file to them. One of the things which is better, it’s got this really good simple efficient editor so once you’ve got the file back the transcription and the video. It plays the video up in one corner of your screen and highlights the words as they’re being spoken.
Seamus
So then you can pause it if you have to edit the word you pause it edit that word, and keep on going and you can, up and down the speed and things like that so that’s a really efficient way just to do a final tidy up of your transcription.
Mark
I must admit I’m a tightwad – I think I prefer the free one.
Seamus
Yeah, and 600 minutes a month for a single person is you know that’s a fair bit of time that you can get for free, how long that will last for I don’t know because that seems very very generous to me. But it’s an amazingly good service.
Mark
OK, otter.ai, I think I’ll go and check that one out
Seamus
Yeah, yeah. It’s really good. And as I said, I’m using that to put the transcription of this up on my website because it’s doing it all for me all I’ve got to do is a final check. And then I’ll just put it on the website just as a transcription so that a) it’s good for me because it gets stuff on the website b) people can, if they’ve missed. One of the things we’re talking about they can go up and check the website to just see the transcription there.
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