Transcribe a conference talk

In an account — free or Pro, with the same features — the transcript comes with:

The talk as text, with the time

Click any line to hear that passage; the transcript follows the recording while it plays.

Who spoke, on a panel

In American English, British English and Indian English, the transcript separates the voices into Speaker 1, Speaker 2 and so on; you rename each label once, and the name holds for the whole transcript. In Australian English and Philippine English, it separates them too, on recordings of up to 2 hours. If the separation fails, the transcript comes without speaker labels, and says so.

A summary built for a talk

The key concepts, the definitions given, the examples and demonstrations used, and the questions from the floor with how they were answered.

Questions about the session

Ask what a speaker said about a topic; the answer points to the passages and the moment in the recording they are in.

Translation

Translate the transcript for attendees who follow the event in another language, and read it beside the original before it is shared.

Export

Word (DOCX), TXT, SRT and VTT, on every plan — Word or TXT for the proceedings or the recap, SRT or VTT for the published video.

A conference transcript is as good as the microphone nearest the speaker. The organiser's feed gives the cleanest text; a phone in the audience picks up the room, and a question from the floor without a microphone comes back as fragments or not at all. On a panel, people interrupt and agree over each other, and where they overlap the text needs review.

Every automatic transcript has errors, and they cluster on proper names, numbers and technical terms. Before you quote a passage, click the line and listen: with a time on every word, that check takes seconds. In a conference talk that is the names of the speakers, the institutions and products they mention, and the figures on their slides — which are not read: only what is said aloud is transcribed.

You can also record in the browser, on a phone or a computer. Keep the page open and the screen on until you stop: a browser can end a recording when the page goes into the background.

Without an account, the trial transcribes up to the first 10 minutes of a recording. On Pro, each file can be up to 8 hours, within the month's included hours; what each plan includes, the pricing page shows. See plans and prices.

On long recordings, speaker labels can wander from one section to the next — a consequence of how long audio is processed, not a setting.

Name the main language rather than leaving it on automatic. Automatic detection has to decide what language each stretch of speech is in, and where a recording switches language, what was said in the other one may come back translated instead of transcribed — or not come back at all. Either way nothing is marked as missing: the transcript will look complete.

Philippine English is marked “preview” in the language list: offered, but without a quality commitment yet, so check its transcript more closely before you use it.