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How Do I Automate Transcription Of Audio Interview Files Into Text?

I am a Volunteer for a UK Charity and have recorded a large number of interviews for a national Audio Archive, with people about their work experiences at a specific property.
I have now been told that I have to create a text file of the content of each recording so that key word searches can take place.
Is there any way that this audio to text transcription can be automated? (I recognise that some text editing and corrections will be required)
—–
David Warren

Comments: 2 Responses to “How Do I Automate Transcription Of Audio Interview Files Into Text?”

    7 years ago

    If you want your computer to do it, you'll need to look into purchasing some software. The built-in dictation function on your Mac is made to work with live dictation, where you can stop, correct, continue and such. It won't work well with recorded dictation. From a computer science viewpoint, these are very different things.
    You can search for "transcribe" in the Mac App Store and many apps come up. I have no idea which ones do what you want (transcribe audio files instead of live speech) and how good or bad they are. I'll leave that research up to you.
    Most of the time when people want audio files transcribed properly they use a service. Then a real person is doing the work. It costs more, as you would expect. Not sure what your budget is on this. Since this is for a charity, maybe you can find volunteers to do this.

    Ihab Hosny
    7 years ago

    I believe Dragon Dictate for Mac can do this, and I used it on several of podcast recordings. The following is a quote from their website:
    Dragon Professional Individual for Mac supports Nuance-approved digital voice recorders and smartphones for advanced recording functionality and can automatically transcribe the audio files to text back at your Mac. It leverages all the accuracy improvements gained from the state-of-the-art speech recognition engine for fewer post-corrections.

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