Transcript creator OR Speech to text

Question

I listen to a daily podcast that is about 4 hours long. I think it would be a cool project if I could come with some way to generate transcripts of it automatically. Is there any software that will "listen" to the mp3s and create text of what they are saying?

I'm not very concerned with differentiating who is talking because I think that would be asking too much. There are 4 main people speaking and others less often.

Solution 1

I'm pretty sure Dragon will let you do this. You might have trouble with the accuracy though.

Solution 2

Steps:

1. Download Express Scribe free transcription player and install.
   2. Once the application is installed you will find a example dictation file already loaded. This will give you the opportunity to play around with the controls and options to set the application up to suit your needs.
   3. From the main interface click on the Settings button.
   4. Express Scribe allows you to change or set quite a few parameters including Rewind and Fast Forward Speeds, System Wide Hotkeys (to control the application without using a mouse), set up of a Foot Pedal Control (if you have one), Autoloading of files from a LAN folder or FTP Server, choice of file types to allow (over 20 supported) and set up of a Speech Recognition Engine.
   5. Once you have your options set up you can now load your first audio file. Depending on where you are receiving it from you can either click Load (it will open a dialogue box that will allow you to browse for the file on your PC), Load Now (if you have set up a LAN or FTP connection) or Dock (if you have to digital or cassette dictation recorder with you).
   6. Select the audio file in the main interface window and click the Play button to start. If needed slow down or speed up the audio playback using the speed control in the far bottom right corner. Above this control you can also adjust the playback volume.
   7. If you would prefer Express Scibe to float above your word processing application you can choose Scribe Mini from the main interface toolbar. As the name suggests this option provides a miniture version of the application.
   8. Once you have finished transcribing your audio files you can either mark them as "Done" (removing the file from your list) or "Dispatch" (returning and email to the original sender along with your trext attachment and removing the audio file from your list.

Tips

• Take some time to explore all the options of the application.
• If you receive a poor quality audio file you can choose Special Audio Processes from the File menu to try and clean it up.
• When Express Scribe receives an audio file it is stored in C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\NCH Swift Sound\scribe\Current
• If you have marked an audio file as "Done" but want to retieve it you can Recover Old Files from the File menu.

Solution 3

One thing you could try (although not on a daily basis) is uploading the audio as a video to Youtube, then asking YouTube to transcribe the video, giving you English captions...can take up to 24 hours for YouTube to do this, however...The caption file is even downloadable and you can edit them yourself, so you could copy and paste the text to wherever you wanted...

Comments

[AndyMcKenna]

Ouch, a bit pricey at $199.

[Admin]

Can it transcribe from a file though? There are many programs that do this, but many will only listen from a live mic

[Admin]

Transcribing a recording with Dragon Naturally Speaking: wiki.wsu.edu/ctowiki/…

[Admin]

Yes it can - though I seem to recall you need to the Preferred version or greater to enable that feature, though I can't seem to prove that... nuance.com/naturallyspeaking/resources/product-matrix.asp

[Azad Zain]

I don't think the poster wanted to do manual transcription.

[Admin]

i'm not familiar with the training of voice recognition programs, but it seems like you could "train" it by playing back short snippets of the podcast, over and over -- basically the same way you train it to your own voice. certainly won't be automatic tho.

[studiohack]

Dragon is not powerful enough. I've tried it.

[Mohib Sheth]

Fantastic trick :) Though its not perfect but works quite good..

[287352]

Even today, in 2014, Dragon is no different. For it to work well, you need to "train" it to the voice that is speaking by reading as much as 500 words from a text file. Even after that, it will miss punctuation more than half the time.