Podcast Transcription Services Reviewed
January 14, 2008 – 2:39 pmGetting your podcasts transcribed into text can work out well for SEO and for those readers who don’t want to have audio enabled on their computer and would prefer reading. We found three lower-cost transcription services and tried them out with three different podcasts from my work. The purpose of us putting the podcasts on our blog in text format was strictly for search engine optimization purposes. As a sidenote the first day we put up our first podcast the traffic to our blog increased by 20% over the next week for searches landing on that podcast transcription.
As mentioned before, we (me and my employer) reviewed three transcription services for three different podcasts which were approximately 20-35 minutes long each. They quality on all three were very good, the price was $20-35 per podcast, which I consider very good as there are other higher end services for around $100/podcast which are not much better than these three. The quality, price, and turnaround time on all three were so comparable that I can not pick a clear winner and plan on trying them all out one more time to see if I can find one that is superior.
Transcribr Podcast Transcription
Cost - $1/minute
Turnaround Time: 4 days
Format: They sent over an HTML document. In the left column it has the time of the podcast, in the right column each paragraph starts with the speakers name which is bolded followed by the text of what that speaker said. I was not too fond of the HTML format compared to the others, but some people may find this more convenient than a word document.
Connecticut Secretary Podcast Transcriptions
Cost - $35
Turnaround Time: 2 days
Format: They sent over a word document with the speaker names in a left column and the text in the right column. Very easy to read and organized well in my opinion.
Tech Synergy Podcast Transcribing Service
Cost - $0.80/minute
Turnaround Time: 1 day
Format: I received a word document from them. In the left column is the speaker’s name and in the right column is the text. Every once in a while they have a break that shows 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, etc.
Popularity: 79% [?]
One Response to “Podcast Transcription Services Reviewed”
Whether you are a busy executive, a car commuter, a road warrior, a legal practitioner or a medical professional, or a podcaster, Scribe4you has the productivity-enhancing tools to meet your needs. Submitting dictations and other files for transcription is a breeze with Scribe4you’s flexible dial-in dictate, web, ftp and email submission options. It dramatically increases productivity while reducing costs.
It’s like having a great virtual assistant at your disposal all the time. Scribe4you uses the latest technology and trained personnel to convert your dictation to text around the clock. Simply dial, speak and hang up and they will return to you a formatted transcript. The pricing is one of the lowest on the market at under one penny per word with guaranteed quality and turnaround time.
A variety of features, such as 24×7x365 availability, the option of marking dictation for expedited delivery, the use of customized templates, various formatting styles and credit-card billing, makes this service especially appealing to business users. Frequent customers also can make use of retainer accounts at reduced prices.
In addition to dictation transcription, Scribe4you also offers interview, seminar, focus group and other miscellaneous transcription services. According to Andy Jones, director, Scribe4you, “We are one stop shop for all documentation needs of our clients. They can send in dictations or other audio/video files to us via a variety of ways and our people will create professional documents according to their specs and email them back. In addition, they can send in hand written notes or other documents using fax or email which we can convert to text as well. Corporate customers can take advantage of our discounted pricing scheme for bulk transcription work”.
All services are available to worldwide clients now and it takes only a minute to sign up on the website. Scribe4you.com also offers a free-trial option, where customers can call a toll-free number and receive a free dictation of up to five minutes, allowing them to evaluate the service with no obligation.
By Andy Jones on Jun 17, 2008