This blog post is written with the consumers of video production transcripts in mind, rather than the producers (i.e. the transcriptionist). I’ll post a best practices for transcriptionists soon. In this post, I’ll lay out some of the best practices you can use to ensure you get a transcript that is both accurate and informative. A transcript can be an incredibly valuable tool for videographers/video producers, enabling you to dramatically quicken and improve your editing pr

I think there’s tremendous value in having a transcript of a speech or presentation. Let me list off some of the advantages that a transcript gives you. 1) Quality control. With a transcript, you can read through your speech and see where your strengths and weaknesses are in your presentation. Maybe you have an important point that you felt like you really hammered in, but then you look at the transcript and see that it was really only 2 or 3 sentences. You can see where

One of the most important factors in getting a good transcript is having a good recording. After all, the reason one gets a transcript is that one wants to capture information in a more easily accessible way. By having a difficult to understand recording, you are limiting the amount of information that can be gleaned from an audio file, and are really shooting yourself in the foot. Most transcription companies will have various ways of cleaning up the audio, but, as they s

You've already done the work of researching your topic, booking appropriate guests, getting good recording equipment, and launching a smart, easy-to-use, and informative website for your podcast. By adding transcripts of your podcasts to your website, you can drastically increase the amount of content on your website. I'm not an SEO expert, but I do know that Google and other search engines love content-rich sites. Discussions on podcasts tend to be very dense with the sort

We at RWS do a lot of work for advertising/marketing firms. If you're interviewing employees or customers to get feedback about how a brand is perceived, you'll be generating a sometimes-overwhelming amount of material, and it can be incredibly helpful to be able to reference a transcript. Or if you're putting together a promotional video with clips from the C-suite, a transcript is necessary. Here's a list of a few things to look for when sourcing for a transcription servi

I get asked about the future viability of transcription companies a lot, "Don't you think that transcription will be done by computers or outsourced to cheaper labor markets in the next few years?" Absolutely I think that certain transcription work will be relegated to that cheaper model. It's already happening. There are many transcription services that rely on huge volumes of work and razor-thin profit margins, charging as low as $40-60 per hour of audio. I'm not critici