Other cases involves audience that are non-native speakers of the recorded medium’s language. Nowadays, most users require audio to be converted to text for posting in their websites. This allows search engines to index the material and return the results in search engine pages. This increases web site traffic.
Tips on how to convert Audio to Text:
1. Use Good audio.
If you are doing the recording, try getting it done in a quiet space. Never do an interview in a cafe! The ambient sounds will kill your accuracy! If you must, do it inside your car with the windows up!
2. Use Digital Voice recorders.
The quality improvements are amazing! Best of all, most DVR now supports saving the audio in common formats like mp3 and WMA (windows media). I like using olympia recorders. You can check out digital voice recorder here. The MP3 and WMA formats use compression technology to make the file size smaller compared to CD format.
3. Enhancing Audio.
Let’s face it. Not all of your audio will have clear audio quality sounds. You may have to enhance it by processing it thru noise filters, amplifying some sgements, or equalizing sounds to get better auido quality. In this scenario, I recommend using WavePad sound editor from NCH.
4. Try audio to text software.
Try Dragon Speaking naturally from Nuance. The downside is that it needs a bit of training for it to work. You still need to do manual editing afterwards, but if you train correctly, you should get 85% accuracy or even higher!
5. Do it manually with aids.
You need a good audio player with stop, rewind and fastforward features. I recommend using NCH’s express scribe. Express scribe also supports foot pedals so you can use your feet to do the audio rewind, fast forward, stop and start functions!
6. Increase your typing speed.
If you want to increase your typing speed, check out Mavis Beacon Typing software!
7. Review, review, review.
You need to go back and review it at least 2 times to get better accuracy. You will be surprised by the amount of improvements you can make to the audio to text conversion.
8. Use Software Tools!
Microsoft Word’s spelling checker tool also checks for grammar and punctuation mistakes. Another nifty tool is the “Find and Replace” feature. You can use this to remove double spaces and convert them into single space.
9. Use a common style
Check out Transcription Style rules to find out the industry standard in transcribing audio to text.
10. Use search engines!
Some key terms need to be researched and confirmed. Use the power of the internet. Google it! (or bing.com!)
These tips are by no means all inclusive. Id love to hear from you. If you have tips of your own, please share them and the community will thank you for it!
