Video transcripts amplify the reach of your content, increase SEO results, and help you streamline your editing process. They make video content accessible to viewers with hearing or vision impairments and help you meet ADA compliance requirements.
It can take 4-6 hours for a professional transcriber to transcribe an hour of audio content.
Accuracy
Whether you are a journalist gathering quotes from a video interview or a corporate content manager uploading your latest company presentation to social media, you need accurate transcripts. However, not all transcripts are created equal.
Many automated transcription software programs need help accurately capturing the speech in videos and can produce text that is often distorted, incomplete, or inaccurate. This can be problematic if you transcribe something complex, like a documentary. This is why you should always use a professional transcription service that employs human transcribers to deliver high-quality transcripts for your video content needs.
Accurate transcripts make it easier for audiences to digest your content, stay engaged, and share it on social media. In addition, having a written record of the conversation can also help you avoid any legal issues should someone try to misquote what you’ve said. In addition to verbatim transcripts, some services offer edited transcriptions that omit filler words and repetitive sounds, making your content more engaging for readers. This is particularly useful for educational purposes, medical research recordings, and patient consultations.
Captions
Video transcription is often used to create captions. Captions are designed to translate on-screen dialogue and audio cues for viewers with hearing disabilities or foreign language speakers. They are typically displayed at the bottom of a viewer’s screen. Captions can be open or closed, including speaker labeling, slang and jargon, sound effects, and music lyrics.
Creating transcripts and captions manually can be time-consuming and costly, but numerous video transcribing software options are available that do the work for you. These programs can automatically detect dialogue and generate transcripts in real time. However, not all video transcription software is created equal. Choosing a high-quality transcription program that can provide accurate, clear, and legible content is essential.
Transcripts, which turn your films into searchable text, can assist your videos’ SEO. Making it easier for search engines like Google to find and rank your movies can increase your audience’s size. This is particularly important for vlogs, webinars, speeches, sermons, and educational content. In addition, transcribed videos can be embedded in social media posts and blog articles, increasing exposure to new audiences.
Timestamps
Timestamps are crucial to the transcription process. They can help transcribers determine the timing of audio and video content and improve user experience. They can also highlight specific parts of the recording, adding value to the transcript and helping viewers navigate it effortlessly.
There are different types of timestamps depending on the client’s requirements. These include periodic, paragraph, sentence, and speaker timestamps. These are useful for other content formats, including legal transcripts, market research interviews, focus group discussions, oral history recordings, podcasts, and virtual meetings or conferences.
It’s best to work with a professional transcription company that uses only human transcriptionists for accurate and consistent results. Using an automatic speech recognition platform can lead to inaccurate transcription and cause captioning and encoding issues. For instance, a single typo can throw off the entire process and create errors. This can be costly as it takes longer to fix the mistakes and can affect the overall quality of the transcription. So, be sure to work with a professional transcription service that uses only the best and most experienced human transcribers.
Subtitles
While transcription and captions are helpful tools to expand the reach of your videos, they are different. Captions convey all audio content, including speech & sound effects, while transcripts only reflect the spoken dialogue. Captions can either be ‘burned’ into your video files or exist in a separate file, and they can be hidden or displayed by viewers. It is also possible to make captions and subtitles “open” or “closed,” which is quite helpful when it comes to adhering to accessibility regulations like the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA).
Functionally, adding transcripts to your videos reduces paper edits during post-production and helps viewers who can’t hear follow along. It is a vital tool for growing your viewership, improving accessibility for hard-of-hearing and non-native English speakers, and expediting the process for video editors. AI transcription software can also dramatically reduce time spent transcribing and create high-quality machine-readable text filled with relevant keywords. This makes it easier for your video to be found on YouTube and other search engines.
Accessibility
As video has become the most popular form of online content, many who create videos are realizing the need for accessibility. Studies have shown that video transcripts increase user retention and are even more helpful to users with varying learning styles. They can help satisfy ADA requirements, make content searchable, and boost SEO.
Closed captions and subtitles are widely used in many industries, from court cases and business meetings to movies, classrooms, and surveillance video. They are also helpful for the deaf and hard-of-hearing community, allowing them to access information in ways that work for them.
Having the option to read along can help a user focus on the most critical points and make notes without interrupting the video or turning up the volume. It can also be a valuable tool for those with limited mobility and hearing loss, enabling them to enjoy video content from anywhere at any time. This allows them to engage with their favorite content and get the most out of it. This is why video transcription is essential to any video creation workflow.