How to record phone calls/ meetings ? And, transcribe the audio

March 14, 2018 12:45 PM

I have an iPhone and I would like to record meetings that I take on my phone. I will of course ask permission of the person I am meeting with. After the call has been recorded, I would like to have the audio transcribed. Question 1: How do I record calls on my iPhone? Question 2: After the call has been recorded, is there an app that will transcribe the audio into text? Also, I have a Mircosoft surface tablet.
posted by Boyd to Technology (4 answers total)

I'm a journalist and regularly record and transcribe interviews for work.

For recording a phone call, TapeACall (iPhone only) is awesome. The paid version is absolutely worth it, but there is also a free trial version if you only need to use it once.

For in-person interviews, most people I know just use the built-in Voice Memo app. You might want to invest in a small microphone though to cut back on ambient noice.

For transcribing, you have a few options. There are a number of services that will autotranscribe your interviews. Most charge by the minite and will give you an edit field to make corrections. One example is Trint, which I have found to be rougly 75-90% accurate. Trint costs .20 a minte and I believe there is a free trial of 30 minutes. These services typically take less time than self-transcribing but will require additional editing/correction time.

It's worth noting that the going rate for human transcription is about $1/minute.

I, however, prefer to transcribe my own interviews, as it helps me revisit my notes and I can make corrections or further notes as I go. For this, I LOVE oTranscribe. It's a play window and compose window in one screen, with hotkeys that allow you to pause, ff or rewind the audio, insert linked time stanps into the document, save and download your work and more. The best part is it is FREEEEEE!
posted by Brittanie at 1:35 PM on March 14, 2018 [3 favorites]

Eva is a service by Voicera that you can use for assistance in conference calls. I don't see why you couldn't use it on regular phone calls if you conferenced her (it?) in. I think they've added transcriptions as part of the service.
posted by tayknight at 1:52 PM on March 14, 2018

I have used Rev.com many times for transcription. They cost a dollar per minute of audio (e.g. $30 for 30 minutes of audio) and are worth every penny. It takes waaaay too long to do it yourself. Transcribe it yourself only if your time and sanity are worthless.

After you get the transcription back, then you can still spend all the time you want reading through it and making corrections, but it'll be a much smarter use of your time.
posted by intermod at 7:42 PM on March 14, 2018

Hey OP, just a note about asking permission: I ask before I turn on the recording and then I ask after the recording is on because my former company’s attorney told me to do that back when I was a journalist.
posted by Bella Donna at 7:59 AM on March 15, 2018