Podcaster Tips

Creating a transcript of your show episodes to optimize your podcast exposure will of course require some of your time because the best way and probably the most economical way to convert your audio program into readable version is to transcribe them personally. However, podcasters especially those who produce more than two shows weekly or produce their shows all by themselves hardly find extra time to do regular podcast transcription.

If this is your case, then you might want to hire someone to transcribe your episodes or use voice/speech recognition software to automatically convert your audio program into written text. For the first option, there are now several companies like Production Transcripts, Transcribr and Casting Words that accept all kinds of podcast shows for transcription.

The cost of transcription service generally depends on the length of your podcast episode. Transcribr usually charge $1 per minute of audio file; Casting Words transcription service varies from $ 0.45 to 2.50 per minute while Production Transcripts charges around $50-$60 for every 30-minute audio.

The first option although applicable for all types of podcasts may not be practical especially if the podcast is non-commercial. If hiring a transcriber will be costly on your part, you may want to consider the use of voice recognition software. The Voice or speech recognition software will enable you to communicate to your computer using your own voice as well as to convert your show into written text.

One of the most popular brands of speech recognition software in the market today is the Nuance. I have read good feedback about this software in terms of accuracy and conversion speed.

But Nuance or any other speech recognition software is only applicable to podcast shows with one speaker and whose accent and intonation is uniform. If your show has more than one speaker, or you tend to include other sound or music background during the show, chances are, you can not use any speech recognition software decently.

The voice recognition technology is not yet perfected, probably because the human voice is really dynamic but this technology is promising and we can expect more innovations in just few years.

For the mean time, podcasters may just combine the use of speech recognition software and the services of transcribers depending on their episodes and perhaps, there will be some instances when they can find time transcribing their shows personally.

Of interest: There are other kinds of PC software out there for almost any needs, including free and open source software that can fill most roles, including music software that plays and records.