Last updated on January 23rd, 2024 at 02:18 am
If you have audio recording recordings to transcribe, you would more often than not, send them out to a transcription service.
Transcription services do a good job converting your audio recordings to text.
However, they have two drawbacks.
First, you’ll be put in a queue. Second, they are costly. If you want an audio recording to be transcribed urgently, you would have to fork out more than the standard rate.
The solution is to use an audio-to-text converter tool. Not only will you get your audio recordings transcribed fast in the comfort of your home or office, but you’ll also save costs, in the long run.
There are many audio-to-text converter apps or programs out there. Most of them are cloud-based, allowing you to perform audio-to-text transcription anywhere there’s an Internet connection.
So, which one do you choose among the many?
There are some free ones, too, and some good, paid ones as well, as will be shown below.
Also, read: How to Download YouTube Transcripts as Text.
What to look for in an Audio-to-Text Converter
Ease of use
As far as possible, you don’t want to spend time launching the app and getting it to work. You don’t want to spend time setting it up.
Speed
Next, is the speed of conversion. You don’t want to wait too long for your audio to be converted to text. Also, you don’t want the app to run into problems and be unable to process the audio midway.
Accuracy
What about the accuracy of the conversion? You can’t expect audio-to-text converters to be as accurate as humans when transcribing audio to text. However, at least a 90% accuracy rate is not too much to ask for.
Supports Video to Text
Audio-to-text converters should do more than convert audio. It should also support video-to-text conversion.
This option isn’t really necessary. Video files are large and take a longer time to process.
You could do well to convert a video file to audio before undertaking conversion. This would speed things up. You don’t want to upload a large video file, which serves no better purpose than an audio file.
In any case, YouTube videos can easily be converted to text without using an audio-to-text converter.
Windows Dictation App
There’s a Windows 10 free app called Ease of Access Dictation that allows you to take dictation and convert the recording to text.
First, you would have to set it up.
However, to transcribe an audio file, you would need to install virtual audio cables.
Then you would have to adjust your audio settings to select the virtual audio cable as the preferred sound output option.
This would disable the sound from your speakers. After using the virtual audio cable, you would have to turn on your speakers again.
This would be troublesome for many.
Also, most of these apps can only transcribe audio files and not video files.
So, if you want to transcribe a video file, you would have to extract the audio from it. You would need a separate program for this.
If you’re using a video editor to extract audio, you would have to export the audio file again.
The windows app would also require you to set everything up from scratch when you’re on another computer.
To save time and hassle, you can use a cloud-based video and audio-to-text converter which works fast and accurately.
One such tool is Dictelo.
With Dictelo you can easily transcribe a YouTube video, online meetings, audio recordings of interviews and presentations or lectures. This tool would be a boon to researchers, students, and journalists.
If you’re a podcaster, you can easily repurpose your podcasts into blog posts or ebooks with Dictelo.
Dictelo – Recommended
Using Dictelo will save you hours of work that will be required if you listen to audio and write down what you hear.
Dictelo is part of the Blaster suite of products.
After logging in, you need only three clicks of the mouse to automatically transcribe your audio to text.
What’s more, you can also generate subtitles out of your audio files. You can use these subtitles when uploading your videos to YouTube.
Most of the cloud-based audio-to-text converters would charge you every time you use them.
Dictelo charges you a one-time fee. So, if you often transcribe audio to text, it would be more economical to use an app that allows you lifetime usage with a one-time fee.
What’s more, you can transcribe audio from a list of 30 major languages in the world.
Watch the video below to see how you can convert audio to text online quickly and accurately.
To try out this fuss-free video and audio-to-text converter, visit the Dictelo page.
