Capturing Every Word: A Comprehensive Guide to Zoom Transcription Tools

Best Zoom Transcription Software

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Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

Creating Zoom recording or Zoom transcription is an easy way to keep your conversations documented. Once the participants of a meeting are informed that everything has been recorded, and they don’t need to take notes of the discussions, they automatically start focusing on the speaker of the host.

Another advantage of having Zoom meeting transcription is that it can be referred to anytime you miss out on some parts during the implementation of the process the attendees of the conference had agreed upon.

Keeping the above in mind, following is a list of some of the best Zoom call transcription software that can be used to transcribe Zoom meeting with efficiency and least efforts. One of the following sections also discusses a few tips and tricks for the best transcription.

Best Transcription Software to Transcribe Zoom Meetings

1. Automatic Audio Transcription in Zoom

Zoom is capable of recording your meetings and conferences, and storing them onto its Cloud server from where they can be obtained and manipulated as needed. Zoom also offers free transcription service for all the recordings that saved on the Cloud. However, there are a few pre-requisites that must be met before you can use Zoom to transcribe your meetings.

Prerequisites of using the Automatic Audio Transcription in Zoom

• You must have an Education, Business, or Enterprise subscription of Zoom
• You must have Cloud recording enabled for your account
• You must be the owner of the account or have Admin privileges

How to transcribe the Zoom audio automatically

Once everything is in place, you can follow the steps given below to enable transcription, and transcribe Zoom meetings :

Step 1: Enable Cloud Recording

Use your favorite browser to log in to Zoom’s web portal, go to Settings from under the PERSONAL section on the left, go to Recording from the right section, go to Cloud recording , and turn on the Cloud recording toggle button to enable the feature.

Step 2: Enable Audio Transcription

On the Cloud recording section itself, check the Audio transcript box from the bottom, and click Save to enable Zoom meeting transcription .

Step 3: Generate Zoom Transcription

Start a Zoom meeting normally, click the small arrow next to the Record button on the panel at the bottom, and click Record to the Cloud . Since audio transcription has been enabled in the previous step, Zoom automatically transcripts all the recordings stored on the Cloud after the meeting ends.

Post generation, you are notified about it along with a link to download the transcribed file to your PC.

• Pros
• Free to use
• Transcribes automatically after Zoom meetings end
• Cons
• Requires Education, Business, or Enterprise subscription to enable Cloud recording and auto transcription features

2. Rev

An online Zoom meeting transcription service, Rev requires you to upload your Zoom recordings to their server, and they do the rest. Rev has a team of professional transcribers who listen to your recordings and transcribe the audio to text . Since the entire transcription process is done by real humans and not the bots or software, the accuracy percentage is almost 100%.

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Furthermore, the web interface shows the expected turnaround time and the cost of transcription on a per-minute basis. You can even include some add-ons like timestamps, verbatim, etc. to make the transcription more detailed and informative. However, the more add-ons you include, the higher the price goes.

3. Happy Scribe

With decent star-rating, Happy Scribe is another online transcription tool that enables you to transcribe Zoom meeting within a couple of minutes. At the time of this writing, the web app charges €12.00 for every 60-minute audio that it transcribes.

In order to avail the services, you are required to recharge your membership with the credits that are automatically deducted from your Happy Scribe account every time you transcribe Zoom audio. The Auto-Recharge feature that the vendor offers automatically recharges your account with your pre-defined amount as soon as it detects that your credit balance is below 30-minutes of transcription.

To transcribe, all you need to do is, upload the audio (*.MP4) file to Happy Scribe, pick the language of the source audio, and click “Transcribe” to begin the process. Once completed, you can easily download the transcribed file to your PC.

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4. 3PlayMedia

This online Zoom meeting transcription tool comes with two plans where the first one charges on a per-transcription basis while the second is a prepaid subscription plan for enterprises that have regular meetings to transcribe.

3PlayMedia also allows you to add close or open captions to the recorded video conferences that can be enabled/disabled or remain persistent throughout the videos respectively.

To transcribe meetings, you must sign in to your 3PlayMedia account, go to “Upload Media” to upload the file(s) you want to transcribe. Pick additional services (optional), choose your captioning type (optional), select your preferred turnaround time (choosing fast delivery costs more), agree to the terms of service, and click “Place Order”.

5. Temi

Temi is another online speech-to-text conversion tool that can transcribe Zoom meetings in merely a couple of minutes. The web tool is capable of encrypting your files for secure transmission, thus keeping your information secured.

When you use Temi for Zoom meeting transcription , you also get access to some useful tools like timestamps, transcription editor, etc. for free. The good thing about Temi is that it offers one free trial transcription of an audio file of up to 45 minutes. Post this, you can pay for the service on a pre-purchase basis as Temi doesn’t ask for any long-term subscription or compels you to maintain a minimum credit balance.

Comparison Table

Following is a comparison table to give you a fair idea about the differences between the Zoom transcription apps discussed above:

Tips for Transcribe Zoom Meeting Recordings

Although the programs discussed above are efficient in their own way, they can generate accurate transcription only if the source files are healthy. Following are a few tips you must keep in mind while recording a Zoom meeting for transcription:

Tip 1: Get a Clear Audio Recording

Make sure that you follow the best practices about the input and output device placements and positioning suggested by Zoom professionals. While using a smartphone, ensure that it has enough battery to last at least for a couple of hours, and doesn’t exhaust during the meeting. For laptops, it is advisable to use an average quality headset with a microphone instead of onboard speakers and mic.

Tip 2: Meeting Transcription Software Security

While subscribing for any third-party transcription service, make sure to check their privacy policies and confirm if they are agreeable. Since you will be uploading quite sensitive information that may contain your trade secrets, only the service provider with good privacy policy and robust encryption algorithms should be allowed to handle your files.

Conclusion

Zoom transcriptions come in handy when you plan to discuss some crucial matters in a meeting, and want all the details to be documented with proper timestamps. In case it is a video conference that is to be recorded, you can choose a service provider that offers close and open captioning as well.

You may also like: How to Improve Video Quality in Zoom Meetings >>

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

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