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We are excited to launch our latest feature: Express Delivery. Express Delivery orders will deliver the transcript within 12 hours of the order being placed. Therefore if you place the order by 8 PM in the evening, you’ll have the transcript before you start you work next day. As usual the transcript is guaranteed to be 98 or more accurate.

The charge for Express Delivery is $3.00 per minute of audio which equates to $180 for a 1 hour file. There is also a cap on how many hours of audio can be Express Delivered per day: 2 hours. If you try to place orders of more than 2 hours, you’ll be an error for the same.

Click on the options button and tick the checkbox labelled Express Delivery to enable it.

We are excited to introduce the 30 day flexible delivery option. With this option the file will be delivered anytime within the next 30 days, with delivery guaranteed on the 30th day, for a discount of 40%. The effective rate with this option therefore is $0.90 per minute of the audio. That works out to $54 for an hour of audio.

This option will save you even more on your transcription costs if a 1 month turnaround is acceptable. As usual, it comes with our accuracy guarantee of 98%, with free re-reviews if the quality not up to the standard.

Starting today, you can also order a subtitle file along with the transcript. The subtitle file will be formatted as SBV file which is the format used by YouTube. The additional charge for subtitling is $1.00 per minute of audio. This option can be enabled from the payment page. If you plan to always order subtitles, then you can configure this option to be enabled by default from the settings page.

The subtitle file can be used directly as the YouTube caption file. It can also be converted easily to other formats such as SRT and used with other video players such VLC or the WebVTT format which is the format used by HTML5 complaint browsers. There are various online converters available. You can also contact us if you require any help with the conversion.

Now you can save even more on your transcription costs with our discount coupons. Starting today, you can apply coupon codes and get a discount for your transcript orders. Press the coupon button on the invoices page, enter the coupon code and press Apply button to get the discount.

The coupon codes will be published regularly in our mailing list. Contact support if you want to be on that list.

For our regular users, we are are starting a new discount policy effective today. If you order more than 10 hours in a month (separately or together), then we’ll send you a discount coupon which you can use for your next set of orders. The coupons will be valid for 30 days and will be automatically mailed to your account email address.

Please do let us know if you have any questions. Feedback and comments are most welcome.

QuickPay is our one-click payment system where you can choose to save your credit card details and use that for future payments. The credit card credentials are stored securely in the vault provided by our payment gateway provider; Braintree Payments. The valut is PCI Level 1 compliant and your credentials are safe there.

The QuickPay payment option is presented in the invoice page while ordering the transcript. Each saved card is listed and you can choose one of the cards to make the payment from. The QuickPay cards can also be added or removed from the Settings page.

We have tried to keep the transcript ordering process as simple as possible. The QuickPay option makes it even simpler for you to get a high quality transcript of your audio file. Please upload a file and try it out today.

We have now enabled file trimming on Scribie.com. If you have a audio file and need only parts of it transcribed then you can trim the audio file and remove the unwanted parts before placing the order, thus saving your costs.

The Trim File option is available from both, the Uploaded Files and Invoice pages (named as Time Range, last option). It brings up a dialog which prompts you to enter the start and end time stamp. The audio file is trimmed to contain only the portion between start and end. A new file is created and placed in your files page. The original file is kept intact and can be use to create further trimmed files. The trimmed file can then be ordered.

Try it out today. As usual, feedback/comments are most welcome.

Dropbox is a popular cloud storage service and it’s not surprising therefore that many customers have asked for the ability to import files directly from Dropbox to their Scribie.com account for transcription. We have now added Dropbox Importer to our uploader. Visit the following link to try it out.

https://scribie.com/files/upload#dropbox

The first step is to connect to your Dropbox account and authorize Scribie Uploader to access your files. After authorization, the uploader will search for supported audio/video files and present a list of the files found. You can then select the files which and upload them to your Scribie.com account. Once uploaded, you can place the transcript order. The authorization step has to be performed only once and the Dropbox account will stay connected till you logout from your Scribie.com account or manually disconnect it.

Along with this update, we have also revamped our file uploader. We have added support for Drag and Drop which is supported in HTML5 browsers. Visit the following link with the latest version of Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome to try it out.

https://scribie.com/files/upload#files

For the best performance we recommend latest version of Google Chrome.

We are planning to add importers for Google Drive and Box.net soon. If you want your favorite online storage service then please leave us a comment. We’ll work on adding support for that.

The Integrated Editor is a text editor which is tightly coupled with the audio file of a transcript for easy cross-referencing. We use this tool internally for Proofreading and QC. Today we are releasing this tool for our customers as well. The editor can be launched from the from the Check & Download button on the Recordings page. The editor looks like the following once it loads.

The Integrated Editor has some important features which makes it easy to check the transcript against the audio. It can position the cursor on the transcript as you skip forwards and backwards through the audio. The positioning is accurate to +/- 50 characters. Conversely, it can play the audio from a particular cursor position of the transcript. The audio position is accurate to +/- 10 seconds. This tight coupling makes it a breeze to jump through the audio and the transcript without having to manually control the audio player.

The editor also supports keyboard shortcuts to faster editing. The keyboard shortcuts can be customized and you can assign a key combination to a particular action. There are more than 80 actions available to control various functions of both the audio player and text editor. Keyboard shortcuts is useful for heavy editing. Please note that some key combinations may or may not work depending upon your browser and Operating System (eg. Ctrl+N cannot be mapped on Windows since it’s pre-configured to open a new browser window). The keyboard shortcuts may not work if there are other programs configured to use those key combinations and are running (eg. ExpressScribe). Close any such programs or use a different key combination.

Another useful feature is variable rate playback. It’s currently supported only for Google Chrome and let’s you speed up or slow down the audio during playback. Playing the audio at faster rate cuts down the time required to go through the entire file. You can maybe finish a 1 hour file in 30 minutes if you play it at 150% speed.

Terms Analysis is another useful feature which highlights terms which may be out-of-context in the transcript. The highlighted terms can then be cross-checked with the audio.

Here’s some tips on how to use this editor effectively.

• Click on the Next Blank button to cycle through the blanks. As the audio of the blank is played, the cursor will be placed on it and  and it will be highlighted. You can then edit the blank and/or remove it. You go through all the blanks in the transcript quickly and fill them up.
• Click anywhere on the waveform to play that part of the audio. The cursor will be positioned +/- 50 characters of the audio timestamp. Use this feature to randomly check segments of the transcript.
• Press Shift+F10 to play the audio corresponding to the current cursor position. The audio position will be accurate to +/- 10 seconds.
• Enable time-coding if you have it disabled. It improves the accuracy of the cursor/audio positioning during jumps. Note that if you have it disabled and enable it after making some edits, then those edits will be discarded. Therefore, enable it a the start and disable it again once you’re done checking.
• Memorize the keyboard shortcuts for most frequently used actions. Play, pause and skip backwards are the most frequently used actions. The default shortcuts for those are F10, F11 and F7.
• Remember to rate the transcript before downloading. Your feedback is important to us and helps us improve our service.

The Integrated Editor will vastly simplify the transcript checking process for you. You can quickly go through the transcript and verify it’s correctness before using it for your end purpose. Please contact support if you face any issues. We will be glad to help you out. Comments and feedback also are most welcome.

Our transcription rates have been increased to $1.50 per minute of audio with effect from 1st of June 2012. That corresponds to $90 for a 1 hour file.

The Flexible Delivery discount has been increased to 25%. Flexible Delivery orders are delivered anytime within a week instead of the normal 1 day delivery schedule.  It works out to $67.50 for an 1 hour of file. For a 1 hour file, the increase is therefore only around $10 from our previous rate, with this option enabled. This option can be enabled from the options button on the payment page.

The bulk order discount has also been increased to 25%. It is applicable to orders where 10 or more hours of audio is ordered at a time and applied automatically. The cost for that works out to $675.

The affiliate commission rate has also been increased to 25%. So if you know someone who might need a transcription service then please refer them to us with your affiliate code. We’ll pay 25% of the order value to you when their transcripts are delivered.

We would like to thank you for choosing Scribie.com. We strive to provide you the best possible service and the deliver the highest quality transcripts. This change will have us maintain that.

We have added new transcript order options in the Invoices page. The Option button just below the table brings it up. A screenshot is below.

 

A description of each of the option follows:

Flexible Delivery:

The Flexible Delivery files are delivered anytime with a week instead of the normal 1 day. If within the week we are able to fit in the file in our delivery schedule, we will deliver it. Otherwise you are guaranteed delivery on the seventh day. We offer a 25% discount for these orders.

This option has to be specified before the order is placed. It cannot be enabled/disabled afterwards.

Additional Proofreading:

Proofreading is part of our workflow where we correct all inconsistencies in the combined transcript. It drastically improves the quality of the transcript. For difficult files (eg. files with poor audio quality, background noise, speakers with unclear accents, non-native speakers, etc.) you can request an additional proofreading. We pay special attention to these files and ensure that you get an accurate transcript regardless of the difficulty level of these files. We charge an additional $0.50 per minute of the audio for additional proofreading.

This option has to be specified before the order is placed. It cannot be enabled/disabled afterwards.

Strict Verbatim:

Set this option if you want us to include all ah’s, uhm’s, umm’s as spoken in the audio file. By default our transcripts are non-strict verbatim transcripts which means that these filler words are not transcribed unless necessary (ie. for a affirmative or negatory answer to a question). However these filler terms can indicate hesitation or confusion on the interviewee’s part and including them may prove useful. If this option is enabled then all the filler terms will be included in the transcript.

This option has to be specified before the order is placed. It cannot be enabled/disabled afterwards. No additional charges apply for this option.

Time-coding:

By default we time-code the transcripts. The time-code is the time stamp of the audio when the particular paragraph started. It is useful when you want to cross check the transcript agains the audio file. Time-codes are formatted as H:MM:SS.

This option can be enabled/disabled anytime from the Invoice Details page. No additional charges apply for this option.

Speaker Tracking:

Before each paragraph we prepend the speaker name or initial which identifies the person who was speaking at that time in the audio file. If speaker names are provided or spoken in the audio, then they are used. If not we use the generic format of Speaker 1, Speaker 2 and so on.

This option has two sub-options relating to formatting of the names. If speaker initials is chosen then the first occurrence will be the full name of the speaker and rest will be initials. Eg. if the name is Rajiv Poddar then the first time Rajiv speaks the speaker tracking will contain Rajiv Poddar and all subsequent one’s will be RP. This is illustrated in the sample transcript. If full names option is specified then the full name will be used throughout.

The Speaker Names link allows you to specify each speaker’s first and last name.

This option can be enabled/disabled anytime from the Invoice Details page. No additional charges apply for this option.

The transcripts are prepared as a text file and before the delivery we convert the file to MS Word, OpenOffice Text and Adobe PDF format. We use a template for this conversion. There are four different templates you can specify; Scribie default template with single/double line spacing and blank template with single/double line spacing. The Scribie default template has a title page, a header, footer and the last page contains some stats. Pleas check the sample transcript for an example. Blank template  only contains the transcript. Double and single line spacing adjusts the spacing in between the lines in the delivered file. If you want your own template to be used instead then please contact support and they will help you out with it.

This option can be enabled/disabled anytime from the Invoice Details page. No additional charges apply for this option.

Spelling Style:

The spelling style of the transcript can also be specified. Currently we support American, British, Australian and Canadian styles of spelling. Please contact us for more options.

This option can be enabled/disabled anytime from the Invoice Details page. No additional charges apply for this option.