Scribie.com

This is a series of posts on our human-powered audio transcription system. The following are links to the previous parts: Overview, Workflow, Certification, Transcription & Reviews, Proofreading.

Delivery is the final step of our workflow. Here we perform quality checks on the final transcript that was prepared in the previous step to determine if the transcript is deliverable. When we are satisfied with it we convert the file into MS Word, Adobe PDF, OpenOffiice.org Text file using a template file. Then a notification is sent out to the customer that the transcripts are available for download.

We do two types of quality checks; random sampling and keyword analysis. The keyword analysis helps us spot the least relevant terms in the transcript. The audio around those terms are checked again to ensure that they’re correct. We have developed our own tools which help us do these checks quickly. Typically we don’t have to spend more than the duration of the audio file to complete these checks and deliver the file.

If the quality checks fail — which does happen once in a while — the transcript is reviewed once more. We also do a root cause analysis after that to prevent these cases from happening again. That helps us improve our system. Mostly it happens because of poor audio, or difficult accent and/or diction of the speaker.

This post completes this series about our Transcription System. We hope we have given you valuable insight into how we work. We believe we have superior transcription process which performs better and is more scalable than other systems out there. But don’t take our word for it, try out our transcription service today and see for yourself.

This is a series of posts on our human-powered audio transcription system. The following are links to the previous parts: Overview, Workflow, Certification, Transcription & Reviews.

In our workflow, we first break the audio file into smaller parts and each part is then transcribed and reviewed by different people. Due to this methodology the transcript may contain inconsistencies. Proofreading is the step where these inconsistencies are corrected. Our proofreaders are the best of the best amongst our certified transcribers. We employ them as contractors and train them. The proofreader goes through all the parts of a file, does all the corrections necessary and prepares the final transcript for delivery.

We have specialist proofreaders for different accents and subject matter. Tough accents such as Indian, African, etc. and mixed accent files are handled by them. Subject matter experts take care of Medical, Legal, Academic and technology (eg, Web Development, Telecom etc.) files. Additionally our proofreaders are trained to research specific terms and acronyms. We also do additional proofreading if requested. Additional proofreading option can be specified while ordering and is recommended for difficult files.

Our delivery capacity is limited by number of hours we can proofread in a day. That is the reason behind our delivery limit of two hours per user per day. We stagger the deliveries over several days when more than two hours is ordered by one customer in a day. It is a safeguard to prevent us being overwhelmed by a single large order. However we do have the ability to ramp up very quickly and recruit new proofreaders whenever there is a need. We just have to be told about it in advance.

Proofreading is what sets us apart from other transcription services. It is designed to guarantee high transcript quality. If you are looking to get a highly accurate transcripts at a reasonable cost then our transcription service is the right choice for you.

This is a series of posts on our human-powered audio transcription system. The following are links to the previous parts: Overview, Workflow, Certification.

The Transcription & Review subsystem is where the bulk of the work gets done. In transcription the file is played back and typed into something called a raw transcript. This is the first pass transcripts where the incomprehensible parts are marked with blanks. In review this raw transcript is checked against the audio mistakes. Timestamps and speaker tracking is also added during review. The output of both these steps produces a fairly accurate textual representation of the audio file.

In our workflow, we first break up the files into smaller parts. Our certified transcribers — the one’s who have successfully cleared the Transcription Test – can then login to their account and select these part files. Another innovation of our system is that we don’t actually assign files to them. Instead they are asked to choose from the files available. They can preview the file and check the quality before choosing. This creates a competition which in turn ensures that files get done quickly.

For performance monitoring we use a five point grading system; A+/Excellent to D/Poor. The files are graded after the review. Another small innovation of our system is the Diff Preview which shows the changes made during the review. It helps the reviewer to assess the quality of the raw transcript and grade accordingly. Based on the grades a Transcriber can be promoted to a Reviewer. There is a disputes and arbitration system in place too to investigate unfair grading.

Another innovative aspect of our system is it ensures a file is worked on by multiple transcribers and reviewers. The average for a 1 hour file is 15-20. More eyes and more ears on the file does wonders for the transcript quality. During Proofreading all the inconsistencies caused by this methodology are corrected. We will talk about more about Proofreading in the next part fo the series.

Till then if you want a high quality transcript of your audio file which has been checked multiple times by different people, then check out our transcription service today.

The next part of the series is available here.

This is a series of posts on the Scribie.com transcription system. The previous parts are: Overview, Workflow.

Our transcription system is 100% human powered. That makes the certification subsystem the first important component. This subsystem handles the process of certifying new transcribers and inducting them. To become a certified transcriber one has to apply and take Transcription Test. We publish guidelines on how the transcript should be prepared and provide recommendation for tools. The candidates are first added to a waiting list and invited for the test at their turn.

The test itself is a 3-6 minutes audio file which which they have to complete within 2 hours. We evaluate the submission and check the quality of transcript. We also look at the adherence to the guidelines and formatting. If everything is okay, they are certified as a Scribie.com transcriptionist and paid for the work done. We are closing in on the 2000 certified transcribers mark right now.

The goal of the transcription test is to ascertain whether a candidate is fit for this type of work. We get a lot of applications, but around 50% of them drop off at the test stage. The ones who pass through understand what to do and how to do it. They are given access to the next component which is the Transcription Subsystem. They can log in to their Scribie.com account anytime and choose from the available files. They get paid when their submissions are reviewed.

Unfortunately we  have a high churn rate of transcribers and 50-80% of new transcribers stop working after the first few weeks. It’s just the nature of freelancing work; it’s either a stop-gap measure or a side-job. To compensate for that we are constantly hiring. The Certification Subsystem manages the waiting list and ensures that we have surplus capacity.

Around 10% of our transcribers go on to become regulars. In fact few of our transcribers have been working working with us since the early days and are still active. That in itself is a testimonial to our system’s effectiveness.

If you are interested in working for us then please check our Freelance Transcription Program. If you want to outsource your audio transcription work to our certified transcribers then upload your files now.

The next part of the series talks about the Transcription and Reviews subsystem.

This is a series on Scribie.com’s audio transcription system. The first part which provides an overview is here. 

Our workflow consists of five steps.

File Splitting -> Transcription -> Review -> Proofreading -> Delivery

We start by splitting the file into smaller parts. The file is split at the 6 minute boundary which produces one or more files of duration 6 minutes or shorter. This is the first little innovation of our transcription process. File splitting breaks down the work into smaller manageable chunks. It helps in many ways. The file can be worked on parallelly by number of transcribers. A huge amount of effort is not wasted if one part has to be re-done. Additionally, we can track the progress precisely.

Transcription is the typing part. On an average it takes around 15-20 minutes to transcribe a 6 minute file. For a lot of our transcribers–who are mostly home-based freelancers–this is not a huge investment of time. Therefore splitting increases the likely hood that the file will be transcribed quickly. In fact on an average it takes around 1 to 1.5 hours to complete the transcription part of a one hour file!

The accuracy of the transcript is very low at this stage; typically around 50 to 80%. Therefore we do a review. The transcript is checked against the audio and all mistakes are corrected. Time-coding and speaker tracking is also added at this stage. Review usually takes 5 to 8 minutes of effort. But it takes longer for all the parts to get reviewed because we have fewer reviewers than transcribers. This is by design since we promote only our best transcribers to reviewers. The review drastically improves the accuracy.

Once all parts are transcribed and reviewed, we can combine them together and prepare the final transcript. However one more round of review is required here. That’s because, since different parts are worked on by different people, there are bound to be inconsistencies. Proofreading is done by a one person who goes through all the parts together and corrects them. The proofreader is an employee of CGBiz LLC (our company). They are the best of the best we have. We train them and pay them a monthly salary rather than an hourly rate.

The transcript is almost done now. However things might not be perfect even now. The proofreader can make mistakes, some more research may be required for certain terms, etc. So before the delivery we do some random checks. We try to gauge whether the quality is indeed at the level we want it to be. We also use keyword analysis (tf-idf to be precise) to identify out-of-context terms and inconsistencies. We review it again if we are not happy with it. Over time we have found that a small percentage of files require re-review; around 2%. Those are generally the most difficult of files.

Once we are satisfied that the transcript is perfect, as best as it can be, we deliver the file. The file is converted into MS Word, Adobe PDF, OpenOffice Text and plain text formats and we notify the customer that the transcript is available for download.

All of the above happens in 1 day and is managed by our transcription system. We charge only $0.99 per minute of the audio for it. So if you want to get a high quality transcript quickly, please do try out our transcription service today.

The next part of the series talks about the Certification Subsystem.

Last month we completed four years of our company. We launched CallGraph Skype Recorder in April of 2008 with intention of offering services around it. The transcription service was one of those and it quickly became the most popular. The past four years we have invested all our time and effort in developing a human-powered transcription system with a single goal in mind: deliver the best quality transcript with the lowest amount of effort. In this series of posts we are going to write about this system in-depth.

So why build another human-powered transcription system? Why not just use a Automatic Speech Recognition system. Speech recognition has been in the limelight recently most notably because of Siri which uses Nuance’s Technology. In fact in Google Glass it’s a central component. Even Evernote recently added the support for it. However all of these systems employ keyword recognition; eg. commands that are spoken aloud. Our requirement was conversational speech recognition. The technology for that is still very immature. In fact we tried out CMU Shpinx and results were so poor that we ruled it out.

The big issue with human-powered systems is that it produces inconsistent results. Transcription is very labor intensive. And just like any labor intensive workflow, if you do not have processes in place, you will not be able to control the quality. The typical transcription process involves one person doing the typing work and maybe, another person proofreading it. On an average it  takes around four hours to type one hour of audio and around the same amount to edit it. This increases the cost of transcription. And even after that the transcript is bound to have mistakes, thereby affecting its quality.

So that was the starting point for us. Our system manages the transcription process end-to-end. It’s like a machine where you input the audio file and it outputs a high quality transcript in one day. This system is powered by our certified transcriptionists who do all the work. We have a well defined workflow and a robust process in place. We use some Machine Learning and Information Retrieval tools as well, but for the most part, it is all done by hand.

With this system we have completed more than 3000 hours of audio transcription till date and managed to survive four years in a highly competitive market. The best part is that we a high return rate of customers. For a startup, it might not be a stellar achievement like Instagram’s, but we believe that we have built something substantial; a scalable and reliable transcription service. The next post will cover the first part of our system, the transcriber certification process. Till then, if you are in need of a transcription service then you should try out our transcription service today. You will not be disappointed.

The next part of the series can be found here.

We recently launched profiles for our certified transcribers. Here’s a screenshot of my profile.

It contains some background information, relevant professional experience and performance and work history on Scribie.com. It gives you an idea of who the transcriber is, how much work he or she has done and how has the work been. The profile is very basic right now but we will be adding more functionality to it soon.

So how is this useful? Well for starters you can check who worked on your files and how much time they spent working on them.

https://scribie.com/profiles/files

These stats are broken down on a per file basis as well. The stats section has the link.

https://scribie.com/transcripts

Additionally, if you’re happy with the result then you can choose to pay a bonus to our transcribers. These transcripts are prepared painstakingly and a bit of appreciation can go a long way! You can pay the bonus to the one’s who have worked on your files or an individual transcriber from their profile page. If you pay to the group then it’s divided up equally amongst all of them. We also do not keep anything for ourselves, except for a 5% charge to cover the fees. All of the money goes directly to the transcribers.

You can also browse all the transcriber profiles from here, the one’s which are public. We break it down in various lists: top 25 transcribers, reviewers, most active, by country etc. Have a look.

http://scribie.com/profiles/browse

Having your podcasts transcribed and publishing the text content on your website may sound unintuitive at first, but it has several advantages and is worth considering.

Reading vs Listening

Reading is a much faster process than listening. Many of your visitors would want to quickly scan through the transcript instead of listening to it. Some of these visitors might even end up as subscribers for your podcast. This goes for your regular listeners too. Sometimes they just might just want to scan the podcast quickly before deciding to listen to it.

Social Media Sharing

Having the complete text of the podcast online makes it easier for people to share it via Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and the myriad of social media sites which are there nowadays. Your listeners can quote a part of the text or highlight a particular section which they want to emphasize and share it with their own circle. Higher sharing rates means more traffic for your website and associated benefits.

Indexing & Search

The biggest advantage is that the search engines can now easily index your content since the text of the podcast is available. Better indexing will lead to more search traffic and more visitors to your site. You will also benefit from the long tail search traffic, those obscure terms for which your site appears on the search result. Your podcast might be linked by others which in turn will mean a higher Page Rank and even more search traffic.

Contextual Advertisements

If you are using Google AdSense then the transcripts will lead to better contextual advertisements being displayed on your site and higher earnings from AdSense for you. This happens because the Google AdSense crawler first mines the text content on your website and matches it to the ad’s. Since the text content will now be closely related to your niche or topic, your visitors will get to see more relevant advertisements and a higher click-through-rate for you.

E-book Packaging

Selling e-books based on the content of your podcasts is a direct way of monetizing your podcast. Once you have the transcripts it becomes an order of magnitude easier to create an e-book. There are various sites which help you sell digital information content,  ClickBank being one of the popular one’s. You can also sell these e-books to your listeners and visitors. An e-book is also a perfect freebie to give away if you want visitors to sign up for your newsletter.

There are several ways you can get your podcasts transcribed. If you are good typist you try transcribing yourself or outsource it via Scribie.com for $0.99 per minute of audio. It is ultimately an investment which will pay off very handsomely in the long run.

CallGraph Skype Recorder records by default in stereo mode which means that your voice and other participant(s) voice are on different tracks in the file. While playing back you will hear your voice on one side of the speaker while your caller/callee’s voice on the other side. To force CallGraph to record in a single track change the channels to mono from Configuration -> Recording tab. This change will affect all subsequent calls recorded with CallGraph. For older one’s, you can convert them to mono using an audio editor (eg. Audacity).

The stereo mode is useful if you’re recording podcasts since you can edit each track separately. Having voices on separate track makes it easier by an order of magnitude. It also helps with the transcription of audio file and we recommend that you record in stereo mode if you plan to get it transcribed.

Sometimes due to misconfiguration of the PC’s playback settings, only one track is audible during playback and it appears that CallGraph is recording only one side of the call, even though Skype connection has been authorized. A quick fix is to set the recording mode to mono.

We now offer two types of transcript: Draft and Proofread. If you plan to do a comprehensive review of the transcript then you can choose the Draft Transcript Type while ordering. The Draft Transcript is not time coded and the speakers are not tracked in it. It contains just the text of the audio file with each speaker’s diction paragraphed neatly.The rate for the Draft Transcript is $0.60 per minute. Therefore for a 1 hour file it will cost $36.

The Proofread Transcript on the other hand requires minimal or no editing on your behalf. This type of transcript is time coded and speakers are tracked with initials. The blanks are marked with a time-stamp to make it easy to locate it in the audio file and correct it. We also do a complete review. This includes researching any terms that might occur in the audio and finding out the correct usage, correcting mistakes,  filling in blanks, etc. We also ensure that the quality is as high as possible. The rate for the Proofread Transcript is $0.75 per minute of recorded audio. Therefore for a 1 hour file it will cost $45.

This gives you a bit more flexibility while ordering the transcript. The most time consuming part while transcribing an audio is typing; thats the heavy lifting part. In the Draft Transcript we do the heavy lifting for you and you can then review it and modify it as per your need.

We now offer only Proofread transcripts at $0.99 per minute of audio.