How to Transcribe Audio Fast and for Free?

In today’s era, a lot of development of apps and tools has been made to ease down our work and crunchytricks.com can tell you a lot about it. Surely in 2024, transcribing audio to text is no longer as tedious a job as it once used to be.

The better part is that now we have alternative options so that we don’t even need to pay to get our work transcribed. Many apps and tools can do it for us for free and in a short time.

Without wasting much time, explaining the definition of transcription in the tech world, which is to convert one’s podcast/video content to plain text, is called transcription.

 It is Indispensable Due to Many Reasons:

• Transcripts improve discoverability because they are more conversational by nature. The transcription of a conversation has a natural flow. It is how people talk. And this is what Google wants. It makes your content searchable and recordable for long-term use.
• Transcripts increase accessibility to people who are hear-impaired or people in public places without headphones. Also, People whose first language is not English may have difficulty understanding the audio. Having a transcript helps them follow along more quickly. As we can transcribe the text in many international languages.
• Transcripts also create the chances of sharing the ability to reach a bigger audience, allowing to repurpose the content more quickly and efficiently.

Let’s get started with different ways to transcribe an audio file faster and for free. 

A) Google Docs

Using Google Docs is the most convenient method to transcribe the audio file. Docs, Google’s free, cloud-based response to Microsoft Word, has a dictation software tool called Voice Typing. It will get synced with your Google account and can be shared easily. It is relatively self-explanatory: When you speak, the device listens to you and transcribes what you say into a Google Doc.

If one is using a Mac system, the procedure is different, and here it goes like, as Mac systems don’t let you record your computer audio because of piracy or something, so

1. You will download the third-party software called Soundflower.
2. Then unzip it and install it on your computer,
3. Then go to sound settings and command it to use output audio as input by selecting Soundflower 2ch on both the input and output tabs.
4. Afterward, open any audio file click on the Tools tab in the Google Docs file, and click on the microphone now.
5. You will see your audio transcribing on the Google Docs file very smoothly.

In the Windows system, the process goes like this,

1. Go to sound settings and select the recording device tab,
2. Put stereo mix as default.
3. Here also, open any audio file click on the Tools tab in the Google Docs file, and click on the microphone now.
4. You will see your audio transcribing on the Google Docs file very smoothly.

This method called automatic transcription is much better as it avoids 95% of the background noises. Otherwise, we have one more way of self-transcription in which we can speak out loud after clicking on the microphone in the Google Docs document. But it is not very accurate, or you have to take care and sit in a quiet place so there should be no background noises while recording.

You can use this method in various cases, like while creating podcasts, content on your website, YouTube channel, or your educational portal.

B) Various Free Apps and Tools

You can download many apps and tools available on Play Store for free to transcribe your audio, need to create an account on it, and upload your audio mp3 file and see the magic. A list of transcribing apps and tools are:

• Otter voice meeting notes
• Speech typing
• Happyscribe
• Speech notes
• Transcribe
• oTranscribe
• Inscribed
• FTW transcriber
• Express Scribe

You can use this method in many cases, like, while interviewing some celebrity, during interrogating suspects, during note-taking in classrooms, during lectures by some essential personalities, during note-taking in corporate meetings and client dealing.

C) Subtitle Edit Utility App

This is one of the apps which can turn your podcasts and YouTube videos into blog posts. You don’t need fancy software now.

1. When you upload your video to YouTube
2. Wait for YouTube’s automatic subtitles
3. Download the SRT file from it
4. Upload your SRT file in this Subtitle Edit utility
5. Save as text (merge all lines)
6. Open the text file, and copy the blob of text
7. Paste the text into Grammarly and format it.

Conclusion

Thus, it is essential to add transcripts to your content in every field of work. It boosts the confidence of the creator to look forward to growing the audience and increasing engagement at your website.

Also, we learned how to create transcripts easily in a short time and for free. All you need is to edit it with Grammarly or Google Docs to look like a creative fancy blog/content, and you are all set to boom.