DIGITAL TRANSCRIPTION SERVICES

Digital transcription has become one of our specialist services. Digital audio recording is still a relatively new technology but one which has revolutionised the transcription industry. We are pleased to offer a diverse range of services including digital conference transcription, digital interview transcription, digital dictation as well as webcast and podcast transcription, lecture transcription, market research transcripts and digital focus group transcribing.

Digital recorders produce a far superior quality of recording which reduces transcription costs significantly and results in fewer inaudible sections. Digital files have many advantages over analogue - see our Comparison page for more details.

For business people who travel frequently, one of the main advantages of digital transcription is that, whatever your location in the world, you don't need to wait till you return to the office, or are near a post office, to send 'physical' media such as tapes to your transcriber. As long as you have access to a suitable PC and a fast Internet connection, your digital sound files can be uploaded from your recorder directly onto your PC and then sent easily and quickly to your transcriber. The extra time and postage costs are eliminated. The risk of losing precious original tapes also disappears - you're simply sending a copy of the digital recording, while the original stays on your machine. There's also none of the usual deterioration experienced when copying tapes, the digital copy you send is just as clear as the original.

Our digital transcription team are equipped to transcribe from most formats of digital recordings - some of the more common ones in regular use are dss, wav, mp3 and wma. Please see our table below or check with us for more details on a specific format.

As the quality tends to be excellent, we are pleased to offer a fixed per audio minute price below for all digital recordings, so that you know in advance what your overall costs will be. We invite you to browse our Guidelines and Equipment pages outlining facilitating and recording for a variety of situations. It's worth remembering that all the common sense things involved in making a clear recording apply just as much to digital as they do to analogue recordings. Just because it's digital, don't be fooled into thinking that it won't be affected by background noise, the lack of a microphone or equipment interference. Digital is not some magic cure-all but if handled properly, it can produce superb recordings.

 

Digital file recording formats currently supported
Digital audio files		Digital video files
Aac ADPCM Aif ALaw Asf Au CDA CELP Dct (encrypted dictation) DSP TrueSpeech DSS (Olympus, Lanier, Grundig) GSM 6.10	MP2 MP3 Philips Digital PCM Real Audio (ra and rm) Sanyo Digital SBC Sony (msv, dvf) uLaw VoiceIt (sri) Vox WAV WMA (Windows Media Audio)	Apple Quicktime MPEG Video Microsoft MOV movies Real Video WMV Please note: digital video files need to be converted so that they can be played in transcription software. We can do this, provided the conversion software is available for the format you've chosen. Check before filming that your format is convertible. We are happy to provide you with the digital audio recording as well.
If you don't see your digital sound format listed above, we'd be happy to listen to a test file to see if the format you're using is compatible with our transcription software, or to see if we can convert it to a useable format without loss of sound quality. A good guide is that any format playable in Windows Media Player, Apple Quicktime or Real Player is also playable in most digital transcription software.

Clients should also be aware of the sheer size of digital files - some formats take up a lot of memory. WAV produces an excellent quality of sound but does result in huge files. Other formats such as DSS, MP3 or WMA take up less memory. Other formats produce very small files but don't necessarily produce the same good quality sound - it's best to check first on a test recording that the quality is adequate for transcribing. We review the pros and cons of the various digital file types elsewhere in more detail.

ALL RECORDINGS are listened to a second time, Internet research is carried out to identify names or terminology, and all transcripts are proofread by the Director, Irene Boston. There is no extra charge for this service. Not all transcription companies do this, some don't even proofread so make sure you ask the right questions before choosing a service.

It's worth considering the method of transmitting digital recordings to the transcriber. Most ISPs limit the size of file allowed as an email attachment. There are several options open to clients to overcome this. Some clients prefer to set up a secure page on their company website and upload the files to that page, so the transcriber can download the sound file directly. Alternatively, we have a secure FTP account with www.sendthisfile.com which can be used to transmit large files via our Upload File page. We can also return completed transcripts using this method if they are sensitive and you consider that an email attachment is not secure enough. The third option is to save all your digital sound files to a CD or DVD and post them to us - this may be useful if you don't have time to 'babysit' the upload of your files, or if the transcription is not urgent, but it does introduce postal delays.

Our default transcript style is Intelligent Verbatim which is the most cost effective method of transcription. Please read our definitions of Complete Verbatim, Intelligent Verbatim and Edited Transcript to choose which format is most suitable for your needs. We use a standard layout for all transcripts but should you wish for something different, please let us know. We provide a transcript code on each document to signify areas which are inaudible or unclear.

We hope that this provides you with a thorough overview of our digital transcription services. Please email or contact us on 01485 543746 for a detailed quote and turnaround times based on our current schedule, or browse our Overview or FAQ pages, as well as our Testimonial page.