Despite sounding like a no-brainer process, transcription is a deep, nuanced field requiring considerable expertise. Businesses and agencies of all sizes can benefit from audio transcription, like better organization, SEO improvements, better accessibility, and the ability to repurpose content. However, most transcription service companies are different, and you need to find the best provider to get the best services.
In This Article You’ll Know How:
- Audio transcription supports industries from medical and legal to business, academic, and media by improving documentation, accessibility, and organization.
- Transcription is more complex than “audio-to-text,” with challenges like poor audio, overlapping speech, and industry-specific formatting requiring professional expertise.
- Professional human transcription—like Ditto’s services—delivers higher accuracy, security, and cost savings compared to in-house teams or AI tools.
What Is Audio Transcription?
Audio transcription is the process of converting audio or video recordings into text. Transcription is widely used in several industries, including:
| Industry Type | Description |
| Medical Transcription | Involves transcribing patient records, medical history, consultation notes, etc. Crucial for healthcare documentation. |
| Legal Transcription | Includes transcribing legal proceedings, depositions, court hearings, and legal briefs. Essential for law firms and courts. |
| Business Transcription | Covers corporate meetings, conferences, interviews, and financial reports. Useful for businesses and corporate entities. |
| Academic Transcription | Involves transcribing lectures, seminars, research interviews, and academic papers. Useful in educational institutions and for researchers. |
| Media Transcription | Relates to transcribing films, television shows, documentaries, and other media content. Important for subtitling, captions, and media production companies. |
| Financial Transcription | Involves transcribing financial reports, earnings calls, and business meetings. Critical for finance professionals, analysts, and stakeholders. |
| Law Enforcement Transcription | Encompasses transcribing police interviews, interviews, body cam footage, forensic analysis, etc. Essential for law enforcement agencies and legal proceedings. |
Transcripts can be performed verbatim, which means that all words in a recording are captured, including the fillers such as “ahs” and “uhms” that preserve the intended meaning of speakers.
That’s It? Is Transcription Just Audio To Text?
While the premise is deceptively simple (essentially boiled down to just typing out what you’re hearing), the process of converting audio to text is nuanced and involves many challenges.
They include:
- Audio and Video Quality Issues: Audio and video recordings today have improved quality, primarily due to better recording equipment. However, poor recording quality, background noise, and low speaker volume are still possible and can significantly hinder accurate transcription.
- Accents and Dialects: Different accents and dialects may make it difficult for transcribers to understand and transcribe spoken words accurately.
- Overlapping Conversation: Humans tend to be messy conversationalists, with speakers often overlapping. This is especially evident in free-flowing conversations such as podcasts or focus groups.
- Complex Terminology: Understanding and accurately transcribing specialized terminology in different fields can be difficult and not something you can overcome with Google searches every thirty seconds.
- Formatting Requirements: Different industries often have specific formatting guidelines that must be followed. Some require verbatim transcription, while others need the transcript cleaned up. A transcriptionist unfamiliar with the process can make errors that take time to fix.
- Confidentiality and Data Security: The more people you give access to your file, the more potential security leaks there are. Anyone handling audio transcription must employ stringent security measures to protect private information.
- Technology Dependence: The transcription industry is ever-evolving, and anyone unable to keep up with technological changes might get left behind.
- Time Constraints: Businesses that use transcription often require transcripts as soon as possible. Meeting tight deadlines can be stressful and demanding.
- Physical Strain: Transcribing video and audio content may seem like a walk in the park. However, sitting down and typing for long hours has been seen to cause fatigue and many physical conditions, like increased pressure on spinal discs and carpal tunnel syndrome.
Why Are Transcripts Important?
“Why would anyone bother transcribing audio if it has that many challenges?” some might be thinking. A fair question—and one that’s easily answered. That’s because audio transcription offers a significant number of benefits, including:
Improved Documentation And Archiving
Businesses from every industry now take advantage of how easy audio and video recordings are. They can create and store complete and accurate records of important events which can be used for reference.
However, audio and video files can take up a lot of disk space. A typical 1-hour video file shot in 1080p is about 1.2 to 1.4 gigabytes—that’s a lot of space. Before you know it, your 500GB solid-state drive is filled with videos, and now you have to choose which ones to delete.
Transcription neatly addresses that issue. Unlike audio or video content, transcripts require less space on a computer drive, making them an ideal form of record-keeping. In contrast, a transcript of the same hour-long recording may only take up a fraction of a megabyte, making it far easier to store and manage. They can be stored on any digital device without too much fuss. And even if you did need to delete a video, you can rest assured that a complete transcript is saved somewhere.
Accessibility
Transcriptions provide accessibility to individuals with hearing impairment or those who prefer reading instead of watching. For businesses, this could increase your user or customer base, allow you to be more inclusive, and meet certain regulatory guidelines like the ADA.
Likewise, medical, law enforcement, and legal organizations using transcripts allow for improved inclusivity and meeting regulations.
SEO Improvement
Video content has proven to be one of the most effective ways to create customer engagement. However, unlike long-form content like blogs and articles, videos cannot be crawled by search engines.
Imagine talking about an interesting topic throughout your video, naturally using high-quality keywords—and Google settles for just reading your title and video description.
Video content creators need more metadata real estate to attract search engine crawlers. Since search engines only crawl text, video transcription offers an alternative search engine optimization boost by allowing search engines to index everything said in the video, allowing them to access your content better and giving you more chances to rank better in searches, leading to more people consuming your content.
Repurpose Content
As said, videos are the current king of content creation, yet blogs and other written works still generate traffic. Transcription allows you the flexibility to repurpose already-produced content into another form.
For example, video or audio files can be transcribed and changed into high-quality blogs or articles, potentially offering additional income streams for businesses.
Aside from that, repurposed content via transcripts can supplement materials used in training sessions, seminars, lectures, and other similar events, offering more value for your video production efforts.
Options For Meeting Transcription Needs
Here are some of the ways you can get transcripts:
In-house Transcription
In-house transcription refers to hiring transcribers to do the work within your company. Different businesses tend to have different levels of audio transcription needs. And despite the importance of transcription, most organizations operate outside the scope of the work, which means they need to allocate business-critical resources to finding, hiring, and retaining skilled transcribers instead.
Let me tell you, that’s no cakewalk. Skilled transcribers earn up to $60,000 annually, with some earning more. Training, benefits, and equipment expenses tend to pile up. Time and resources that can help you grow your business are diverted, hindering your ability to focus on more important business aspects. Transcription is important—make no mistake about that—yet it shouldn’t come at the price of your company’s growth.
AI Transcription
Speech recognition and automated transcription software are a dime a dozen these days, and companies that require transcription services might be tempted to try them out. They’re faster, cheaper, and easier to use!
However, they’re also inaccurate. So far, the best automated transcription solution reaches only about 61.92% accuracy. That’s great, and I am all for using it for note-taking, reminders, and other low-stakes projects.
However, transcripts used in official settings like deposition summaries, earnings calls, interviews, conference calls, lectures, and patient histories need the highest possible accuracy.
Outsourced Human Transcription
Getting a human-powered professional transcription service is your best choice if you want accurate and affordable transcripts.
They cost significantly less than hiring in-house, with some estimates putting the potential savings up to 60%.
Not only can they offer you more savings when compared to hiring and retaining transcriptionists, but their expertise and laser focus on the transcription process also allow them to be more accurate and offer more benefits over automated transcription.
Human transcription providers are also flexible enough to accommodate requests. Document formatting guidelines, different file formats, storage options—you name it, a reliable transcription service like Ditto can provide it.
In hindsight:
| Option | Description | Pros | Cons | Best For |
| In-house Transcription | Hiring transcribers as employees to handle all transcription work internally. | – Direct control over staff- Familiarity with company processes- Immediate availability | – High cost (salary ~$45k–$60k+ per year per transcriber)- Training, benefits, and equipment add overhead- Diverts resources from core business | Organizations with constant, high-volume transcription needs and budget to sustain a dedicated team |
| AI / Automated Transcription | Using speech recognition software to automatically generate transcripts. | – Very fast- Low cost- Convenient for quick drafts and personal use | – Accuracy at 61.92% (depends on audio quality)- Struggles with accents, jargon, crosstalk, and poor audio- Requires heavy editing for official use | Quick notes, brainstorming sessions, internal reference where accuracy is not critical |
| Outsourced Human Transcription | Hiring professional transcription providers to handle audio/video on demand. | – Typically up to 98–99% accuracy– Lower cost than in-house (savings up to 60%)- Flexible (formatting, file types, turnaround speed)- Scalable depending on workload | – Not as instant as AI- Confidentiality requires trusted providers | Businesses needing reliable, accurate transcripts for legal, medical, financial, academic, or corporate use |
Benefits of Ditto’s Reliable Human Transcription Service
The benefits of audio transcription highly depend on the quality of the transcription provider. With Ditto, you get the best of everything. Here are the advantages we offer over the competition:
| Benefit | Description |
| Cost Savings | Our transcription pricing saves you on on hiring, training, and equipment costs by getting Ditto’s outsourced transcription services. |
| Expert Services | With Ditto, you get the pros. Our transcribers are 100% US-based and have relevant and extensive experience in their respective specialties and industries. |
| Accuracy and Proficiency | Human transcriptionists provide the most accurate transcripts for any type of transcription. They handle language nuances, dialects, and accents effectively. For example, Ditto offers 99% accuracy rates for all transcription work. |
| Focus on Core Strengths | Outsourcing transcription to us allows professionals and organizations to concentrate on their primary operations, improving efficiency and productivity. |
| Fast Turnaround Times | Ditto offers several turnaround times (TAT) options to fit anyone’s budget. Standard TAT is three to five business days, with faster or more economical options also available. |
| Secure Services | Ditto employs the latest security protocols and has passed the stringent guidelines of regulatory bodies like the CJIS and HIPAA. That’s why we can say we’re a CJIS- and HIPAA-compliant transcription company. |
Ditto’s Professional Transcription Can Help Your Business
Don’t settle for less when you can get the best. Ditto’s audio transcription services offer the best bang for your buck, giving you accuracy, affordability, and accessibility all in one package.
Ditto Transcripts is a Denver, Colorado-based FINRA, HIPAA, and CJIS-compliant transcription services company that provides fast, accurate, and affordable transcripts for individuals and companies of all sizes. Call (720) 287-3710 today for a free quote.