Friday, March 9, 2018

Cool Transcription Tool that's Free AND Reliable!

I don't usually do free ads for folks, but I just have to mention oTranscribe, which I've been using for the past couple of weeks to do a transcription for a qualitative analysis. It's free to use oTranscribe on a small scale (I'm doing a single hour and 45 minute interview).

oTranscribe is one of those tools that seems to have read your mind about what you need. They save your work for you so that all you have to do is go to "otranscribe.com" and there is your project, right where you left off. If you're paranoid about saving things, like I am, they have an export function. I have multiple copies of the transcription that I've saved all along in my own folder, but that's just doubling up, because oTranscribe has also saved each of my copies in its "History" function. They do not store your audio recording, so you have to upload that each time, but I don't want them storing my audios anyway. oTranscribe also has keys for starting and stopping (the same key, a toggle, which goes back one second each time you pause), for slowing the playback, for speeding it up, for dropping in a time stamp, and many other nice features that you may or may not need.

The feature I like best is that I can re-map my function keys. Instead of using F1 to slow down playback, I use down arrow. Instead of F2 for "go back a few seconds," I use left arrow. It's incredibly easy to use.

I highly recommend this product. You can find it at www.oTranscribe.com.