LJ Brain Trust: Transcription?

[cjsmith]

I have a bunch of cassette tapes of people talking and would love to have them transcribed. Formal services will do this for an enormous fee, but I'm not sure I need that kind of quality. I'm not exactly going to publish the results. I just want them searchable with "grep".

Starving students would probably do it for $10/hr, but even that gets kind of stiff. With the amount of time the transcriber would have to stop the tape and catch up on typing, even assuming everything's perfectly audible the first time through, I can't imagine a 60-minute tape taking any less than two hours... and I think I have something like a hundred of these.

Ideas for doing this cheaply and quickly? Or should I abandon the whole project if it's not worth $2K to me?

[edit: I counted, I have seventy tapes. Each has a bit less than 60 minutes of talk on it. I've transcribed two and each one of those took me many hours, my vague memory says four or five. I can imagine that someone skilled or less perfectionist might get that down to something closer to two.]

Comments

[daltong.livejournal.com]

I'm interested.

Perhaps I could do some for something in trade? If you don't come up with some easy solution, let's talk.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Let me stew a little longer, but offer is noted and appreciated. I'm not sure what would work as a good trade -- this is nearly seventy hours of audio, and the reason I'm not doing it myself is I don't have the time. But I'll think on it, and thank you.

[joedecker.livejournal.com]

Any hope that the sound is good enough for voice recognition?

(I'm not optimistic.)

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

Honululu.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

?

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

It's always my first thought when it comes to dogs and VR software. anisoptera's bouvier (massive sheepdog-like thing) Levi once came up behind either her or 98 and barked while she was typing, and Dragon said that Levi said, "Honolulu!"

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

That's, um... yeah. I guess I could imagine the kind of bark that sounds like the vowels of "Honolulu".

[anisoptera.livejournal.com]

It was a fairly normal bark...a booming sort of woof woof like you get from a big dog. It did not sound like "Honolulu" at all to me but it kept showing up on the screen. I was talking away and then "Honolulu" would show up. It was very confusing as Levi was not even in the same room with me. I almost peed myself laughing when I finally figured it out.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I doubt it, sadly. My understanding is that my voice *un*distorted by a recording is probably not good enough for understandable text to come out the other end, unless I train a system to the sound of me. These have me and two other people, one of whom is freakin' QUIET. :(

Is there a cheap/easy way to try?

[shaktiqueen.livejournal.com]

I'd do it for you for under five hundred. I need xmas money.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

As I said to daltong above, let me think a bit more. We're talking at least a month's full time work here. Well, just a guess. A bit under seventy hours of audio, and I can't imagine being able to transcribe in under double the runtime. I'd love to do this "cheapo" but also don't want to take advantage of anybody, or leave anyone feeling stuck and grumpy about a bargain turned grim.

(Plus of course there's one other person on the tape whose permission I'd have to secure if anyone but me does the transcribing.)

[kuangning]

Yeah, count me as offering as well. I'm still not working, and even a bit would help. :P

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yikes, wow. Let me think a bit more, but I'll keep in mind that you're potentially interested. I counted the tapes: seventy. I would be shocked if this were less than four forty-hour weeks of work, because I can't imagine being able to transcribe in under double the runtime. (Of course if anyone but me or software or a professional house does the transcribing, I'll have to ask permission of another person whose voice is on the tape.) Anyhow, I'll stew on this a bit. And thank you.

[kuangning]

Thank you, as well. Hopefully you'll figure something out that works. :)

[vvvexation.livejournal.com]

Count me as another starving student. Hell, if you get enough of us offering you could probably get it all done in about a day....

[ohhjuliet.livejournal.com]

If you bought the actual transcription recorder thingy and did it yourself, it might be cheaper and faster for you that way?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I don't know if there is such a thing. There's voice recognition software, which I could purchase, but it might not work...

[ericainohio.livejournal.com]

I think what she was talking about was a 'transcription machine'. I am actually a trained transcriptionist, although I've never sought a job in that field! These machines are basically cassette players, and it has a foot pedal that you attach to the machine that starts and stops the playback. And when you lift your foot, the recording stops and actually goes backward a tick or two (on most machines, you get to adjust how long a 'tick' is, lol). So that when you start again, you're typing from where you left off. You can wear headphones to make listening to the machine easier too. There would be a jack for that.

I'm not sure how much these machines cost. I'll bet a quick google search would tell you. Or you could check ebay for a used machine?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Ahh, I get it now. (amywithani's comment also described this.) Worth a thought, since it keeps the hands free and could really cut down on the time...

[dizzdvl.livejournal.com]

I was a transcription clerk for doctors and we used Dictaphone.

[therobbergirl.livejournal.com]

When I was a lowly student, I had to transcribe taped interviews for someone else's thesis. These interviews averaged 60 minutes each. It took me about four hours for the first few and after that, I could do it in about two. It helps a lot if your transcriber uses a dictaphone (no, use your finger like everyone else, ha ha ha). With a dictaphone, you put a pedal on the floor, press it with your foot to move the tape forward, and release the pedal to pause and rewind a little bit. You can customize how far to rewind. To rewind extra, you just tap the pedal a few quick times. For example, I had set mine to four second rewind. If I quickly pressed and released three times, it would rewind about 12 seconds. That was amazingly useful and speeded up transcription time immensely.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oo, now I understand what ohhjuliet meant. That's worth a thought. Sadly, it means a) if I do decide it's a good idea to pay someone else to do (part of) the work, that person has to be local, and b) every user has to come up to speed on it. Still, though, if these things can be purchased or rented for cheap, they could really help.

[therobbergirl.livejournal.com]

I did a search on Office Depot and they want a lot of money (~$240) for the transcriber unit. (Search for "transcriber" rather than "dictaphone" -- distaphone gets you the recording part of the device.) My Ebay search turned up a ton of items priced ludicrously high and unbelievably low.

As to getting up to speed, they're very easy to learn. I was comfortable with it inside of five minutes.

I wonder if there's some sort of place that deals in old, crunchy office supplies. You don't need a modern, shiny one. An old clunky heavy thing from the 1980s or even earlier would do the trick.

Do watch out for cassette size. Most of the ones I see on Ebay and Office Depot are for micro cassette. I don't know if that's what you have.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I too did a quick web search and found new units were pricey. O'course, if it cuts transcription time in half, that's like paying $240 to have half of it done, which is a bargain. Still worth looking for a used one, though.

[deedeebythebay.livejournal.com]

I think you already have a couple of offers, but I'll let you know I type about 80+ words a minute and could sure use the money. Let me know if you're interested.

[ashiegrrrl.livejournal.com]

I'll do it! I'm poor as dirt too *wink wink*

I'd say I could do it for $10-$15 an hour, or something.

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

make a whole bunch of phone posts :)