Why Transcribe Your Audio/Video Content?
Transcribing your audio and video content offers numerous benefits:
- Increased accessibility and usability
- Enhanced searchability
- Facilitated data analysis
- Legal compliance
- Improved archiving and documentation
- Ethical considerations
Available Transcription Services
Several captioning and transcription services are available to members of our university community. Before choosing a service, please consider the following important notes:
- Research Projects: If you're transcribing content for research purposes, we strongly recommend contacting the University's Institutional Review Board (IRB) at https://irb.upenn.edu/ for guidance on appropriate tools.
- Privacy and Security: We do not evaluate how these services (human or AI-based) use your content or assess any privacy/security concerns. Please check with your school or center to ensure these tools comply with their policies for your research.
- Accuracy and Cost: Human transcribers generally provide higher accuracy than AI transcriptions but tend to be more expensive and have longer turnaround times.
- Quality Assurance: For projects requiring high accuracy, we recommend proofreading all transcriptions, regardless of the method used.
- Funding: If you have a grant-funded project, consider including transcription costs in your grant proposal.
Choosing the Right Transcription Tool
When selecting a transcription service, consider the following factors:
- Required level of accuracy
- Language(s) to be transcribed
- Duration of audio/video content
- Budget constraints
- Preference for AI-based or human transcription
- Desired turnaround time
- Need for time-stamped captions or simple transcription
- HIPAA or IRB compliance requirements
- Real-time transcription for live content vs. recorded content transcription
By carefully evaluating these factors, you can choose the most appropriate transcription service for your specific needs.
Transcription/Captioning Services Available/In-use at Penn:
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3Play - AI captioning/transcription with an option to add human review (for a fee) at a later time. Transcribes in 25 languages.
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Adobe Premiere - AI captioning/transcription. Free for Penn users at Penn computer labs.
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Davinci Resolve - AI captioning/transcription. Free for Penn users at the Vitale Digital Media Lab (Van Pelt Library).
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Zoom - AI captioning. Provides live captioning as well.
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YouTube - AI captioning/transcription. Free for all users. YouTube can automatically generate captions in over 100 languages
There are new AI-based services all the time, and we recommend doing a survey of the current landscape if you think the services we list here may not meet your needs.
