Whats the best (free) software to automatically transcribe a 50-minute speech?
Mechanical Turk is people doing piecework to transcribe your audio, often in the third world. You get what you pay for. ExpressScribe is software that helps you do that work. I love it and use it all the time. It does not “automatically” transcribe anything at all. There is no such thing as even halfway reliable “automatic” transcription software. The very best stuff — Naturally Speaking– still requires training the software, loading a pre-chosen vocabulary, and plenty of human checking and error correction for accuracy. It also requires a nearly pristine recording with no background noise to speak of. And it costs a lot of money for a good reasons. Lots of people think software to do this should exist as a free download somewhere and are perplexed it doesn’t show up when they google SourceForge. They are dreaming or watching too many science fiction movies. The challenge of producing such an application has not been fully me — certainly not automatic accurate transcription of a wid
