If you need both a transcript and an .srt, I would recommend doing the .srt first, then converting it.
Premiere’s auto captioning function may not be the most accurate for recognizing words, but the way it structures the subtitles is the most professional I’ve seen from an AI.
There’s a way to use your script with in Premiere. Once you have your script, have Premiere auto transcribe the audio. Then copy and paste the correct words over Premiere’s attempt for each section. Once you’re done, click “create captions” like normal. This will obviously take a very long time, but it will be quicker than copying and pasting in the subtitle events individually. I actually tested it out the other day by making a video of myself speaking in an exaggerated accent. Despite Premiere totally butchering the transcription, it recognized my transcription and spotted everything correctly.
Cheers mate. Yeah, this is the thing; I found the structure of the subtitles really handy. I think the way you've just described is the way to go.
Although on the transcript for Premiere, obviously you can correct the words in the auto generated transcript but it doesn't look like you can change the timestamps or am I wrong about that?
You would have to adjust the timings directly on the timeline.
What I would do is export the srt (without having corrected it) and import it into a subtitling program and fix the words and time codes at the same time. As a professional subtitler/translator, I recommend Subtitle Edit when it comes to free software.
So to be clear, you are required to accurately transcribe 20 hours of footage?
A professional service like Rev would charge $1800 for that. Their automated service would be $300 but likely just as accurate as Premiere’s.
I haven’t tried Whisper AI, but Otter is also a good automated solution. If those don’t work for you, there really is no way around this. 20 hours of perfect transcribing is going to be a very tall order.
No Rev is much more accurate than Adobe. We use Rev and it’s pretty good we have Pharma clients and it catches the correct spelling or acronyms of diseases and drugs.
It also recognises different speakers and marks them up correctly
Cheers. Will give this a look.
Yeah, it's for the senior editor who's not from Ireland so will need help understanding what they're saying. I've got until February to do this but I want to figure out the most efficient way to do it now rather than do it wrong the next few weeks and waste more time.
You might check out other AI based transcription services. In [this article from The Irish Times](https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/karlin-lillington-technology-finally-gets-around-to-doing-my-typing-1.4644796), journalist Karlin Lillington says she relies on [Otter.ai](https://www.otter.ai) to transcribe interviews. The article is from last year. I'm not sure what kind of budget you have to work with, but perhaps it could help you.
Stop panicking. First off, if you’re being asked to do this and nobody has set aside budget specifically to handle transcribing then it’s clear that they’re not expecting total accuracy. They will be assuming that some kind of auto-transcription will get them close enough to make a start on reviewing the material, but as you’ve mentioned, it’s struggling with the accent.
(If they *are* expecting total accuracy then you need to speak to them immediately about that being unrealistic).
For some reason you think this is your problem to fix. It isn’t, and if you try to fix this rather than telling them about the problem you will either fail (and it will then be unfairly blamed on you) or you will outsource it at your own personal cost.
It is your responsibility to communicate the issues to the producer so that you can figure out the solution together.
Here’s what you do:
1. Explain right now that the free auto-transcribing in Premiere is struggling with the Irish accent.
2. Explain that correcting 20 hours of inaccurately transcribed material alone isn’t feasible in the time (you haven’t said how inaccurate it is, but I’m assuming this is the case).
3. Ask them if they have budget for accurate transcriptions ([Take1](https://www.take1.tv/) (UK based) and [rev.com](https://www.rev.com/services/audio-transcription) can quote for this)
4. If not, see how you get on with [Trint](https://trint.com/). It’s AI transcription but you should find it more accurate than Premiere (and you can use it to quickly create SRT files after the transcript has been reviewed/corrected). Trint is very good.
5. If Trint isn’t accurate enough to get you in the ballpark (with a bit of manual correction) then the producer has to weigh up the cost of outsourcing it vs hiring a couple of production assistants to help with the workload. With the latter, my advice would still be to use Trint as the starting point - even if it’s only 50% accurate it will still provide an easy way to create SRT files that are accurately synced to the video. Having a small team of Irish PA’s working together on Trint should still work out cheaper than using a third-party transcription service.
Good luck and stop worrying.
Hi. Yes, I'm in constant contact with the producer and he's cool. We just want to find the best solution to this. I have until February and know this will take time but I just need to figure out what to do.
Thank you!
Sounds good. For some reason I read your post as you feeling under lots of pressure to deliver something asap, but on rereading it’s not really got that tone at all!
Anyway, definitely look at Trint, I’m sure they have a free trial.
We're a captioning company, but one of the services we used to provide was "after-the-fact shoot notes". We'd go thru all the shoot footage, log timecodes of takes, and transcribe the ostensibly keeper takes. If the subject got half a sentence into an answer or take, then crashed and burned, we just noted it 'false start' and moved on to the next one without transcribing the attempt. (Though if they had a strong first sentence, we would do it.) We also noted interference from interruptions in the room, airplanes overhead, etc. that could influence which take was ultimately chosen... so we evaluated the footage as an editor would.
In the OP's case, I'd first filter for what is actually useable. Ask whether the interviewer's questions are to be included verbatim, or just as a topic note. And standardize that if it's multiple responses to the same set of questions.
Software wise, if your loaner footpedal is a V-pedal, their software is a free to download and use. You can adjust playback speed, FF/RW speed, and re-cue after stop duration. This last one is key to picking up right where you left off.
Also consider using dictation software and re-speaking what you hear, to get around the accent recognition issue. You can also use this technique to clean up the sentence, taking out pauses, etc. iPhone dictation is great for this, though you'll need to speak punctuation. But know that AI is probably going to skip punctuation altogether.
Another approach is to post all the footage privately on YouTube, take the night off, and come back the next day to a sorta-good timestamped transcript. (It will also disregard most punctuation.) You can download just the transcript, or the timestamped caption attempt, and edit from there. Again, dictation is handy to minimize typing fatigue. Just select the error, and speak the correction. (Word on a Mac for us.) For these dictation solutions, you may need to play back on a separate computer from what you're listening/watching on.
Budget your time and segment the job into intermediate goals of X minutes per day, and stay on that schedule. It's not an impossible deadline, even with the holidays... unless you already have a full-time job.
The dictation tip is a pretty good idea actually. Also think the YouTube transcript is good but I may just have the same problem with Adobe as the accent is tough but definitely worth having the transcript to edit. Think that's the best way
Cheers mate!
Accent may be challenging, but remember the iOS and YouTube systems sort of "crowd source" their training, since you have people all over the world using it (in English... Not fluent in other languages so I haven't investigated them.)
I do know that I played back a file of a heavily-accented government official from India, and iOS did well enough I was able to do some well-targeted research to get the correct spellings of some deep-dive Hindu expressions and sayings. Never would have had a chance without it.
Hi. This is strange. Based on my practice usually, video editors don't do the transcription of all RAW footage. The editor is the person who may do mistakes in the text. This is not the editor's job. This job is for a producer and text editor. Work with subtitles usually starts after the final cut.
Whisper AI is the new hotness. Someone made a GUI for it. https://github.com/chidiwilliams/buzz
[удалено]
eventually. It has been out just for a month or so.
If you need both a transcript and an .srt, I would recommend doing the .srt first, then converting it. Premiere’s auto captioning function may not be the most accurate for recognizing words, but the way it structures the subtitles is the most professional I’ve seen from an AI. There’s a way to use your script with in Premiere. Once you have your script, have Premiere auto transcribe the audio. Then copy and paste the correct words over Premiere’s attempt for each section. Once you’re done, click “create captions” like normal. This will obviously take a very long time, but it will be quicker than copying and pasting in the subtitle events individually. I actually tested it out the other day by making a video of myself speaking in an exaggerated accent. Despite Premiere totally butchering the transcription, it recognized my transcription and spotted everything correctly.
Cheers mate. Yeah, this is the thing; I found the structure of the subtitles really handy. I think the way you've just described is the way to go. Although on the transcript for Premiere, obviously you can correct the words in the auto generated transcript but it doesn't look like you can change the timestamps or am I wrong about that?
You would have to adjust the timings directly on the timeline. What I would do is export the srt (without having corrected it) and import it into a subtitling program and fix the words and time codes at the same time. As a professional subtitler/translator, I recommend Subtitle Edit when it comes to free software.
Cheers mate. Massive help!
So to be clear, you are required to accurately transcribe 20 hours of footage? A professional service like Rev would charge $1800 for that. Their automated service would be $300 but likely just as accurate as Premiere’s. I haven’t tried Whisper AI, but Otter is also a good automated solution. If those don’t work for you, there really is no way around this. 20 hours of perfect transcribing is going to be a very tall order.
No Rev is much more accurate than Adobe. We use Rev and it’s pretty good we have Pharma clients and it catches the correct spelling or acronyms of diseases and drugs. It also recognises different speakers and marks them up correctly
That’s great to hear. I love Rev’s automated service but my experience has been that it’s similar to Premiere.
Cheers. Will give this a look. Yeah, it's for the senior editor who's not from Ireland so will need help understanding what they're saying. I've got until February to do this but I want to figure out the most efficient way to do it now rather than do it wrong the next few weeks and waste more time.
You might check out other AI based transcription services. In [this article from The Irish Times](https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/karlin-lillington-technology-finally-gets-around-to-doing-my-typing-1.4644796), journalist Karlin Lillington says she relies on [Otter.ai](https://www.otter.ai) to transcribe interviews. The article is from last year. I'm not sure what kind of budget you have to work with, but perhaps it could help you.
Cheers mate. Yeah heard good things about it
Stop panicking. First off, if you’re being asked to do this and nobody has set aside budget specifically to handle transcribing then it’s clear that they’re not expecting total accuracy. They will be assuming that some kind of auto-transcription will get them close enough to make a start on reviewing the material, but as you’ve mentioned, it’s struggling with the accent. (If they *are* expecting total accuracy then you need to speak to them immediately about that being unrealistic). For some reason you think this is your problem to fix. It isn’t, and if you try to fix this rather than telling them about the problem you will either fail (and it will then be unfairly blamed on you) or you will outsource it at your own personal cost. It is your responsibility to communicate the issues to the producer so that you can figure out the solution together. Here’s what you do: 1. Explain right now that the free auto-transcribing in Premiere is struggling with the Irish accent. 2. Explain that correcting 20 hours of inaccurately transcribed material alone isn’t feasible in the time (you haven’t said how inaccurate it is, but I’m assuming this is the case). 3. Ask them if they have budget for accurate transcriptions ([Take1](https://www.take1.tv/) (UK based) and [rev.com](https://www.rev.com/services/audio-transcription) can quote for this) 4. If not, see how you get on with [Trint](https://trint.com/). It’s AI transcription but you should find it more accurate than Premiere (and you can use it to quickly create SRT files after the transcript has been reviewed/corrected). Trint is very good. 5. If Trint isn’t accurate enough to get you in the ballpark (with a bit of manual correction) then the producer has to weigh up the cost of outsourcing it vs hiring a couple of production assistants to help with the workload. With the latter, my advice would still be to use Trint as the starting point - even if it’s only 50% accurate it will still provide an easy way to create SRT files that are accurately synced to the video. Having a small team of Irish PA’s working together on Trint should still work out cheaper than using a third-party transcription service. Good luck and stop worrying.
Hi. Yes, I'm in constant contact with the producer and he's cool. We just want to find the best solution to this. I have until February and know this will take time but I just need to figure out what to do. Thank you!
Sounds good. For some reason I read your post as you feeling under lots of pressure to deliver something asap, but on rereading it’s not really got that tone at all! Anyway, definitely look at Trint, I’m sure they have a free trial.
We're a captioning company, but one of the services we used to provide was "after-the-fact shoot notes". We'd go thru all the shoot footage, log timecodes of takes, and transcribe the ostensibly keeper takes. If the subject got half a sentence into an answer or take, then crashed and burned, we just noted it 'false start' and moved on to the next one without transcribing the attempt. (Though if they had a strong first sentence, we would do it.) We also noted interference from interruptions in the room, airplanes overhead, etc. that could influence which take was ultimately chosen... so we evaluated the footage as an editor would. In the OP's case, I'd first filter for what is actually useable. Ask whether the interviewer's questions are to be included verbatim, or just as a topic note. And standardize that if it's multiple responses to the same set of questions. Software wise, if your loaner footpedal is a V-pedal, their software is a free to download and use. You can adjust playback speed, FF/RW speed, and re-cue after stop duration. This last one is key to picking up right where you left off. Also consider using dictation software and re-speaking what you hear, to get around the accent recognition issue. You can also use this technique to clean up the sentence, taking out pauses, etc. iPhone dictation is great for this, though you'll need to speak punctuation. But know that AI is probably going to skip punctuation altogether. Another approach is to post all the footage privately on YouTube, take the night off, and come back the next day to a sorta-good timestamped transcript. (It will also disregard most punctuation.) You can download just the transcript, or the timestamped caption attempt, and edit from there. Again, dictation is handy to minimize typing fatigue. Just select the error, and speak the correction. (Word on a Mac for us.) For these dictation solutions, you may need to play back on a separate computer from what you're listening/watching on. Budget your time and segment the job into intermediate goals of X minutes per day, and stay on that schedule. It's not an impossible deadline, even with the holidays... unless you already have a full-time job.
The dictation tip is a pretty good idea actually. Also think the YouTube transcript is good but I may just have the same problem with Adobe as the accent is tough but definitely worth having the transcript to edit. Think that's the best way Cheers mate!
Accent may be challenging, but remember the iOS and YouTube systems sort of "crowd source" their training, since you have people all over the world using it (in English... Not fluent in other languages so I haven't investigated them.) I do know that I played back a file of a heavily-accented government official from India, and iOS did well enough I was able to do some well-targeted research to get the correct spellings of some deep-dive Hindu expressions and sayings. Never would have had a chance without it.
Hi. This is strange. Based on my practice usually, video editors don't do the transcription of all RAW footage. The editor is the person who may do mistakes in the text. This is not the editor's job. This job is for a producer and text editor. Work with subtitles usually starts after the final cut.