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I am looking for a cheap transcription service for video blog material (interviews, etc).

I don't need subtitles or time syncing. Just cheap and relatively accurate transcription of video.

Does anyone have any recommendations?

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I have used 3PlayMedia 3playmedia.com They are Cambridge, MA startup run by some really down to earth nice guys. Very accurate transcripts. – Apollo Sinkevicius Oct 17 '12 at 22:11

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7 Answers

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Try synergy transcription services for your transcription needs, they can provide accurate transcription at a cheap price.

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We've used Mechanical Turk and it has been great. If you don't want to figure out all of the tips and tricks of the system, there are services like Casting Words that will organize it for you.

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Casting Words is $0.75 per minute. Speakertext is $0.33 per minute. – Joseph Turian Jan 7 '10 at 8:04
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I'd suggest putting up a request at FindVirtual.com - it's an online community of virtual assistants: deal direct, lots of skill sets available, nice people.

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On the This Week in Google podcast, they said Google is rolling out something like this functionality for videos. No idea if it's publicly available.

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/11/youtube-audio-transcription.html

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I think Andrew Warner of mixergy.com (great podcast btw) is using Amazon's Mechanical Turk and he gets pretty good results from what I have seen.

ps. sorry for not linking mixergy.com, I can only add one link

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The Stack Overflow podcast set up a wiki for transcripts. Do you have enough listeners/viewers who would be willing to participate in a transcript wiki of your video blog?

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No, I don't have this audience. – Joseph Turian Jan 7 '10 at 8:03
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So I've used:

TranscriptionStar – iSource solution Inc. 
transcription@transcriptionstar.com
http://transcriptionstar.leapfile.com
1291 Weber Street| Pomona |CA |91768
Ph: 714-277-3909

before and they transcribed audio files that went with videos for about $1.25/minute (advertised $1.00 but it ran a bit higher). They did a good job although we had to go in and fix the engineering terms.

Their billing leaves a lot to be desired.

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Care to elaborate: "Their billing leaves a lot to be desired." ? – Joseph Turian Nov 30 '09 at 0:28
We paid them but for months I kept getting calls asking for me to pay again. I kept emailing them the payment info (including the cleared check) and they just kept calling. My guess is they applied my payment to someone else or something. I assume this was just a one time problem. – Dane Nov 30 '09 at 18:01

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