Television Transcription services

Television transcription is transcribing television content - programmes, interviews and raw studio recordings - with speakers identified. The work goes to transcribers who do this particular job every day, not to a general pool, and each file is checked against the source by a second reviewer before it is sent. This site is built around audio, video and document material in almost any format, including legacy media.

Mostly broadcasters, post-production houses, caption teams and rights holders. What they have in common is material that has to be exact and not roughly right, which is why every file is checked against the source before delivery. A lot of the work arrives from archives, estates and institutions digitising what they hold.

You are given a date, not a range: rush delivery within 2 to 24 hours where it is urgent, and a firm delivery time in the quote where it is not. Legacy media such as tape, MiniDV, DAT or optical disc adds a digitising step, and that is quoted and scheduled up front. Television transcription is scheduled against the people who actually do this work, not against a general pool.

Work is done by human transcribers and compared with the original before it is sent, which is how the 99+% accuracy standard is met. Degraded tape and low-bitrate audio go to people used to that loss, not to software that fills the gaps with guesses. What gets checked on television transcription is the detail a reader would otherwise have to verify themselves: names, figures, terms and anything the source left ambiguous. One person working alone would not catch a mistyped name or a passage of crosstalk recorded as one speaker.

It is handled by restricting access, not by promising discretion. Television transcription often involves material people would not want circulated, so the file is closed to everyone except the pair working on it. Everyone on the job is under NDA, transfer is encrypted, and your own confidentiality agreement is signed before work starts if you have one.

Word, PDF, Excel, Google Docs or plain text, or your own template applied so the file comes back ready to use. Headings, tables and numbering are built properly instead of pasted in. The format for television transcription is agreed at order stage, so the first delivery is the one you can file, send on or publish. Source material in almost any audio, video or document format is accepted, including formats most suppliers turn away.

Transcripts can be produced in a caption-ready layout so the captioning step starts from clean text. None of that is left to chance on the day: it is confirmed at quoting stage. Anything on physical media is digitised first, logged, and then worked from the digital copy.

Worth asking for: on-screen text and graphics can be noted where they carry meaning. It is easier to set at order stage than to retrofit, and it costs nothing on top of the quoted rate when it is part of the original brief. A digital master of the source can be returned alongside the finished file where the original is fragile.

Yes, in 100+ languages, each handled by a native speaker and not by someone working from a dictionary. What television transcription involves does not change with the language, and the same independent check happens before delivery. Older recordings often mix languages, and each one is kept as it was spoken instead of flattened into one.

General transcription starts at $1 per audio minute and legal transcription at $2. The source format makes no difference to the rate; digitising legacy media appears as its own line in the quote. Television transcription is quoted from the material you send, so a short job and a long one are worked out the same way. Quotes are calculated from how long the recording runs, how clear the audio is and how many people are speaking, so two clients sending comparable material pay the same, and nothing begins until you approve the written total.