I have a question for the veteran transcribers out there. A 3-4 minute transcription takes me roughly 30-45 minutes on average to transcribe it and check it over completely for errors and do corrections. At this rate I do not make enough to bother consistently transcribing. I usually get excellent scores however with the rare exception of some idiot reviewer chopping it to unnecessary bits. Which I do find hard to get the score fixed from Speach Ink or CW. They usually do not respond... Anyhow is the time I take anywhere near what you vets are taking? I generally use a program that runs through the audio in steps so I do not have to constantly stop and start the audio. Is there something I could be doing to increase my speed? I am up for any help here because I am hoping to get to where it is worth the time to do this kind of work. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Also If you can just post your average time for a 3-4min please do so. I would like to find out if a lot more people are doing these much faster or just making peanuts like me. Thanks in advance!
Given 10 minutes of tough audio, I can submit within 20 minutes, and I get the top grade 95% of the time ... :rolleyes: ;-) Ha ha, that's not true. I'm a chump, not a champion. I regularly take ten or fifteen times the length of the audio ... and I'll take twice again as long, or even more time than that, if a lot of research is necessary (and if I enjoy researching the subject). The top grade (and top pay) often eludes me. Give me the simplest 50-word transcript with crystal-clear audio, and I might expect to miss the top grade because an editor took out a hyphen (such as the hyphen in "crystal-clear audio"), or some other IMHO-questionable change. Granted, I do have some odd and stubborn habits, and yes I do make mistakes, no question about it. I put in an effort, every time ... and I don't hesitate to take WAY too much time to get things right, to the best of my admittedly limited abilities.
Yes I consider myself quite limited also. This is quite new to me. I find the reviewers can be downright mind boggling in their editing. I'll get a 96 on one then the next one I spent 15 mins more on and did exactly the same way following the rules and get a 79.. it gets quite frustrating to be honest. I have been trying out ClariTrans (I think that is how it is spelled) and the problem with them at the moment is I think they are only having one person edit/grade and just going with that. I has messaged them about one getting rejected and they apologized and said they would give the editor a warning. I have yet to hear if they will be reversing the rejection though. Apparently the guy/gal just added two commas and gave it a rating of 2 even though it did not need commas added. Sometimes I feel like I am turning in a big target with my transcripts for people to take aim at.
It takes me 3 - 4 times the length to finish a transcript. So a 5 minute transcript takes about 18 minutes. A 2 minute takes 9 or 10 minutes. The real short ones take a little longer because it takes the same amount of time to download and setup my audio and everything as it does a long one. Real bad audio may take 5 or 6 times the length. The tools you use will help speed up your time. I transcribe with MS-Word and use Express Scribe to play my audio. If you don't have Word, you can try using OpenOffice free software: http://www.openoffice.org/ After transcribing for a little while, you learn the common words you misspell, so I have set them up to auto correct. Big words that I fumble with typing, I've setup shortcuts. For example, I ALWAYS misspell Massachusetts. I have setup quick correct to take mass. and spell the word out. If I am doing an interview or have multiple people, I setup quick correct for the name labels. For example w1 is Woman 1: and m1 is Man 1: If the name is a long name, I'll setup some sort of quick combo to spell the label. Of course, this only saves times with larger transcripts. Short ones you just suffer thru them. I do not use a foot pedal for Express Scribe, I have setup my Function Keys for play, reverse, etc. I will set the playback speed from 50 to 80, according to the speed of the original. This gives me a good typing speed. If I have to pause the audio will backtrack 3 seconds when it starts playing. That gives me a chance to get back into the swing. Another way to speed things up is I type and don't worry about mistakes or too much with formatting. I do these corrections when I read back through after transcribing. If you have your auto correct setup correct, you'll find that a lot of your mistakes are corrected. (One of my worst misspellings is the word THE. I spell it TEH, which is corrected by the software.) Make sure if you're just starting out to start with good clear audio. Interviews, sermons, or lectures are best. If you have multiple people talking it takes more time. After you get several transcripts behind you and you're comfortable with the styles etc, you can do the harder transcripts. Hope this helps. This is just some things that have helped me thru the years.
SpeechInk is hard for me - they're verbatim and I have a hard time with the typing and formatting of all utterances, false starts, repeated words, etc. Miss enough of those "uh" words and your grade is in the toilet. No thank you. I like doing transcripts for CastingWords. Their style guide is different but only took me a few transcriptions before I didn't have to look at it obsessively every time. You request qualification and you start out with a rating of 80. There isn't a target on your back with them, but being a new worker is noted for people who do the follow-up tasks for editing. My laptop is getting older by the day. It takes me about 7 minutes for each minute of audio. That's why I try working different kinds of jobs for them when it's available. My biggest tip relates to CastingWords as opposed to SpeechInk - because it isn't insurance calls - and that's to fix sentences after you've transcribed the whole clip of audio. It's something that isn't easy to do when you're not sure what's coming next. Sometimes the speakers don't even know what's coming next, it seems. If you look around the forum, there are other threads (like in the CastingWords area) with tips for transcription. Cool thing is -- people who have the most tips are also editors. They want people to be good at transcribing. It makes their jobs easier. I truly believe more transcribers = the ability for the company to take on new clients. Work for everyone. Here's to hoping, at least.
Usually takes me about 20 minutes. I don't care if I change up anything, it is still 20 minutes with a clear, no research transcription. I think you are on the right track, just keep doing the work and things will speed up for you. Of course those insurance interviews are pretty hard.
I can't do verbatim either. People it stresses me out...if you miss one ah or um..you could get a bad grade. They are extremely hard to do. I never do them. I had a hard enough time on Speech inks test. I did take it twice because some of the things in it they corrected were not in the style guide- Like they didn't say how they wanted "mm-hmm" spelled etc. Woo! Stressful! I got a high grade but it was still stressful,LOL! I refuse to do the verbatim ones. I would rather be shot!LOL! One a five minute audio I can take 30 minutes. ON 3-4 minutes it depends. I always check everything a bunch fo times to make sure it is perfect. I am a fast typer. You are about right on track. I do CastingWords. I would be able to do it faster if I could download it into transcription software so I could stop and start easier and also turn the volume louder(express scribe lets you turn up the volume even more ) It truly depends on what type of transcription it is- If it is clear and only one speaker- It goes even quicker.
I prefer to do the ones under 2 minutes. I enjoy the rating, editting and grading, final edit more than anything though. The editting and grading can take 2-3x as long sometimes as well.
You can download the audio. I can't run Express Scribe on this laptop anymore, but I did do it successfully more than once. Right-click on the download link (at the right of the HIT screen)...and I forget what to do after that. It's in one of the CW forum threads. There's TONs of info on CW, just have to sort through what's there. Good luck.