These Free AI Flashcard Generators Make Studying Too Easy: My Top Picks Quick Links Revoldiv Otter.ai Upload to YouTube Rev TurboScribe Whisper
Reading is quicker than listening. Transcriptions help, but installing an app just to transcribe audio is a waste of space. These online tools let you do it instantly, no downloads required.
1 Revoldiv
Revoldiv is a personal favorite of mine since it is easy to use, completely free, and transcribes video and audio files in seconds. You don't need an account to use the transcription platform, but having an account ensures that your files are stored, and your changes are saved to the cloud.
Like most audio transcription tools, Revoldiv uses OpenAI's Whisper and other models for accurate and speedy transcriptions. It can identify multiple speakers, and detect cheers, speech, and applause. It also supports editing transcriptions to remove errors and filler words. The video or audio file can be edited simultaneously with the text. Transcriptions can be exported as either plain text files or subtitles. The built-in link-sharing option can also be used to publish projects.
Revoldiv supports Chrome (as well as other Chromium-based browsers) and Mozilla Firefox. There is also a Chrome extension for live transcriptions. Revoldiv doesn't, however, support batch uploads and has a limit of two hours per media file.
2 Otter.ai
Otter.ai is one of the most popular speech-to-text transcription tools. It is branded as an AI meeting assistant that attends meetings with you and takes notes for you. While Otter is primarily used for real-time transcription, it is capable of generating transcripts and closed captioning for recorded videos.
Otter.ai offers live, automated transcriptions with speaker identification and AI-generated summaries. You can use it to transcribe audio or video files for free or choose any of the paid plans.
Otter.ai uses a freemium pricing model, with a free plan that allows you to import and transcribe up to 3 audio or video files. The Pro plan (priced at $8.33 monthly) increases the limit to 10 audio files, while the Business plan offers unlimited transcriptions of uploaded files.
Otter doesn't offer the best value in terms of pricing -- you might hit the transcription limits pretty quickly. Still, it's a great option for individuals and teams that require its collaborative tools and workflow integrations.
3 Upload to YouTube
While the process is definitely more involved, you can also use YouTube's automatic transcript generation feature to create transcripts for your audio and video files.
To transcribe your audio files on YouTube, you will first need to convert them to video before uploading. You can upload as many as 15 videos at once, but there is a limit on the number of videos you can upload within 24 hours. After uploading, you can generate a transcript with the Show transcript button.
You don't have to publish a video before you can generate transcripts for it.
While you can batch-upload files, YouTube's transcriptions tend to be worse than Revoldiv's, in my experience. They also do not include any punctuation by default and copy-pasting is the only way to export generated transcriptions. YouTube transcripts are also a great way to spend less time on YouTube.
4 Rev
Rev is a popular captioning and transcription platform that offers human and AI-powered services. It allows you to choose between automated transcriptions and human transcribers. It also provides captions, subtitles, and translations.
Rev offers AI-generated transcriptions as part of the VoiceHub platform. It uses a freemium pricing model similar to Otter.ai and the free plan allows uploads of 30-minute long videos and audio files with a monthly limit of 300 minutes.
The Basic plan is priced at about $10 per month (billed annually) for a 90-minute conversation limit and 1,200 minutes of transcription per month. Human-made transcriptions are more expensive and are billed at $1.50 per minute. Naturally, these transcriptions tend to be more accurate, but they also take more time deliver.
Rev also provides automated meeting notes and live transcription on Zoom and other similar platforms.
5 TurboScribe
TurboScribe is an audio transcription platform that presents a cheaper alternative to Otter.ai and Rev. It is powered by OpenAI's Whisper and supports up to 98 different languages.
The free plan offers three daily transcripts, each up to 30 minutes long. Free users are given lower priority in waiting times than paid users. The paid plan, Turbo Unlimited, is priced the same as Rev at $10 per month but offers much more value with up to 10-hour uploads and unlimited transcriptions.
TurboScribe offers incredible value, especially if you have a lot of audio or video files to transcribe.
6 Whisper
If you'd rather skip the middleman and go straight to the source, OpenAI's Whisper is free to use and currently the standard for accurate speech-to-text. Many audio transcription tools simply build on the Whisper model, adding a simpler interface and neat features like speaker identification, simultaneous audio/video editing, and automatic chapters.
An interesting aside: OpenAI developed Whisper to make it easier to scrape YouTube videos and podcasts for training its large language models.
You can run the model on your machine, but for the best results, you will need a computer with a dedicated GPU, Python 3.7 or newer, and ffmpeg installed. There are, however, online implementations of Whisper that run completely online without the need to install or run any apps locally.
Google Colab is a quick and easy way to use Whisper online. It is a hosted Jupyter Notebook service that allows you to write and run code straight from your web browser. To use Whisper in Google Colab, make a copy of this notebook and follow the instructions.
Th end result is a text file containing the transcript, which will be located in the Files section. You can change "txt" to "srt", "json", "vtt", or "all" (for all available output formats).
While this method might not be as intuitive as previous transcription tools, it is highly customizable and is often more accurate.
There are several options for transcribing your audio or video files that work entirely on the cloud. Revoldiv is my personal favorite and Whisper is a close second but any of the options here can work for you, depending on your needs.
