How to Best Transcribe Zoom Meetings

Over the past few years, Zoom meetings have not only become an integral part of the workplace and classroom, but they’re now often the go-to method of interaction. With so many meetings occurring, it’s essential that everyone keeps track of what’s going on. This is why transcriptions are so helpful. Read on to find out how easy they are to acquire and why they’ll benefit you!

​Zoom Meeting Transcriptions: All You Need to Know

Zoom has enhanced the concept of meetings, gatherings, calls, interviews, lectures, and more. Since its prevalence is more dominating than ever, it’s a good idea to learn the ins and outs of its features so you can get the most from what it has to offer. One way you can do this is through transcriptions.

The concept of transcribing spoken words into text may seem a little daunting, but it’s surprisingly simple to do. Here you’ll not only learn what transcription is but why you should always transcribe your meetings. You’ll also discover the straightforward steps of creating this documentation and why professional transcription is the best option for your needs.

​Getting a Good Understanding of Transcription

Transcription is the act of transcribing something, which is making a written copy of words. It takes audio information and converts it into text, streamlining everything into a legible and comprehensible presentation. Devoid of opinion or embellished tangents, it’s recognized as purely a conversion of the original spoken material into visual words. When done correctly, it has an extremely high rate of verbatim accuracy while only involving the source language.

​Why Transcription Is Important

While the outcomes are the same, Zoom meetings and in-person meetings both function differently. With so many moving parts involved in Zoom, you’re likely to face more distractions than you typically would when everyone’s assembled in a single locale. Unexpected circumstances like computer glitches, a knock at the door, or even a needy pet can draw your attention away from a meeting.

Don’t miss out on what’s important! Transcriptions will provide you with everything that transpired during your meeting. Acting as a full script, they ensure you’ll always have a point of reference and documentation. You won’t have to worry about the distraction of taking notes. Plus, they’re an excellent resource for anyone who couldn’t attend the meeting.

Convenient and shareable, transcribed texts make life easier in general. Not only do they keep everyone in the loop with a visual reference, but they eliminate the tedious process of replaying audio. Instead of searching for a specific moment and then manually listening to it over and over again for citation or understanding, a transcription is candidly in print, effortlessly available for your perusal at any time.

Transcription is great for video calls and webinars, too. It’s a fantastic tool for those who have hearing impairments or who are in a situation where they cannot use audio. Because of all these benefits, it’s evident that transcribing is your best option. And it’s simple, too! Just by following this clear-cut process, you’ll be able to add a heightened sense of professionalism and detailed organization to your institution.

​Make Sure to Record Your Meeting

The first step of transcription is obviously having something to transcribe. Therefore, you need to record your meeting. This process involves getting attendee consent and the host either doing the recording or delegating responsibility to another participant. The recorder then should follow these steps for video meetings.

There are two slightly different methods depending on whether or not you initially enable screen sharing. Each will work when you record to the cloud. To permit this recording, select Record to the Cloud, then Advanced Cloud Recording. From here, click on Audio Transcript. Make sure to save these changes.

If you know ahead of time that you’re in charge of recording, you can set yourself up right before beginning so you can seamlessly transition into speaking once your conference starts. Log into your meeting, and while on the Zoom meeting screen, press Record on the menu found at the bottom of the page. Now you’re recording and ready to share your screen.

If you want to wait until everyone’s gathered, or if the meeting has begun and it was determined that you’re going to record, you can easily start the process after your screen has already been shared. Just click on the menu’s More option and select Record from the dropdown.

For both instances, you can pause or stop recording at any time using the respective buttons on your screen.

​Retrieving Your File

When your meeting concludes and you stop recording, you’ll receive an email from Zoom containing the Web Video Text Tracks (WebVTT, or .vtt) file of your meeting. The .vtt contains the transcribed text. But you’re not done here.

Transcriptions recorded to the cloud don’t contain the proper punctuation and capitalization, for example. This all needs to be done manually through the editing feature, which is immensely time-consuming and tedious. In all likelihood, you’ll end up devoting entirely too much attention to this job.

However, there’s a better and easier way to get your meeting into text format without all the effort. Instead of dealing with how to transcribe Zoom meetings on your own, here’s a smarter alternative.

​Why a Transcription Service Is Your Best Option

Automated transcription is highly unreliable. In addition to the spacing and syntax issues, there’s an incredibly low accuracy rate with auto-generation. Depending on the meeting duration, you could spend hours or even days fixing your generated text.

Why put yourself through this? Conserve your valuable time and devote your energy to something worthwhile instead. Be more efficient! Using a transcription service like GoTranscript will end up saving you time, money, and human resources.

With a stellar accuracy rate of 99% or more, rest assured that GoTranscript will provide you with a word-for-word transcript of your meeting. But why is this so different from the results of automatic generation? Because GoTranscript works exclusively with human transcription experts. Therefore, you can be confident that excellence and precision come standard with any order. Boasting over 20,000 staff members worldwide, GoTranscript passes the low-overhead savings onto you, so you’ll get high-quality transcription without putting a dent in your bank account.

Relax, and let GoTranscript do the hard work. Get professional results quickly by following these easy instructions.

​Upload Your Meetings to GoTranscript

Click here to get started. On GoTranscript’s home page, select the Order Online option near the top. The link will take you step-by-step through the process.

When you reach the next page, you need to add your file. Select either Upload Files or Post URL, depending on how it’s stored. Use your device’s file browser to add anything you want transcribed. It’s perfectly fine to include multiple files.

​Choosing the Finer Details

After your files are uploaded, you’re presented with an analysis. You’ll have to figure out your desired turnaround time, clean or full (including grammatically incorrect speech) verbatim, and other options. Another consideration is time-stamping. This option is beneficial when there are multiple speakers or if you need to locate specific points of your meeting for reference.

​Completing Your Order

After you make your selections, click Continue. This directs you to the payment page, where you can use your preferred method to make your purchase. But GoTranscript has some great money-saving features, too. For one, there’s a customer loyalty program that offers discounts of up to 20%. Also, there’s a student discount to help with budget constraints. And don’t forget about the free trial to help get you started with no strings attached!

Once you submit it, your order will be handled by professional staff members through a four-step process of transcription, review, proofreading, and quality check. When this is complete, you’ll receive an email with a link to your account so you can safely and securely go over your transcript. Then, simply export it in the file format of your choosing.

​Conclusion

Now that you know how transcription works and why it’s important, it’s time to put this knowledge to good use. Simplify your life by letting GoTranscript provide you with the tools you need to succeed!