Can You Create an Audio Transcript on Zoom?
Why Zoom transcription is a good idea
With the dramatic rise in working from home and workforces spread around the globe, video calls have become a vital component of the business communication toolkit. From company updates to virtual events, Zoom is a leading provider of video call technology.
Video calls can help us connect and can be more productive and engaging than a string of emails, but as we all know, they’re not perfect. Many people have suffered from ‘zoom fatigue’ as organisation battle to strike a balance between the right communication channels and their frequency.
Time spent on video calls can feel wasteful without good notes that document the key moments, decisions, and outcomes of any session. Alongside this, making sessions accessible and inclusive is also a priority. Creating a Zoom meeting transcription can help your teams to become more productive, make your content more accessible, and improve the longevity of your content by providing an accurate record of events.
This is a simple guide on how to create an audio transcript on Zoom.
Does Zoom have transcription? – Yes!
There are 2 main ways you can gain a transcript of your Zoom sessions.
- Built-in Zoom automatic transcription service
- Outsourcing to a professional transcription service
If you purchase Zoom’s Business, Education or Enterprise package, Zoom can automatically transcribe your video calls, webinars, or events for you. A quick side note, the service is currently only available in English. However, before you dive headfirst into the Zoom video transcription built-in tools, it’s worth noting that Zoom uses speech recognition software to quickly generate a Zoom transcript. The Zoom transcription software has the benefit of being quick and doesn’t require you to share the content with third parties, but this comes at the cost of accuracy.
As the transcription on Zoom is created using ASR (automatic speech recognition) the quality of the transcript can really vary depending on the audio; accents, multiple speakers and technical terminology etc. all impact the quality of the final output. And, let’s be honest, many calls will have a combination of these audio options making the automated transcripts prone to error.
If accuracy is important to you, you should consider using a more accurate human or hybrid transcription service provider rather than the automated transcript from Zoom. With a professional service, such as Take Note, the process is quick and easy and will deliver you higher-quality results.
How to create a Zoom audio transcript
Granting the relevant access in your Zoom account
As prerequisites, you need to have a relevant account with cloud recording enabled and audio transcription enabled. You can limit who can generate transcripts to specific users or groups, or make it available to everyone on your account. For all three options, you must log in to the Zoom web portal and navigate to the same ‘Recording’ tab.
Specific Users
To allow Zoom audio transcription for yourself, go to ‘Settings’ straight from the Zoom web portal, then go to the ‘Recording’ tab and make sure the Cloud Recording option is enabled. Under ‘Advanced Cloud Recording Settings’, tick the ‘Audio Transcript’ box, and save the changes. If the option is greyed out, you will need to contact your Zoom administrator for access.
Specific Groups
To limit access to members of a specific group, go into ‘User Management’, then ‘Group Management’. Select the relevant group and go to ‘Settings’. On the ‘Recording’ tab, make sure that ‘Cloud Recording’ is enabled. Under the advanced settings, tick ‘Audio Transcript’ and save the changes. If the option is greyed out, you need to get permission from the account holder.
Whole Account
If you want to make audio transcription available to all account users, go to ‘Account Management’, then ‘Account Settings’. Go to the ‘Recording’ tab, enable ‘Cloud Recording’, and select ‘Audio Transcript’ from the advanced settings. You can click on the Lock icon to make these settings mandatory for everyone using the account.
Recording your meetings
Within busy organisations, it can be challenging to find meeting slots that work for everyone. Even with the best-laid plans, unexpected events can cause people to run late to meetings, have to duck out early or mean they can’t attend at the last moment. Recording a meeting allows people to catch up after the event or revisit content to check on key discussion points or agreed actions.
Providing access to recordings and searchable transcripts is a great way to make the content accessible and provides a variety of ways for people to consume the content. A transcript is often a quicker and easier way for people to review video and audio content. Combining search functionality with timestamps provides an easy way for people to identify key moments that they’re interested in.
Recording a Zoom meeting is simple. When you start the meeting, click the ‘Record’ button and select ‘Record to the Cloud’. If you have the transcript option enabled on your account, Zoom will generate a transcript for the recording, as well as separate audio and video files. Alternatively, you can also select to record the meeting to your computer, but the cloud option is needed to allow for the built-in service to work.
It is also possible to enable a live transcription zoom call where an attendee or third party can type the transcript in the meeting as it happens. This can help increase the accessibility of the call or session. Typing at the required speeds and accuracy for zoom live transcription is a skill and so it’s well worth exploring professional services.
Editing the Transcript in Zoom
Due to the automatic nature of the Zoom transcription service, it’s likely that you’ll want to make some edits to the Zoom recording transcript before sharing it more widely. Editing the transcript can help to avoid any embarrassing errors such as misspelt names, incorrect terminology or other errors in the text. The editing function also allows you to add relevant capitalisation and other punctuation that has been missed during the automatic generation process. You can also allocate text to the relevant speaker if it is showing up as an ‘unknown speaker’ in Zoom. Be warned though, the editing process is a time-sucking task and is just one of the reasons that professional transcription services are so popular.
If you’re keen to give it a go, here are the steps you’ll need to follow.
- After the meeting, you will receive an email with a link to the cloud recording, then a second one with a link to access the transcript. Alternatively, navigate to your previous meetings in the web portal on the ‘My Recordings’ page, where your historic meetings will be accessible.
- For each meeting, you will find a vtt file of the text of the transcript to download and open in your chosen text editor. You can also open the mp4 file to display the transcript alongside the recording.
- Use the Pencil icon to edit the relevant text.
- Don’t forget to save your changes.
Viewing the transcript in Zoom
If transcription has been turned on for the video the transcript will appear on the right-hand side of the video screen. You can find keywords in the text using the search bar at the top of the transcript panel and select phrases to jump to that section of the video.
Closed captions
The transcript is automatically embedded in your Zoom recording but is hidden by default. As a user, you can choose to display the captions on the video by selecting the ‘CC’ icon at the bottom right of the screen when you playback a video. The relevant text will appear at the bottom of the screen as you watch the content.
Gaining an accurate transcript of your Zoom meeting
To get a perfect transcript of your call you can securely upload your Zoom audio or video to a transcription service to be transcribed by an expert in your field. Take Note promises 99% accuracy and guaranteed turnaround times to ensure you get an accurate transcript when you need it. You can opt to include speaker ID and timestamps to make the output easy and quick to review.
How to share or download your recording
When you click a video recording on the My Recordings page, the playback video launches in a new browser tab, which includes controls for Download and Share. You can also set a playback range for the shared video so that it starts and ends at the times you specify, removing unneeded portions from the beginning and end.
Concise meeting minutes
Transcripts provide a verbatim version of events. However, in some cases, a more concise account of a meeting could prove more useful. Meeting minutes detail the key discussion points, decisions and actions in line with the planned agenda.
Meeting minutes deliver an impartial third-person accurate account of events that is quick and easy to review. Minutes are ideal for those who are looking for the key takeaways and potentially don’t have the time or inclination to read through the complete transcript or play back the meeting in full. Using a professional service, such as Take Note, to produce the meeting minutes means attendees can fully focus and participate in the meeting rather than becoming distracted by trying to scribble notes.
Help your teams become more productive and make your meeting count with transcription. Get an instant quote today.
