Transcribe public meetings

Who uses this and for what

• ·Reporters who need a quote or a vote from a three-hour meeting without watching all of it.
• ·Residents and advocates tracking one agenda item across several meetings.
• ·Clerks and board secretaries who want a first pass at the minutes. The official minutes remain the clerk's own document and the usual approval process still applies.
• ·Neighborhood and HOA boards that record meetings and want a searchable record for members.

Getting the recording

Many public bodies publish a recording of open meetings. This site does not take web links, so you need the audio or video as a file: a download from the body's website where it offers one, the recording the host saved in the video-meeting app, or your own recorder. Only upload recordings you have the right to use. If the file is longer than your plan's per-file length, cut it into parts at an agenda break; the long recording guide shows how, and the free audio file info tool tells you a file's length before you upload.

Finding the moment you need

1. Upload the file and wait for the transcript. A long meeting takes longer than a short clip, and when the server is busy it queues behind other files.
2. Search the text for the words you expect: the agenda item number, the name of the project, "motion", "second", "all in favor".
3. Use the timestamp next to the line to play that part of the recording and confirm what was said and who said it.
4. Copy the lines you need, with their times, into your notes or story. Export plain text, timestamped text or Markdown.

Speakers, names and the limits of a draft

A council meeting has more voices than the eight speaker labels a free account can separate, and members, staff and the public are easy to confuse, so do not rely on the labels to say who voted which way. Use the roll call and the official agenda to confirm names and spellings, and check every vote, number and quotation against the audio before it is published. Remote speakers on a conference line, a distant room microphone and several people talking at once are where words go missing. No accuracy figure is offered, and the transcript is not an official or certified record.

Privacy and posting

Open meetings are public, but a recording can also include residents who spoke at public comment and private details someone said aloud. Decide what you will post and follow your body's own records rules; they differ by state and by body. Uploading sends the audio to our server. Files from the no-account preview are deleted automatically, and with an account they stay until you delete them. See the privacy page.

Which plan fits

Without an account you can try one file at a time, up to 15 minutes and 25 MB, 3 tries a day, with nothing to sign up for. Pro is $9.99 a month for 600 transcription minutes a month (10 hours of audio), with files up to 500 MB and 120 minutes each. Pro+ is $19.99 a month for 2,500 minutes a month, files up to 1 GB and 180 minutes each, and priority processing when the queue is busy. Paid plans are billed monthly in US dollars with PayPal and can be cancelled from your Billing page; transcripts you already made are not deleted when a plan ends.

A meeting of two hours is 120 minutes, the length of a Pro file (120 minutes) and one fifth of Pro's 600 minutes a month; a recording of up to three hours fits Pro+'s 180 minutes per file. A longer recording has to be cut into parts. A reporter who follows one council that meets twice a month, for two to three hours each time, needs about 240 to 360 minutes a month.