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Scriptorium
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Transcribe qualitative research interviews

Interview studies produce hours of audio that have to become text before analysis. This page gives you a timestamped first draft with speaker labels. Consent, ethics approval and data protection stay your responsibility, and the draft needs checking before you code it.

Free preview: one file up to 15 minutes and 25 MB, 3 tries a day, no account needed.

Want to keep your transcripts? Create a free account

Decide where the audio may go before you upload

Your ethics board, your consent form and your data-management plan decide whether participant audio may be processed by an outside service. We make no claim that this site meets any particular regulation or board requirement, and you should not assume it does. The audio is uploaded to our server, kept with your account until you delete it (files from the no-account preview are removed automatically), and the privacy page has the details. If participants did not agree to that, do not upload.

Self-hosting for sensitive studies

When the protocol says recordings must stay inside your institution, run the software yourself instead of using the hosted site. The same transcription code runs on your own machine, so the audio never leaves it.

Speaker labels, verbatim and clean text

Speaker labels (up to eight speakers, with a free account) are worked out from the sound of voices; rename them to codes such as P01 and INT. In a focus group with more than eight people or similar voices, expect mistakes. Automatic text also tends to smooth false starts and fillers. If your method needs a strict verbatim transcript, with pauses, repeats and hesitations, listen to the audio and add them yourself; if clean text is enough, edit for readability and say in your methods what you did.

Pseudonymising

  • Replace participant names, workplaces and places in the edited transcript before it leaves your secure workspace.
  • Remember the audio itself identifies people by voice, so protect and delete it as your protocol says.
  • Keep the key linking codes to people apart from the transcripts.
  • Delete the uploaded file from your account when your protocol says to.

Drafts you review

Read every transcript against the audio at least once before analysis. Missed negations, swapped names and mis-heard technical terms can change meaning, and no accuracy figure is offered. Without an account one file can be up to 15 minutes and 25 MB. A free account lifts those per-file limits and keeps your transcripts in a library you can search, so for a full-length recording create one instead of cutting the file up.

How it works

  1. Add a recording

    Drop in a video or audio file, choose one from your device, or record from the microphone. Nothing to install.

  2. It transcribes

    Speech becomes timestamped text, with speaker labels when more than one person talks.

  3. Read, fix, export

    Click any line to correct it, then download TXT, subtitles, Markdown, JSON or CSV.

Questions

Is this compliant with GDPR or my ethics board's rules?
We make no such claim. Compliance depends on your consent process, your institution and how you handle the data.
Can I transcribe focus groups?
Yes, as a draft. Many overlapping voices are hard for any transcriber; see the focus-group guide.
Can I keep recordings off the cloud?
Yes, by self-hosting the software on your own hardware.
Does it work for interviews in other languages?
Yes, for the languages the site supports. Have a speaker of the language check the draft.
Is it free?
Yes — one recording up to 15 minutes and 25 MB with no account, up to 3 tries a day. A free account keeps your transcripts in a library and lifts the guest limits; the current limits and paid plans are on the pricing page.

Want your transcripts saved and longer files? Create a free account · See pricing · All use cases

Try it with your file

No account needed for a first transcript.

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