Software
The new Word Transcribe feature of Microsoft is designed for students, journalists, and others
Microsoft adds today's web-based audio transcription feature in Word. Transcribe in Word will be presented for 365 subscribers in an online version of Word, which provides an easy way to transcribe audio automatically. Microsoft supports current audio files or the ability to record and automatically transcribe conversations directly within Word for the web.
When a conversation is transcribed, Microsoft AI separates each speaker and breaks up the conversation into sections that are easy to replay, edit and paste.
Transcribe also supports audio or video captured elsewhere with Mp3, WAV, M4A, or MP4 files supporting up to 200 MB. Obviously, processing time will change a lot when you upload separate audio, but it is a matter of seconds for transcription to complete if you recorded it within Word itself.
The transcription works by capturing audios from your computer, so that you can use them to transcribe meetings, calls or even videos from YouTube. Also, Word will capture your own microphone audio.
Microsoft is aimed at journalists who transcribe interviews, students who record lectures and anyone else who needs to easily transcribe and calls.
Transcribe initially launches on the web on Word, and plans later this year to bring the same feature to the Word for iOS and Android apps. English is the only languages supported right now, but it is reasonable to assume that it will expand to other languages as a result of Microsoft's transcript support work elsewhere. However, Microsoft restricts transcript to Microsoft 365 abonns, which are also limited monthly to five hours for uploading audio, without an opportunity to extend that transcription time.
This takes only 300 minutes per month, which is half the six hours offered monthly by competitors such as Otter.ai. Otter also provides a similar web interface for recording and transcribing calls in real time. I found in my own testing that the Word Transcribe feature of Microsoft captures audio at a higher quality than Otter, which allows you to listen back to certain transcription elements that need to be corrected. It is not compressed by Microsoft for Transcribe, rather it is captured in WAV file format and directly uploaded to your own OneDrive storage with the new 'Transcribed Files' folder.
It's hard to pick between Word and Otter here, but I think that this new transcribe feature makes moving from an audio file in a document quicker if you're used to working with Word. You can also take notes and insert some of your transcript when it's finished. The only disadvantage is that it is available for the web on Word only, and not on Word's Windows and MacOS desktop versions. For this particular feature, Microsoft appears to be focused on the web and mobile so we probably won't see Transcribe appearing any time soon in regular Word desktops.
