A Professional Touch Typing Service

Tips and Frequently Asked Questions


How long does it take to transcribe a one-hour recording?

There is no definite answer to this due to a lot of variances. However, transcription industry standards dictate that 10 to 15 minutes of speech should take one hour to transcribe. Therefore a 60 minute recording should take approximately 4 hours to transcribe.

What are these variances that can affect how long it takes?

There are are a number of variances. The most common being:

The quality of the recording:

Poor quality recording is often due to the recording equipment, recording volume, type of microphone and in the case of analogue recorders, the brand of tape used.

The clarity of the voices:

Poor clarity of the voices is most likely to be due to the speaker being too far away from the microphone, or by speaking too low, or too fast. If it's difficult to hear it, it's difficult to transcribe it!

Choice of recording environment:

Background noise is another major factor of a poor quality recording. This is because the choice of recording venue has been poorly chosen. The microphone has often done its job well, picking up every single noise, roar or background chatter. Think about dictating in an environment where external noises are kept to a minimum to avoid this variance!

Number of people speaking:

Some recordings involving multiple speakers take longer to transcribe due to the tendency of speakers to interrupt and overlap or by the difficulty of identifying a single speaker amongst the many.
There are various other factors which may influence transcribing times, and these can be regional or foreign accents, specialist and / or technical terminology, microphone positioning, and speed of speech.