Meeting transcription is here

We’re excited to announce that our new automatic webcast transcription and subtitling service is now here for all Connect clients. 

In September, we told you about our partnership with Cedat85, the leading providers of automatic speech recognition technologies. Since then, our development team have been seriously busy. From this month, every webcast will have a full transcription and subtitling available to view on archive, behind our secure admin area.

A fully interactive transcription service

We’re really proud of the transcript player, which integrates smoothly with Connect. It features:

– Live scrolling so that the transcript text follows the video
– The ability to jump to agenda points or speakers
– Search function: look for key words or speaker names so can you view the video content which interests you
– High levels of accuracy
– Downloadable PDF of the full meeting transcript

 What are the benefits of transcription and subtitling?

Our user research has shown that Democratic Services officers spend a lot of time dealing with FOI requests from the public and media, and even more time writing up minutes of meetings for public release. We think this feature means a faster and more effective way of dealing with these tasks. It’s really simple to use: just view the transcript via the action button in your Connect admin area.

Subtitles improve accessibility for people with sensory impairment or English as a second language. They can be turned on at the click of a button in the Connect Admin area. The transcription search function also allows viewers to find the content which is of interest to them.  It all adds up to deeper engagement and more transparency.

This is the first release of the transcription software. Over the next couple of months we will also be introducing a professional correction service. This will enable clients to opt for the transcript accuracy to be professionally improved before public release.

If you’d like to find our more about this development, please get in touch. You can read more about this feature here.