Otter: Real-Time Transcription App with Automatic Speech Recognition
Most of us are aware of the huge complexity and multiple challenges involved in the transcription process. It requires tremendous hard work as well. This is precisely why most people who need transcription prefer to opt for professional transcription services. What happens if this whole lot of complexities and the demanding task is completely taken care of by a real-time transcription tool? Yes, that is exactly what Otter offers.
Free but not forever
Otter transcription service now comes for free, but the company has already expressed to charge a subscription fee in the near future. Though the details of the pricing are still unknown, we can expect it to charge a fee only with versions free of commercial ads.
How it works?
Basically, Otter is a kind of transcription service that depends heavily on the automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology to transcript the voices in real time. It is extremely easy to use and only requires you to press the record button. When you start speaking you can see your words appearing in the app. When processing the transcription, it adds punctuation throughout the text. It can also separate different speakers. Sometimes, for correction, it also listens to the playbacks where necessary.
Fully fledged mobile transcript
Otter comes with respective mobile apps for both Android and iOS platforms. Both allow easy setup requiring you to download the apps and create accounts for each one of them. You can reach for navigation just by tapping on one of the five icons shown on the menu at the bottom. You have five menu options, such as Dashboard, Conversations, Record, Groups, and Settings.
The iPhone app of the Otter looks similar to the Android app for the service except for just a few enhancements. From the outset, it seems Otter made a concerted and comprehensive effort to deliver a consistent user experience through both the apps.
Web interface
Otter also offers a dedicated web interface apart from the mobile apps. It also comes with the similar clean and modern design just like its mobile apps. The menu buttons are fewer here. There is no search bar and help sections at the time we tested it. According to some, the web interface also has some performance issues and works a bit sluggish compared to its mobile apps.
Accuracy of Otter
When it comes to the accuracy of the transcription services provided by Otter, the results are awesome. Otter can easily transcript a conference call without major mistakes. If the voices are heard clearly, Otter most of the times provide a perfect output. The automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology is well equipped to transport the sound to the transcript with least minimum errors.
When it comes to the speed if Otter took around six minutes to finish a transcription, other services could have done it in just three to four minutes. On the other hand, the fastest human-based transcription service Rev took nearly an hour to complete the same task.
To evaluate the errors scrupulously, you can choose a few paragraphs. Now based on the word count calculate the percentage of errors for each transcription service. A missing word or an extra word transcribed will also be considered as errors. In gross comparison, Otter performs better than other automatic transcription services in regard to accuracy. But compared to human-based transcription it falls short of its performance. Though it varies from one type of task to the other.
In a nutshell,
Lastly, transcription comes as an important service when you want to transform an important conversation into valuable and useful data. Whenever you feel to record a conversation and make it usable as a transcript the instant automatic transcription apps come to aid. Otter with its consistent focus on real-time transcription and sharing process becomes invaluable for such needs.
After rigorous testing of many transcription services, it seems to do far better than most other transcription apps presently at hand. In accuracy, it may not compete with human-based services such as Rev, but then the speech recognition based automated transcription make it stand out. The future of transcription is certainly is in real time transcription services that use latest speech recognition technology and Otter utilised it to the full swing.
Dhruvil is a Writer & Marketeer for Nimblechapps, joined in December 2014, based out of Sydney, Australia. He has worked briefly as a Branding and Digital Marketing Manager before moving to Australia. At Nimblechapps, he worked on Social Media Marketing, Branding, Email Marketing and Blogging. Dhruvil studies Business at University of Western Sydney, and also handles Operations for the company in Australia.