Using the Transcript feature in Soundtrap
I train a lot of teachers. I mean a LOT. When you do a lot of trainings you tend to get a sense of what features are really impressive to teachers when you demonstrate them. In the past 4 months, the ONE feature that I know will blow teachers away when I show it is the Transcript feature in Soundtrap for Education. Every single time I show it I can hear a collective gasp, multiple people whispering Oh My God, and the universal sign for “mind blown”. It really is that cool.
To access the Transcripts feature, you need to open a Podcast project in the Soundtrap for Education Studio on launch. Only podcast projects can access this feature. Once you have launched a podcast project, add a track for voice. You can add as many voice tracks as you’d like - the transcript tool will work on every track. After you have recorded your vocal track, click on the transcript button in the bottom left corner of the studio interface.
Once you click the button, you will then see a drop down menu appear next to it labeled “Select voice track”. Click on the drop down menu and select the voice track that you would like to transcribe, and then click Transcribe.
Next, you’ll get a pop up window that asks you to confirm that you would like to transcribe your chosen track. Click Confirm to start the transcription process.
Depending on how long your track is, you will see your voice track converted into text. This text is now in the Interactive Transcript stage - and WOW does it get cool from here. What interactive means is that you can actually highlight any text that you would like to remove from the recording, delete it, and almost as if by magic, it will be deleted from the original track. You can also use the Copy, Cut, Paste to rearrange the text of your voice track. If you find transcription errors, you can also make corrections, but it won’t change the audio. Here is a great tutorial video that shows this entire process in action.
There are some incredible uses of the interactive transcription tool in Soundtrap for Education. First, if you or your students make errors while reading a script or recording their vocal tracks, they can use the interactive transcript tool to edit it later. For example, students (and teachers) tend to use filler words like um, ah, and like constantly even though they may not know they are doing it. Rather than re-recording the entire track, simple highlight the words you want to remove and click delete. I have used this feature MANY times when recording and editing my own podcast episodes.
The transcript feature can be used to copy the spoken voice track and then pasted into any other program - like a word processor. Imagine that! You can speak your next term paper out loud, and then copy the transcript into Microsoft Word or Google Docs so that you can hand it in! It can also be used with ESL students, early language learners, story telling projects, etc. It is an incredibly useful tool and I strongly recommend trying it out for yourself. If you don’t currently have a Soundtrap for Education account, just sign up HERE for free 30-day access and try out the Transcribe tool for yourself!