How do you transcribe council minutes from audio? Start from the whole meeting, not your notes.
Upload the council meeting recording as one file (up to 10 hours or 5 GB, with or without a pack) and a 3-hour meeting comes back in about 6 minutes, at roughly 2 minutes per audio hour, with chapters per agenda item and the figures, dates and motions that were said. The opening minutes are a free preview, and the $4 pack of 300 minutes covers the full 180-minute meeting with 120 minutes to spare.
From the chamber to the draft
Four steps from a meeting recording to minutes the clerk can work with.
Find the recording you already have
Most councils keep one of three things: an MP3 or WAV from the chamber sound desk, a video of the public stream, or a replay on YouTube. Paste a YouTube or Vimeo link and nothing needs downloading. Older meetings on cassette or MiniDisc have to be digitised first, then uploaded like any other audio file.
Upload it in one piece
Do not cut the meeting into agenda items. The upload box here takes files up to 500 MB; anything bigger carries on at the upload page, where the same 10-hour, 5 GB limit applies. A 3-hour MP3 is usually under 200 MB, so it rarely gets that far.
Read the chapters against the agenda
Chapters start where the discussion moves on, each with its timestamp, and they usually follow the order paper closely. The brief lists the decisions and takeaways, and the names, numbers and dates said are gathered in one list, so budget lines and adoption dates are easy to check.
Draft, check, then approve
Ask the chat which motions were moved and seconded, and it answers from the full transcript. Every quotation has a timestamp to replay before it goes into the record. The clerk still decides wording and what belongs in formal minutes; this is an AI transcript to work from, not a certified or official record.
Minutes by relistening
Why clerks stop scrubbing through the audio.
✗ Hand-written from the tape
The meeting runs three hours, and writing it up from the recording takes most of a working day.
- Rewinding to catch an amended motion
- Vote counts noted in the margin and lost
- A late item recorded from memory
- The livestream file too big for the tool
- Cutting the audio to fit a 25 MB limit
- Minutes ready a week after the meeting
✓ Drafted from the transcript
Every word of the session is searchable before the draft is written.
- About 6 minutes for a 3-hour session
- Agenda items as timestamped chapters
- Figures and dates collected in one list
- Motions found by asking the chat
- DOCX ready to edit into your template
- The original audio kept for disputes
Sample
Lines from a long council session.
Illustrative only: written for this page to show the shape of a transcript, not taken from any council's meeting.
Export
One transcript. Five clean formats.
Every pack exports all five — no format is held back for a higher tier.
Plain text
De-ummed paragraphs. Ready to paste.
SRT captions
Timed to the speech. Every video editor reads this.
WebVTT
HTML5 player + YouTube uploads.
Show notes
Formatted with chapters and pull-quotes.
Machine-readable
Timestamped text for your own tools.
Pricing
Honest pricing, no surprises.
A pack from $4 (300 minutes) opens the full transcript. After that, no subscription and no auto-renew — every tier is a one-time minute pack, and credits never expire. Buy once, use the minutes whenever you need them.
Casual pack
$4/300 min
5 hours of audio — $0.80 an hour. One-time — credits never expire.
- 300 minutes of audio
- All export formats
- AI chat over the whole transcript
- Executive summary & key quote
Best value
$18/3,000 min
50 hours of audio — $0.36 an hour. Credits never expire.
- 3,000 minutes of audio
- Summary, chapters and key quotes
- All export formats
- AI chat over the whole transcript
Bulk pack
$32/6,000 min
100 hours of audio — $0.32 an hour. Credits never expire.
- 6,000 minutes of audio
- Summary, chapters and key quotes
- API access for batch pipelines
- All export formats
FAQ
Council meeting recordings, answered.
Can the transcript become our official minutes?
It can become the draft. Minutes are a summary of decisions approved by the council, and the clerk still writes them in your format. The transcript, chapters and brief give the clerk the full session to work from, with a timestamp beside every line.
Our meetings are streamed. Do I need the file?
No. A YouTube or Vimeo replay link is enough, and Google Drive share links and folders work too. If your stream sits on another platform, download the recording and upload it. Video up to 5 GB uploads with or without a pack.
How much would a year of meetings cost?
Packs start at $4 for 300 minutes. Packs are one-time and credits never expire, so the balance carries into next year.
What about a budget session that runs past ten hours?
One file holds up to 10 hours or 5 GB. A marathon session longer than that goes up as two files, split at a recess, and each comes back with its own chapters.
Do I need consent to record?
Public meetings are often recorded as a matter of course, but closed sessions and staff discussions may need the consent that applies where you are. Check your own rules before recording anything that is not public.
Who can see the recordings?
Recordings are transcribed on our own servers and are never used for training. You can delete a meeting and its transcript at any time, and nothing joins the meeting itself; this works on the file afterwards.
Related
More on meeting recordings
Turn tonight's meeting into a draft. About 6 minutes for three hours.
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