How do I transcribe hours of thesis interviews? All of them, in one afternoon.
Upload each interview as its own file, or paste a Google Drive folder link holding the whole set: every file can run up to 10 hours or 5 GB (with or without a pack), and each is transcribed at about 2 minutes per audio hour. Packs start at $4 for 300 minutes, and credits never expire.
Planning the whole dataset
Treat the interviews as one project, not fifteen chores.
Name files before you upload
Rename each recording to its participant code, such as P07_2026-03-14, before it leaves your laptop. The transcript inherits the name, the Library sorts cleanly, and real names never appear in a file list your supervisor might see over your shoulder.
Send the set in one go
Put the interviews in a Google Drive folder shared by link and paste the folder link, or drop the files one after another on the upload page. Each recording becomes a separate transcript with its own clock starting at 00:00:00, which matches how you will cite them.
Budget the minutes up front
Add up the lengths before buying. Packs start at $4 for 300 minutes. Up to 3,000 minutes, the $18 pack; a large multi-site study goes on the $32 pack of 6,000 minutes. Credits do not expire, so a second round of interviews next term draws on the same balance.
Check, then code
Read each transcript while the audio plays at a faster speed, fix names and technical terms, and pseudonymise as you go. The brief and chapters point to the themes in each interview, and speakers are named in the summary and key quotes, which speeds the first pass of coding.
The manual route
Why typing a dataset by hand eats a semester.
✗ Hours of typing per hour of talk
Manual transcription of qualitative interviews commonly takes several hours of typing for each hour recorded, before any analysis starts.
- Weeks of typing before coding
- Interviews piling up unprocessed
- Paid typists at per-minute rates
- Inconsistent formats across files
- Hunting for a quote by ear
- Deadlines slipping into the next term
✓ Your time goes into checking
The machine does the first draft; you do the listening pass that research actually requires.
- Minutes per interview, not days
- 1,125 minutes on the $18 pack
- Folder links for the whole set
- Timestamps for every quote
- Speakers named in the summary
- DOCX and TXT for analysis tools
Sample output
An interview transcript ready to check.
Illustrative and invented: no participant or study is quoted. The interviewer and participant appear as plain lines with times.
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
Thesis interview transcription, answered.
How long does a full set take?
Each interview takes about 2 minutes per audio hour once it has arrived, so fifteen 75-minute interviews finish within the same hour you send them. The real time cost is your checking pass, which is shorter when you start from a timestamped draft.
What will my interviews cost?
Add the minutes. Packs start at $4 for 300 minutes, and credits never expire. Fifteen at 75 minutes, 1,125 minutes, fit the $18 pack of 3,000 minutes. Forty one-hour interviews, 2,400 minutes, need the $18 pack of 3,000 minutes. One-time purchases, no subscription.
Will my ethics committee accept this?
That is their decision, and the information they usually want is factual: recordings are transcribed on our own servers and are never used for training, and each recording and transcript can be deleted from your Library when your data plan says so. Describe that in your data management section.
Are the interviewer and participant told apart?
Speakers are identified and named in the summary, key quotes and chapters. The transcript lines themselves carry timestamps, and most researchers add their own I: and P: markers during the checking pass, which they would do anyway to match the department style.
Some interviews are in another language. Is that fine?
Yes. 99 languages are detected automatically, and an interview that switches between two languages is detected on its main language, with the switched passages handled. The transcript is in the language spoken; translate quotes yourself so the wording is yours.
One interview is a 3 GB video call. Will it upload?
Before the first pack, files go up to 5 GB, as they do with a pack on the account. A video call saved as MP4 often has an audio-only twin such as an M4A, which is far smaller and gives the same words.
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