Transcription for genealogists family interviews and old tapes, as text.
A digitised 90-minute cassette or a long family interview comes back as text in about 3 minutes, with the names, places and dates that were said gathered in a brief for your research. A box of twelve 90-minute tapes is 1,080 minutes, which fits the $18 pack of 3,000 minutes, and the opening minutes are a free preview.
What family historians record
The relatives who remember are the source no archive holds.
New interviews
A visit to an aunt with a phone on the table, a video call with a cousin overseas, a reunion where the oldest generation tells stories. All of it uploads as a file, and an interview shared on YouTube or Google Drive can be pasted as a link.
Old tapes, digitised first
Transcription works on a digital file, so cassettes, microcassettes and reel-to-reel need to be played into a computer or sent to a digitising service first. Save each side as its own file, usually MP3 or WAV; a 45-minute cassette side as MP3 is small. Long digitised video goes through the main upload page, up to 10 hours or 5 GB.
Names, places and dates
The brief gathers the names, places, numbers and dates that were said, which turns a rambling afternoon into a list of leads: a great-grandmother's maiden name, a ship, a year, a town. Chapters mark where each relative starts a story, so you can find 'the part about the farm' without listening again.
The caution: memory is a lead, not a record
Old tapes add hiss and dropouts, and older relatives may mix languages or use place names that have since changed. Treat every name and date in the text as something to confirm against documents, and plan one review pass with the audio on the hardest tapes.
Where family tapes stall
A shoebox of cassettes and nobody who has time to listen to all of them.
✗ Tapes in a drawer
Recordings that might hold a missing name, never actually heard.
- Cassettes nobody has played in decades
- Typing up interviews by hand
- Names heard once and never written down
- Losing which tape held which story
- Short free tiers on long tapes
- A monthly plan for a one-off project
✓ Tapes as research notes
Each tape as text, with the leads pulled out.
- About 3 minutes per 90-minute tape
- Names and dates in the brief
- Chapters for each relative's story
- A chat to ask 'who mentioned the mill?'
- $18 for 3,000 minutes, no expiry
- DOCX and TXT for the family file
Sample
Part of a family interview, as text.
Illustrative only: written for this page and not from any family's recording.
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
Genealogists' questions, answered.
How long does a tape take to transcribe?
About 2 minutes per hour of audio. A 90-minute tape is ready in about 3 minutes; a whole box of twelve adds up to about 36 minutes of processing.
What does a box of tapes cost?
Packs start at $4 for 300 minutes. The opening minutes are a free preview, and credits never expire.
My cassettes are not digital. What do I do?
Digitise them first: a cassette deck connected to a computer, a USB cassette player, or a digitising service. Save each side as an audio file and upload it. The transcription works on the file, not the tape.
My grandparents spoke another language. Does that work?
99 languages are detected automatically. A recording that switches language is detected on its main language, so a tape that is mostly in one language with a few phrases in another comes back in the main one.
Does it identify which relative is speaking?
Relatives are named in the summary, key quotes and chapters when the recording introduces them. Saying names at the start of an interview makes this work far better.
Are family recordings kept private?
Recordings are transcribed on our own servers and are never used for training. Delete a recording whenever you choose, and ask living relatives before sharing their stories beyond the family.
Related
Related long recordings
Send the first tape. The opening minutes are a free preview.
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