Transcribe Afrikaans oral history for the family.

About 8 minutes. A 2-hour session takes about 4, since processing runs at roughly 2 minutes per hour of audio. A whole afternoon of stories is readable before the visit is over, so the family can ask follow-up questions while everyone is still together.

Two 4-hour sessions are 480 minutes on the $6 pack of 500 minutes. Three sessions of 3 hours are 540 minutes, just past that, so the $12 pack of 2,000 minutes is the one to buy and leaves room for other relatives. Packs are in US dollars, and credits stay on the account for later visits. A family history society recording several elders will usually need the $24 pack of 5,000 minutes, which covers more than twenty 4-hour sessions.

Uncompressed CD-quality WAV runs at 1,411 kbps, which is about 635 MB per hour, so 4 hours is about 2.5 GB. That is under the 5 GB per-file ceiling but over the 2 GB allowed before a first pack; the file starts once a pack is on the account, or convert it to MP3 first. MP3 at 128 kbps is about 57.6 MB per hour, so the same 4 hours would be roughly 230 MB.

No. Detection follows the main language of the recording, and the English passages are handled. Check family names and place names against the audio, since those are the words people most want right. Older relatives often use family nicknames and old place names, which are transcribed as heard and are worth confirming with the family.

Yes, once a cassette is played into a computer or recorder and saved as an audio file, it uploads like any other recording. Each file can be up to 10 hours long. Cassettes recorded at slow speed or with hiss still transcribe, though the clearer the transfer, the cleaner the text.

Families download TXT, DOCX, SRT, VTT or JSON. Most families print the DOCX and keep the TXT as a plain copy alongside the audio. A printed transcript beside the audio file gives the next generation two ways to keep the stories.