Transcribe a French city council meeting and draft the minutes from text.
A French-language city council meeting in Canada can run 3 to 5 hours, and a 4-hour séance comes back here as French text in about 8 minutes. The first 20 minutes are free, and for a council that meets monthly, twelve 4-hour meetings, 2,880 minutes, fit on the $24 pack of 5,000 minutes.
What the séance becomes
Four hours of council debate, turned into a draft you can write minutes from.
The whole séance, one file
From the opening to the question period at the end, a meeting of up to 10 hours goes in as one file. Upload the recording on upload page, or paste the YouTube link when the council publishes its meetings there.
Numbers for the minutes
Amounts voted, by-law numbers read aloud, dates and addresses are listed in the brief. That list is where a clerk's draft of the minutes starts, to be checked against the recording before adoption.
Chapters as the agenda moves
The meeting divides into chapters as the agenda moves on, each with its start time, so the debate on one item can be found without replaying the evening.
Ask the séance what was voted
Ask the chat what was said about a zoning change and it answers from the transcript, quoting the passage and the time it was said.
Why council minutes take days
A four-hour meeting written up from memory and notes leaves holes.
✗ Minutes from notes and the replay
The clerk notes the votes; the debate stays on video.
- An evening of replay to verify a quote
- Question period summarised loosely
- Amounts noted wrong
- Services that cap file length
- Per-minute rates on long meetings
- Nothing residents can search
✓ A procès-verbal from the text
The full séance as French text, timestamped.
- A 4-hour meeting in about 8 minutes
- Paste a YouTube link or upload
- A séance up to 10 hours or 5 GB
- Elected members named in the brief
- Amounts and addresses listed
- Credits kept from one year to the next
Sample
A council meeting in French, as it comes back.
Written for this page as an illustration; it is not from any real municipality, council or member. The labels are stages of the séance, not names of members.
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 $6 (500 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
$6/500 min
8 hours of audio — $0.72 an hour. One-time — credits never expire.
- 500 minutes of audio
- All export formats
- Unlimited AI chat per transcript
- Executive summary & key quote
Best value
$12/2,000 min
33 hours of audio — $0.36 an hour. Credits never expire.
- 2,000 minutes of audio
- Priority queue
- All export formats
- Unlimited AI chat per transcript
Bulk pack
$24/5,000 min
83 hours of audio — $0.29 an hour. Credits never expire.
- 5,000 minutes of audio
- Priority queue
- API access for batch pipelines
- All export formats
FAQ
French council recordings, the common questions.
How long does a 4-hour séance take to come back?
About 8 minutes, and a 5-hour meeting about 10. That is roughly 2 minutes per hour of audio, and you can close the tab while it works. A council that records the committee of the whole separately can send that recording too, and each file gets its own summary and chapters.
What does a year of séances cost?
Twelve 4-hour meetings add up to 2,880 minutes, which the $24 pack of 5,000 minutes covers with 2,120 minutes to spare for special meetings and committees. A single 5-hour meeting, 300 minutes, fits the $6 pack of 500 minutes. A municipality that records every week may prefer the $19 a month Workspace.
Can I paste the link instead of downloading?
Yes when the meeting is on YouTube, Vimeo or Google Drive: paste the link and the recording is fetched from there. For a video on a municipal web player, download the file where the site allows it, then upload it.
Some residents speak English during question period. What happens?
The meeting is detected on its main language, French, and switches into English are handled. Both languages are on the list of 99 that are detected without a setting.
The meeting video is over 2 GB. Will it upload?
Yes once a pack is on the account: the limit is then 5 GB and 10 hours per file, so a 5-hour meeting needs no splitting. Before a pack, uploads stop at 2 GB. The audio track alone is far smaller and carries the same speech.
Which files come out, and who sees the séance?
TXT, DOCX, SRT, VTT and JSON; the DOCX is the easiest start for minutes and the SRT can caption the published video. Séance recordings are processed on our own servers and are never used for training.
Related
More for municipal recordings
Send last night's séance. Your first 20 minutes of séance free, a year of meetings from $24.
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