Transcribe oral histories recorded in a nursing home a life story, kept in writing.
A recording made in a nursing home, such as a 90-minute conversation with a resident about their life, is transcribed at about 2 minutes per audio hour, so it is text in roughly 3 minutes. The first 20 minutes are free, and ten such sessions, 900 minutes, fit the $12 pack of 2,000 minutes.
Recording a life story
Families often start recording too late. When they do, the recordings deserve to be read.
Ask first, then record
Ask the resident, and family where it is appropriate, before recording, and follow the home's own rules about recording on its premises. Explain who will hear the recording and what will be done with the text.
Quiet voices, busy rooms
Older voices can be soft, and lounges have televisions and trolleys. Put the phone close to the speaker, on a cloth rather than a hard table, and choose a quiet room or the resident's own room if you can. Clearer audio gives a cleaner transcript. Short sessions of an hour or so also tire the speaker less than one long afternoon.
A series of visits, costed
Ten 90-minute sessions with one grandparent come to 900 minutes, which fits the $12 pack of 2,000. A home's reminiscence project with 30 residents at an hour each, 1,800 minutes, fits the same pack.
Names, places and dates
Alongside the transcript you get the places, years and names mentioned, chapters that follow each memory, and the questions the conversation answers. Family members are named in the summary when they introduce themselves.
Why recordings need a written version
The voice matters. So does being able to find the story about the farm.
✗ Files on a phone
Hours of conversation, labelled by date, that nobody finds the time to replay.
- Stories you cannot find again
- Relatives abroad who never hear them
- Place names nobody can spell
- Notes started and abandoned
- Recordings lost with an old phone
- Grandchildren who will want to read them later
✓ A written life story
Each visit becomes text with chapters, ready to print, share and keep.
- About 3 minutes for 90 minutes of talk
- First 20 minutes free
- Chapters for each memory
- Places, years and names listed out
- Family members named in the summary
- DOCX for a printed booklet
Sample
An afternoon conversation with a resident.
Illustrative lines written for this page; no real resident, family or care home is represented.
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
- AI chat over the whole 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
- Summary, chapters and key quotes
- All export formats
- AI chat over the whole transcript
Bulk pack
$24/5,000 min
83 hours of audio — $0.29 an hour. Credits never expire.
- 5,000 minutes of audio
- Summary, chapters and key quotes
- API access for batch pipelines
- All export formats
FAQ
Nursing home recordings: common questions.
How long does a 90-minute visit take to transcribe?
About 3 minutes, at roughly 2 minutes per audio hour. A full afternoon of 3 hours takes around 6.
What will ten visits cost?
Ten 90-minute sessions are 900 minutes, more than the $6 pack's 500, so the $12 pack of 2,000 is the one; it leaves 1,100 minutes for more visits. Three shorter visits of 90 minutes, 270 minutes, fit the $6 pack of 500.
My grandmother speaks her first language, not English. Does that work?
99 languages are detected automatically, so there is no setting to choose. If she moves between two languages, the recording is detected on the main one; read the other passages with a relative who speaks it. Names of people and villages from long ago may need correcting by someone in the family.
What if the television was on in the background?
Speech close to the phone usually comes through; the further away the speaker and the louder the room, the more gets missed. Music from the television is not transcribed.
Is this a medical or care record?
No. It is for family and oral-history use, not for care notes or clinical records.
Who can hear these recordings?
Recordings are transcribed on our own servers and are never used for training. You can delete the file and transcript once you have downloaded them. Share the transcript with the family members you choose by downloading the DOCX or TXT.
Related
Related oral history and family pages
Send the conversation. A life story, kept in writing.
Transcribe an oral historyOperated by Neugence Technology Pvt. Ltd. · contact@whipscribe.com · Security · Privacy · Terms