Transcribe long interviews recorded with a RØDE smartLav+ the file is on your phone, not in the mic.
A 75-minute interview recorded through a RØDE smartLav+ comes back as text in about 2.5 minutes once you upload the file your phone app saved, up to 10 hours or 5 GB per file. The first 20 minutes are free on a first visit; six 75-minute interviews use 450 of the $6 pack's 500 minutes, and a season of twenty, 1,500 minutes, fits the $12 pack of 2,000.
From the phone in your pocket
The smartLav+ has no memory of its own. Whichever app you recorded with holds the interview.
Find the file the app made
The smartLav+ plugs into the phone's headset socket, or into an adapter, and the phone does the recording. A voice-memo app usually saves an M4A, a camera app saves a video, and RØDE's own recording apps have their own export screen; the options move between versions, so look under share or export. Send the file to your computer, or put it in Google Drive and paste the share link here.
Size is rarely the problem
Compressed phone audio is light: at a common 128 kbps, 75 minutes is around 70 MB, well inside the 500 MB this page's box takes. Video recorded with the lav attached is far heavier; files over 500 MB continue on the upload page, up to 10 hours or 5 GB, and anything over 2 GB starts once the first pack is on the account.
Keep the long take in one piece
A phone can interrupt a long recording: an incoming call, a low-battery prompt, an app pushed to the background. Airplane mode and a full charge keep a 75-minute interview in one file. If it split anyway, upload the parts in order; each part's timestamps start again at zero.
What comes back from an interview
A brief with the thesis and the main takeaways, chapters with timestamps for each topic, the names, numbers and dates that came up, and the questions the conversation answers. The interviewee is named in the summary, key quotes and chapters, and a chat over the transcript finds a quote without replaying the audio.
Phone interviews without text
The lav made the voice clear. The quotes were still typed off a phone speaker.
✗ The usual route
A clean recording stuck on a phone.
- Interviews scattered across three phone apps
- Audio played at half speed to type quotes
- Long takes broken by a call or a notification
- Place names spelled from memory
- No way to search twenty interviews at once
- Video copies too heavy to email
✓ With WhipScribe
The phone's file turns into searchable text.
- M4A, MP3 or the video, uploaded as it is
- 75 minutes back in about 2.5
- Topics as timestamped chapters
- Names and dates pulled out for checking
- First 20 minutes free
- A twenty-interview season on the $12 pack
Sample
A long street interview recorded on a phone lav.
Illustrative only: written for this page, not taken from a real recording. The timestamps show a 75-minute interview.
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
RØDE smartLav+ recordings, answered.
How long does a 75-minute smartLav+ interview take?
About 2.5 minutes, since each hour of audio takes roughly 2 to process. A three-hour block of back-to-back interviews is back in about 6.
Where does my smartLav+ recording end up?
On the phone, inside whichever app recorded it, because the lav itself stores nothing. Export or share it from that app; voice-memo apps usually give an M4A and camera apps a video file. A Google Drive share link pasted in the box works as well.
What does a season of interviews cost?
Twenty interviews of 75 minutes are 1,500 minutes, which fit the $12 pack of 2,000 with 500 to spare. Up to six of them fit the $6 pack of 500. Packs are one-time purchases and the minutes never expire, so a season recorded over months is fine.
Does WhipScribe work inside RØDE's apps?
No. There is no integration, plugin or bot in RØDE's apps or on the phone. You export the file and upload it here, or paste a link to it.
What if the interview switches language?
The language is detected automatically from 99. A conversation that moves between two languages is transcribed on its main one, and English terms said inside the speech are kept. Music and street noise are not transcribed; the speech is.
Which exports come back, and who hears the audio?
TXT, DOCX, SRT, VTT and JSON. Recordings are transcribed on our own servers and are never used for training.
Related
More clip-on mics and long interviews
Share the interview off your phone and drop it here. Your first 20 minutes cost nothing.
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