Transcribe long interviews recorded on a Tascam DR-100MKIII two good mics in, one searchable record out.
A 2.5-hour interview recorded on a Tascam DR-100MKIII comes back as text in about 5 minutes after you upload the WAV or MP3 from its SD card, and one file can run to 10 hours or 5 GB. The first 20 minutes are free on a first visit; one interview uses 150 of the 500 minutes in the $6 pack, and a twelve-interview project fits the $12 pack of 2,000 minutes.
From the interview bag
People buy the DR-100MKIII for the XLR inputs and the clean preamps. That care shows up in the transcript.
Card to computer
The recorder writes to an SD card. Either connect the DR-100MKIII to a computer with its USB cable, where it normally appears as a drive, or put the card in a reader. Find the take by its time and date, copy it off, and drag it onto this page. If a colleague holds the recorder, a Google Drive share link pasted in the box works too.
A long WAV and the 2 GB line
At 48 kHz and 24-bit, a stereo WAV grows by roughly 1.04 GB an hour, so a 2.5-hour interview lands near 2.6 GB. That is fine once a pack is on the account; before that, uploads stop at 2 GB. At 44.1 kHz and 16-bit the same talk is about 1.6 GB, and an MP3 copy is smaller still.
Two files from one take
Depending on how the recorder is set, one interview can leave two files, for example a safety copy recorded at a lower level. Pick the one where the loudest laugh does not clip and upload that. Uploading both simply gives you the same words twice and spends minutes twice.
What a long interview turns into
The brief gives the thesis of the conversation and its takeaways, chapters mark each topic with a timestamp, and every name, place and date that was said is listed for checking. Speakers are named in the summary, key quotes and chapters, and the chat finds the story about the move without replaying an hour.
Long interviews without help
The recording took an afternoon. Typing it up used to take the rest of the week.
✗ The usual route
A great recording sits untranscribed because the file is heavy.
- Hi-res WAVs refused by small upload boxes
- Interviews cut into chunks to fit a limit
- Quotes found by scrubbing the timeline
- Place names misheard and never checked
- A dozen interviews and no index of topics
- Safety copies uploaded by mistake
✓ With WhipScribe
The card's file goes in as recorded.
- WAV or MP3 accepted up to 5 GB
- A 2.5-hour talk back in about 5 minutes
- Topic chapters with timestamps
- Names and dates pulled out for review
- First 20 minutes free on a first visit
- Twelve interviews on one $12 pack
Sample
A life-history interview, part way through the second hour.
Illustrative only: written for this page, not taken from a real interview. The timestamps show a 2.5-hour conversation.
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
Tascam DR-100MKIII recordings, answered.
How long does a 2.5-hour DR-100MKIII interview take?
About 5 minutes. Processing runs at roughly 2 minutes per hour of audio, so a short 40-minute follow-up is back in under 2.
What does a twelve-interview project cost?
Twelve interviews of 2.5 hours are 1,800 minutes. That is too much for the $6 pack of 500 and fits the $12 pack of 2,000 with 200 minutes left over. Packs are one-time purchases and the minutes never expire, so a project that runs for months is fine.
My WAV is over 2 GB. Will it upload?
Yes once a pack is on the account: a file can then be up to 10 hours or 5 GB. Before the first pack, the limit is 2 GB, so either buy the pack first or upload an MP3 copy of the same interview.
Should I record WAV or MP3 for interviews?
Keep WAV if the recording is also your archive. For transcription the words come back the same from either, and MP3 keeps a long day of interviews to a few hundred megabytes. The menu names vary by firmware, so check the manual for the exact setting.
What if the interview is not in English?
The language is detected automatically from 99 options. A narrator who switches between two languages is transcribed on the main one, and English words dropped into the speech are kept.
Which files can I download, and who sees the audio?
TXT, DOCX, SRT, VTT and JSON. Recordings are transcribed on our own servers and are never used for training. There is no app or connection between the recorder and WhipScribe; you upload the file yourself.
Related
Other recorders and long interviews
Copy the interview off the card and drop it in. The first 20 minutes are on us.
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