Transcribe recordings made on a festival stage the talks, not the soundcheck.
A day of talks and panels recorded on a festival stage often runs six hours, and a 6-hour recording comes back as text in about 12 minutes. The first 20 minutes are free, a $6 pack of 500 minutes covers the 360-minute day, and music between sessions is not transcribed.
What an outdoor stage does to sound
Speakers, a crowd and a band two fields away, all in one file.
Take the desk feed if you can
The sound desk records what went through the microphones, which is the cleanest source for a talk. A phone in the crowd hears the PA from a distance, along with wind, applause and whatever the next stage is playing. Both work; the desk feed needs far less checking.
Music is skipped, speech is kept
Walk-on music, a band soundchecking next door and the set that follows the panel are not transcribed. The speech is. If a talk happens over background music, the words still come through as long as the voice sits above it.
A stage day, in minutes
Six hours of programme is 360 minutes, which leaves at least 140 on the $6 pack. A two-day weekend on the same stage is 720 minutes and belongs on the $12 pack of 2,000 minutes. Processing runs at about 2 minutes per audio hour, so the day is text before the evening set ends.
What the festival team publishes
Each session becomes a chapter with its own timestamps, and the brief lists the takeaways from every panel. Panellists are named in the summary, key quotes and chapters when the host introduces them, which makes a session write-up or a quote card straightforward.
After the festival
Most stage recordings are never watched again after the weekend.
✗ Left as a recording
A long stage file sits on a drive until next year's programme is announced.
- Hours of video with music between talks
- Panel quotes remembered loosely
- No session write-ups for sponsors
- Captions only on the clips someone cut
- Audience questions lost to applause
- Nothing searchable on the festival site
✓ Turned into text
Every talk on the stage becomes something you can read and quote.
- Roughly 12 minutes for the whole day
- Sessions as chapters
- Panellists named in the summary
- Music left out automatically
- SRT and VTT for the video edit
- A free first 20 minutes
Sample
A panel on a festival stage, as it comes back.
This sample is illustrative and was written for this page, not taken from a real festival or panel. The gap between lines is where music played.
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
Festival stage recordings, the common questions.
How long does a 6-hour stage recording take?
About 12 minutes. The rate is close to 2 minutes per audio hour, and stretches of music between talks add nothing to the text.
What does a festival weekend cost?
One 6-hour stage day is 360 minutes and fits the $6 pack of 500 minutes. Two days on one stage, 720 minutes, fit the $12 pack of 2,000 minutes. The first 20 minutes are free if you are new here.
Will it transcribe the songs?
No. Music, sound effects and crowd noise are not transcribed; the speech is. Plan on the talks, interviews and announcements coming through, not lyrics.
The stage was filmed in 4K. How big can the file be?
Up to 5 GB or 10 hours per file. Before a pack, uploads up to 2 GB are accepted, and a larger file starts once a pack is on the account. If the stream went to YouTube, paste the link and nothing needs uploading.
Should I upload each session separately?
Either way works. One file for the stage day gives one document with chapters, while one file per session gives each speaker their own transcript. A stage recorded for more than 10 hours goes in as two files.
Which languages and exports are supported, and is it private?
Speech in 99 languages is recognised without a setting. Downloads come as TXT, DOCX, SRT, VTT and JSON. Recordings are transcribed on our own servers and are never used for training.
Related
Other live recordings
Send the stage recording. Read the opening 20 minutes free.
Transcribe my festival stageOperated by Neugence Technology Pvt. Ltd. · contact@whipscribe.com · Security · Privacy · Terms