Transcribe a Tagalog FGD recording with each participant's view kept.
A 2-hour focus group discussion in Tagalog or Taglish is transcribed in about 4 minutes, with participants named in the summary and key quotes and a chapter for each guide question. Start with the first 20 minutes free; four FGDs of 2 hours fit the $6 pack of 500 minutes.
For researchers and NGO teams
An FGD with ten participants is the hardest recording to take notes from, and the most expensive to have typed.
The group's view in the summary
The brief says where the group agreed, where it split, and what the facilitator should follow up. Participants are named in it when the facilitator addresses them by name.
Quotes for the report
Key quotes come with the participant named and the timestamp, ready for the findings section of a research paper or a donor report.
Guide questions as chapters
Each time the facilitator moves to the next question in the guide, a new chapter usually begins, so several FGDs can be compared question by question.
Every site in one folder
Share the Drive folder holding the FGDs from each barangay or school as a single link. A large camera file can continue on the upload page.
Why FGDs are hard
Ten people, overlapping answers, two hours, and a documenter writing as fast as they can.
✗ Working from the documenter's notes
In an FGD the strongest voices fill the notes. Quiet participants, side comments in Tagalog and the exact words of a key answer are what get lost, and those are often the findings a funder asks about.
- Notes that favour the loudest participant
- Overlapping answers nobody wrote down
- Quotes paraphrased instead of recorded
- Two hours of audio per site to replay
- No common structure across sites
- Typing bills that grow with every FGD
✓ The same FGD here
The whole discussion comes back as text, already summarised and divided by guide question.
- Where the group agreed and where it split
- Quotes with each participant named
- Chapters per guide question
- The questions the group answered
- Four 2-hour FGDs on the $6 pack
- DOCX ready for your coding software
Sample output
Participants disagreeing, in their own words.
Illustration only: these lines were composed for this page and do not come from a real FGD, community or organisation.
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
Tagalog FGD recordings, answered.
How long does a 2-hour FGD take to transcribe?
About 4 minutes, based on roughly 2 minutes of processing per audio hour. Six FGDs from one field week take about 24 minutes in total, so the team can debrief from text the next morning.
What does a whole study cost?
Four FGDs of 2 hours, 480 minutes, fit the $6 pack of 500 minutes. Twelve FGDs are 1,440 minutes and fit the $12 pack of 2,000 minutes. A multi-province study with forty FGDs of 2 hours, 4,800 minutes, fits the $24 pack of 5,000 minutes.
Do participants' names appear in the transcript?
Speakers are identified and named in the summary, the key quotes and the chapters, where the recording makes the name clear. Many research teams use codes like P1 and P2 for participants, which the summary then follows.
Is the recording too big, and should I split it?
One file can be up to 10 hours or 5 GB, so a 2-hour FGD always fits; do not split it. Before your first pack, uploads go up to 2 GB, and a larger video starts once a pack is on the account.
What if the FGD is held in a regional language?
Tagalog, Filipino and English are detected automatically, including switches between them. Waray, Ilocano and Kapampangan FGDs are supported too, but those languages are a fast first draft; schedule one review pass with someone who speaks them.
Which exports are there, and what about consent and privacy?
DOCX and TXT import into qualitative software; SRT, VTT and JSON are also available. On the consent form you can state this plainly: recordings are transcribed on our own servers and are never used for training.
Related
More for group recordings.
Upload the FGD. Read what each voice said.
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