Transcribe zoning hearings in the United States.
To transcribe a zoning or planning hearing in the US, paste the meeting's YouTube link or upload the file: a 6-hour hearing comes back in about 12 minutes, with every public comment timestamped. That hearing is 360 minutes on the $6 pack of 500, and the first 20 minutes are free.
For residents, applicants, planners and reporters
Hours of hearing, with the minute each neighbor spoke.
Public comment you can cite
Speakers at the podium usually give their name before they talk, and the summary and key quotes carry those names with timestamps. A resident's objection, or an applicant's promise, is a link to one second of the video.
One chapter per application
A long agenda of variances, rezonings and site plans comes back with a chapter for each item. The vote, the conditions attached and the next date on the calendar are in the brief.
A year of hearings priced
A board that meets monthly for 4 hours uses 2,880 minutes a year, inside the $24 pack of 5,000. One 6-hour hearing, 360 minutes, sits on the $6 pack with 140 left.
From the meeting video
Many towns post hearings to YouTube, and that link goes straight in, live replays included. A file from the town's video portal is downloaded and uploaded through upload page.
Why hearings are hard to use
The project was approved at hour five, after forty speakers.
✗ A six-hour video
Minutes summarise; the video holds every word but cannot be searched.
- Hours of video to scrub
- Minutes posted weeks later
- Comments summarised in a line
- Conditions of approval unclear
- Nothing to quote with a time
- Long streams cut off elsewhere
✓ The hearing as text
Transcript, brief and chapters from one link or file.
- A 6-hour hearing in about 12 min
- Each comment at its timestamp
- Items on the agenda as chapters
- Board members named in quotes
- Addresses and figures listed
- DOCX for a letter or appeal
Sample
Public comment on a variance.
Illustrative lines written for this page; no real town, board, applicant or resident is quoted.
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
Zoning hearings: frequent questions.
How long does a 6-hour zoning hearing take?
Around 12 minutes; the pace is roughly 2 minutes per hour of audio. A 3-hour planning commission meeting is back in about 6. The proof page at /proof/long-files shows 2.48 hours transcribed in 200 seconds.
What does a year of hearings cost?
Monthly 4-hour hearings are 2,880 minutes a year on the $24 pack of 5,000. A single 6-hour hearing is 360 minutes on the $6 pack of 500, and a few hearings under 2,000 minutes fit the $12 pack. Prices are in USD. Credits never expire, so a neighborhood group can buy once and use the minutes across several hearings.
Is this the official record of the zoning hearing?
No. It is an AI transcript with timestamps for working from, not a certified or official transcript. The approved minutes, or a transcript ordered from the body, remain the record. A hearing longer than 10 hours, rare but possible, goes up as two files split at a recess.
The video is large. Will it upload?
One file can be up to 10 hours or 5 GB, and before the first pack up to 2 GB. A 6-hour video at 1 Mbps is 2.7 GB (125,000 bytes a second times 21,600 seconds), so buy a pack first or upload just the audio. A YouTube link needs no upload. Use the transcript to prepare comments, letters or an appeal, and cite the official record where one is required.
Some residents spoke Spanish. What happens?
English and Spanish are among 99 languages detected automatically. A hearing is detected on its main language; comments in another language are transcribed as spoken, so check any you rely on against the audio. Comments read from a prepared statement are usually the clearest passages in the whole recording.
Which exports are there, and is it private?
DOCX and TXT for letters and appeals, SRT and VTT to caption the video, JSON for a database of comments. Recordings are transcribed on our own servers and are never used for training, and your transcripts are visible only to you. Delete a hearing and its transcript at any time.
Related
More for public meetings
Paste the hearing's link. Your first 20 minutes are free.
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