Transcribe ward committee meetings in isiZulu and English.
A ward committee or public participation meeting recorded in isiZulu and English, usually two to four hours, is transcribed in about 4 to 8 minutes. The main language is detected and the switches are handled, the first 20 minutes are free, and a three-hour meeting uses 180 of the 500 minutes on a $6 pack.
For ward-level meetings
What residents raised, what the committee replied, and what was promised for next month.
Report-back in hours, not weeks
A four-hour public participation meeting is text in about 8 minutes. The committee can share what was said while residents still remember the meeting.
Both languages, as spoken
Presentations are often in English and the floor answers in isiZulu. The recording is detected on its main language and the switches come through in one transcript.
Issues, not hours
Chapters with timestamps separate each ward issue, from streetlights to housing lists. Recordings from a phone or a hall's sound desk go through upload page.
Follow-ups, listed
The brief collects the names of places, the dates and the amounts mentioned, and the questions the meeting answered. Next month, ask the chat what was promised about the streetlights.
Why participation meetings leave little trace
Residents speak for hours, and the record is often a single page.
✗ A short summary
Long meetings get summarised in a few lines, and the detail residents gave is lost. Residents who speak only isiZulu are often the first to be shortened.
- Four hours reduced to a paragraph
- Residents' isiZulu points lost in translation
- Recordings stored and never opened
- Software that expects one language per file
- Upload caps far below a meeting's length
- Monthly fees for a monthly meeting
✓ The meeting in full text
Each meeting becomes a searchable document with a clock. Residents who could not attend can read what their neighbours raised.
- A four-hour ward meeting in roughly 8 minutes
- isiZulu and English together
- A chapter per ward issue
- Places, dates and amounts listed
- DOCX for the report-back
- A year on one $24 pack
Sample
A ward meeting moving between two languages.
This excerpt is illustrative and written for this page; no real ward, councillor or resident is quoted. In English, the isiZulu lines say: the streetlights have been off for two months, and please tell us when it will be fixed.
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
Ward meeting recordings, the common questions.
How long does a four-hour meeting take?
Roughly 8 minutes, since processing runs near 2 minutes per hour of audio. The public proof page shows 4.94 hours finished in 372 seconds.
What does a year of ward meetings cost?
Twelve monthly meetings of three hours are 36 hours, or 2,160 minutes, which the $24 pack of 5,000 minutes covers with about 47 hours left for extra public meetings. A single three-hour meeting fits on the $6 pack of 500 minutes with 320 minutes remaining. All of these figures are US dollars.
Can the transcript serve as the official record?
No. It is an AI transcript with timestamps to work from when writing minutes and reports; adopted minutes and official records follow the committee's own process.
What are the size limits for a long recording?
Each ward recording can be up to 10 hours or 5 GB. Before your first pack, uploads are capped at 2 GB, and larger files start once a pack is on the account. A meeting streamed to YouTube or shared on Google Drive can be pasted as a link.
Does the meeting need splitting by agenda item, or by language?
Neither. Upload the full recording; the main language is detected, the isiZulu and English switches are handled, and chapters separate the items. Check the spelling of place names before a report goes to residents.
Which formats come back, and how private is it?
DOCX and TXT for reports, SRT and VTT for captioned video, JSON for systems. Ward meeting audio is transcribed on our own servers and is never used for training.
Related
More for public meetings
Upload this month's ward meeting. Residents' words, with the first 20 minutes free.
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