Transcribe a thesis defense and keep every question on record.
To transcribe a thesis defense recording, drop the file or paste its link, and the presentation plus the committee's questions come back as one timestamped transcript. A two-hour defense is 120 minutes: the first 20 are free, and the $6 pack of 500 minutes covers the remainder.
After the defense
The questions you were asked are the revisions you will make.
Every question in one list
The brief lists the questions the recording answers, a fast first pass over what the committee raised. Search the transcript for any of them and the timestamp takes you to the exact wording.
Quotes you can cite to yourself
Key quotes come with timestamps and the speaker named, so a suggestion from your external examiner is easy to find when you write your response to the committee.
Presentation and Q&A, unbroken
A defense with a 40-minute talk and 80 minutes of questions is one recording and one timeline. Video recordings above 500 MB continue on the upload page.
Ask what was agreed
Use the chat to ask which chapter the committee wanted restructured or what deadline was given for corrections. The answer points to where in the recording it was said.
Why a defense is worth transcribing
Two hours of questions is too much to remember accurately.
✗ Relying on memory and notes
Candidates are the worst-placed people to take notes during their own defense. Nerves and the pace of questions do the rest. By the time corrections are due, the exact request from each examiner has usually blurred.
- A friend's notes that paraphrase the questions
- Corrections remembered differently by you and your advisor
- Replaying two hours to find one comment
- No clear list of what the committee asked for
- Quotes from examiners you cannot check
- A revision plan built on partial recall
✓ The same defense, transcribed
What was said is on record with times, and the committee's points are already pulled together.
- The full session as one timestamped transcript
- Questions the defense answered, listed
- Key quotes with speakers named
- Chapters for the talk and each round of questions
- Dates and deadlines that were said, extracted
- A DOCX you can annotate with your responses
Sample output
The question, word for word, at the minute it was asked.
An illustrative sample written for this page. No real defense or committee is quoted here.
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
Thesis defense transcription, answered.
How long does a defense recording take to transcribe?
At about 2 minutes per hour of audio, a two-hour defense is typically ready in four minutes. Very long sessions scale the same way.
What does a 2-hour defense cost?
The defense is 120 minutes. A first-time visitor gets the first 20 minutes free, and the $6 pack of 500 minutes transcribes the other 100. What remains of the pack stays on your account with no expiry.
The recording is a large video file. Is that a problem?
Files up to 5 GB are accepted. Before a pack is on your account, the upload limit is 2 GB, and a larger file starts once you have one. A recording in Google Drive can be pasted as a link.
Should I cut out the presentation and only send the questions?
No. Upload the whole defense. Anything up to 10 hours goes in as a single file, and keeping the talk in gives the questions their context. When an examiner refers back to a slide, the transcript of your presentation shows what you said at that point.
My defense mixed English with another language. Does that matter?
Languages are detected automatically among the 99 supported. A defense held mainly in one language gives the cleanest result.
Is this an official record, and is it private?
It is a machine transcript for your own use, not a certified record. It exports as TXT, DOCX, SRT, VTT and JSON. Recordings are transcribed on our own servers and are never used for training.
Related
More for graduate research.
Upload the defense recording. Turn the questions into your revision list.
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