Travel Technology - Transcribing recorded interviews

I have conducted interviews with a digital recorder which becomes an electronic file directly - I can convert to various formats (.voc, .wma., .mp3, .exe, .aac, .aiff), but was wondering if anyone has experience with software that can make a reasonable first attempt at a transcript from the electronic file? Me transcribing 12 hours of interviews by hand is . . .

I saw this thread (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=816531)about voice recognition software but my question is distinct (didn't want to hijack).

You can use Dragon Naturally Speaking and the electronic version of your interview to get a first draft transcript. Of course it works best for 1 on 1 interviews and is better than having to type everything from scratch. One of my staff tried it with a focus group recording and it was a mess.

TF:cool:

I tried Dragon on a very clean, one-voice clip of audio converted to a digital file and it didn't even come close.

If there is other software out there that will do this, or some kind of secret to using Dragon, I'd gladly check it out.

One of my staff tried it with a focus group recording and it was a mess.

See, that's what I'm worried about (based upon the previous thread) - due to interviews being "normal speak" (rather than "dictation speak") and there's a distance of each individual from the microphone, I don't want to buy software to end up with gobbledygook.

Given offshoring, the volume of English-understanding (if not English-speaking) people out there, and the "portability" of MP3 (etc.) files, if there aren't transcription services that would be very inexpensive and at least as accurate. I'd think that for occasional use, that would be more cost-effective than investing in a software package.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=791821&highlight=transcription

Might be helpful...

Thanks for the help - this is protected and potentially damaging information that can't be sent to a transcription service. That's the only reason why it's either software or me . . .

Unfortunately, voice reco software is just nowhere near ready for the kind of transcription needs of speaker-independent voice recognition (such as transcribing an interview).

I use Ubiqus.com for transcription services; they're pretty reasonable and they make it easy to get them files (upload via the Web).

Thanks for the help - this is protected and potentially damaging information that can't be sent to a transcription service. That's the only reason why it's either software or me . . .

Any professional transcriptionist would certainly respect confidentiality; as a medical transcriptionist myself, I know how important that is.

To the best of my knowledge there's no program capable of doing a good job on the recordings you've described. Speech recognition software has come a long way but is still no substitute for the human ear and brain.