How Does the Transcription Feature Work?

All you need to know about transcriptions!

We recently introduced the ability to add transcriptions to your show! A transcription is a written copy of your show’s audio. You can manually transcribe your audio, or use software to automatically transcribe for you. The most common technique is to transcribe your audio after recording.

Most folks use transcriptions to boost their reach, improve accessibility, and provide backlinks to resources mentioned in their shows. It never hurts to provide a transcription!

To find where to place your transcription when editing or creating an episode, simply click on the More Options drop-down until you see the Transcript URL and Transcript Type text fields:

A Transcript URL is a URL (web address) to where your transcript is currently located. This could be as simple as a Google Doc link, or a link to an HTML file.

The Transcript Type is entirely dependent on the Transcript URL you provided. We accept Plain Text, HTML, VTT, and JSON. See this article from GitHub for more information on the different types. 

If you're not sure what type your Transcript is, then we recommend consulting with your transcription service to find out.

Let’s say for example that you have a public Google Doc with your transcript inside. To add the transcript to your show, you would need to enter the link to your Google Doc in the Transcript URL text field and select “Plain Text” from the Transcript Type drop-down.

The link to your transcript will now be available in your RSS Feed:

Your listeners can then find the link to your transcript in your RSS Feed, in the <podcast:transcript> tag in the associated episode.