Video Transcription – 10 Most Common Mistakes to Avoid
According to Google, 6 out of 10 people prefer watching online videos than the ones on television, and the number is only going to increase significantly in the years to come.
The growing number of video viewers and the criticality of videos for businesses in the future refer to a couple of things, and those are creating user-friendly videos, and making them more and more accessible. Why? It is crucial from the marketing viewpoint and developing user trust. How?
At times, your users may comprise people with hearing disabilities. Sometimes, audio disruptions or surrounding disturbances may affect the comprehension aspect of a particular part of the video (perhaps, a few inaudible words or sentences). These factors may lead to missing out on a crucial part, thereby ruining the user experience. This is where video transcription proves useful and helpful!
What is video transcription?
Transcribing a video is translating it into readable text. You can create transcriptions from online videos, webinars, podcasts, interviews, speeches, conferences, etc. Many people mistake video transcriptions only to translate the words spoken in the video or improving their access. But, that’s only one part of the transcription, and not the whole thing, as video transcription is a broader term.
Working on a video transcription involves other visual elements, including the speaker’s gestures, the mass response of the audience, and different audible sounds. Ideally, an accurate video transcription must help the reader visualize every aspect of the video, without requiring him to watch it.
The transcribing process engages elements such as speech recognition, a human transcriptionist, or transcription software to facilitate the resultant transcription on the same webpage, or a PDF, etc.
The involvement of several elements and aspects makes video transcription a challenging task. The transcriber may make numerous mistakes that can contribute to inaccuracies that may spoil the transcription experience. Hence, if you are about to work on a video transcription, you must know the significance of video transcription, and the ten most common video transcription mistakes to avoid.
5 Reasons why Video Transcriptions are Important
Understanding the criticality, and the purpose of video transcriptions will enhance your perspective while working in a video transcription, and avoid the mistakes that most of the them out there do. So, here are five reasons that make video transcriptions an essential part of the online space.
1. Search Engine Optimization
A video transcription proves another data source for the search engines to index your content. It helps them crawl the text of the video or audio content, and contribute to your organic search rankings. Besides, a transcribed video stands a better chance of ranking on YouTube as well.
In case, you’ve got longer transcripts, you may optimize them for keywords, and include them in the original video script before you create, share and transcribe them.
2. Better User Experience and Trust
Your out of the world video content may not prove as effective if it has technical defects, or external disturbances, on which you may not have control. Users refrain from watching such videos. But, an accurately transcribed video can help your users understand every bit of the video. It augments user experience, contributes to user trust, and proves advantageous for your brand in the long run.
3. A Transcribed Video can be a Source of Revenue
While your video has a certain value, its transcription can constitute an additional product for your company. You may offer the transcribed form of the video as an extra feature, with an additional cost attached to it. For users that need transcriptions, the transcribed version can prove helpful, and become an extra source of revenue for your organization.
4. Transcriptions are Multi-Purpose
You’ve got so many content forms available on the internet. While all of them are useful and crucial to your success across various virtual platforms, you may not have the time to work on the same topic in different forms. In such cases, you can create transcriptions that can convert into eBooks, blogs, social media posts, emailers, guides, articles, etc.
5. Improved Accessibility
Again, your video may have the best of content, concepts, and ideas. However, if a particular set of users, say people who’ve got hearing disabilities cannot access the video, you may limit your scope of target users. Similarly, if a specific part of your video isn’t clear enough, you may lose users, as that will interrupt the video transcription experience, also affect its comprehension.
10 Mistakes that the Top Video Transcription Service Providers avoid
While some of them appear trivial, some of them are critical – both of which, affect the quality of transcription, and at times, result in contextual changes that may annoy the user to a considerable extent. So, here are the ten most common video transcription mistakes you must not commit.
1. Incorrect comprehension Resulting out of Mishearing
At times, a particular part of the video may lack clarity. Sometimes, the speaker’s pronunciation may comprise flaws. On some instances, as a transcriber, you may confront noisy disturbances, and on a few occasions, ignorance as well can prove responsible.
Whatever the reason, mishearing may lead to incorrect comprehension, and therefore a mistake. For instance, you may hear the word air as hair. Using such wrong, and contextually inappropriate words may change the meaning of the sentence. Such mistakes may confuse the reader. Besides, the placement of inappropriate words may disrupt the flow of reading, and the user may lose interest.
The solution is to listen to the video with adequate volume levels, listen to the unclear word or sentence multiple times until you get it right. Ask someone else to listen to it, and confirm your understanding. Although you don’t completely rule out the possibility of a mistake (as sometimes, you cannot help technical problems), you at least minimize the chances by being extra careful about it.
2. Typing Errors (Transpositions and Typos)
Typing errors are the most common ones. The transcriber, to finish the task in a short time, may end up making spelling mistakes. So, disappear may become disappear. Discipline may turn discipline, and so on. The key here to stay careful, and keep an eye on the spell-check.
Besides, a few words in English sound the same (with minor or no differences), but their spellings differ. For example, know and no, two and to, accept and except, etc. These otherwise subtle sounding mistakes may make a substantial difference to the context.
Another significant error is transpositions. Transpositions refer to changing the position of a letter, or a number. For instance, 52 and 25 are two different numbers. A strength training workout, for example, apt for a 25-year-old individual, may not suit a 52-year-old. Hence, writing 52 in place of 25 may prove a blunder. It will change the target audience, and the transcription can prove misleading.
The only solution to this concern is to stay careful, listen to the video multiple times and check the transcription numerous times. Comparing your video with the text also proves helpful in this regard.
3. Text Expansion Errors
Text expanders prove useful to increase the typing and transcription pace. However, you must stay cautious while using text expanders and autocorrect features. Why?
The autocorrect feature may auto-correct errors. But accidentally using the incorrect key may transform words or characters into sentences that are irrelevant in your context. At times, the difference is too small, and you may not notice it in the flow of transcription.
So, what do you do to avoid such a mistake? The answer is to carefully proofread the transcription text multiple times. It will help you identify such errors and correct them before it goes live.
4. Grammatical Mistakes
Sometimes the speaker or speakers in the video may make grammatical mistakes. As a transcriber, you must ensure that you don’t end up making the same ones, and deliver a transcription product that comprises grammatical errors. Using free and paid grammar tools on the internet proves useful in this regard. Although yes, you must read the transcription numerous times before submission.
5. Speech Recognition Errors
Using a speech recognition error results in a higher number of flaws as compared to human transcribers, and which is why a lot of companies prefer the latter alternative. Even if you are using a speech recognition tool, or software, you must put the transcription through a manual check to ensure your address, and rectify errors before you deliver it.
Now, not all the mistakes relate to video transcribers. Sometimes, factors such as inadequate project resources, ambiguous instructions, compromising quality for money, etc. also pose an adverse effect on the transcription quality, accurate, and user experience in entirety. So, here’s a set of five other mistakes that can deteriorate the quality of your video transcription.
6. The Use of Inferior Quality, or Obsolete Equipment
The use of inferior recording equipment ending up in a mistake, especially, when the transcription relates to a video pertaining to medical, legal, or academic matter, can prove disastrous. These industries comprise a lot of intricate, and specific terms and terminologies. Transcription errors while dealing with them can disappoint the user, and even worse prove confusing, and even disguising.
Hence, you must use superior-quality recording and hearing equipment to ensure that you clearly hear everything that the video conveys. Of course, listening to it carefully, included as well!
7. Inadequate or Absence of Supporting Documentation
Video transcription isn’t as apparent as it may seem. It involves a range of intricacies that demand appropriate documentation support to help the transcriptionist seek clarity on industry-related acronyms, words, phrases, etc. that may not be as common, or excessively specific to the context.
Although professional transcriptionists possess certain industry-related knowledge, they may need adequate documentation support for overly technical terms that are known only to comprehensive experts of the sector. If they don’t get such exclusive resources, the transcriptionists may not be left with any other option, but to find every bit of information on the internet.
8. Hurrying up!
Providing a poor-quality file, without any documentation support, and moreover, hurrying up to complete the task can result in a low-quality, inaccurate and flawed transcription. You must give your transcriber sufficient time, and documents to ensure an error-free and high-quality product.
9. Compromising Quality for Cost
Of course, everyone is on a tight budget. But that doesn’t refer to compromising quality for cost. However, that is one of the most common video transcription mistakes. Lower price not only results in a low-quality product but also exceeds the project deadline, thereby putting the venture at stake.
Remember, the cost is as critical as accuracy. But you cannot let the significance of cost outweigh that of accuracy and quality. After all, you are dealing with user experience and trust, aren’t you?
10. Choosing an Inexperienced Outsourcing Partner
Video transcription, and especially when it involves languages other than English, or multiple languages, requires an experienced video transcription outsourcing company. Again, a lot of companies aim at avoiding high costs and compromising quality. Such an approach results in inappropriate vendor choices, project delays, and eventually, a negative impact on the business.
Filose – Your Video Transcription Outsourcing Partner
Filose is one of the best multilingual video transcription companies in the world. The company has over a decade of evolved experience in the video transcription business. It works with several hundreds of clients across various businesses as their video transcription partner.
Filose employs some of the best transcription resources, qualified transcribers, and the latest cutting-edge technologies to ensure accurately, and contextually, and grammatically correct transcriptions. Contact to Filose’s experts on +91-20-49007800 or email to sales@filose.com if you are looking forward to a high-quality transcription product and a trustworthy video transcription partner.
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