On occasion, we receive audio for transcription that can described as bad/low quality. This includes background noise such as wind, static, music, and screaming children; crowded restaurant conversations; lawn mowers, cars, and airplanes roaring by; and recordings made on cassettes or microtapes.

It’s a mystery to me why, but there are some customers who expect professional transcriptionists to have a superman/woman-like ability to transcribe audio that is humanly impossible to hear. They expect few if any blanks to be left in the transcript despite the audio’s bad quality.

Be nice to your transcriptionist. Please be realistic about your expectations when submitting low-quality audio for transcription. If you have no ...

There are several ways you can assist your transcriptionist in producing error-free transcripts with few blanks. As a bonus, you just may decrease the cost of transcription services for yourself too!

Tips for quality dictating/recording:

• Do not eat, drink, or chew gum while dictating.

• Speak clearly and at a regular pace.

• Avoid speaking in a monotone.

• Use a digital recorder. Standard or mini cassette tapes create a lower quality audio. It is also more difficult to find a transcriptionist who still works with cassette tapes. You may also be charged a fee for converting the tape to a digital file.

• Take care to record in a quiet area/room. Recorders easily pick up ...

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Even choosing a great transcription company can’t improve upon a mediocre interview. Therefore, it’s a great idea to review some basic interview techniques and tips before conducting an interview you’d like to have transcribed.

#1 – Find a Good Location

Avoid Starbucks! It’s often easiest to suggest a centrally located corporate coffee shop but if there is any way you can interview in a place that has some relevance to the story or your subject you’ll have much greater success.

Not only because you’ll gain a further sense of context, people are often more comfortable (and open) when they’re in a familiar place or what feels like “their territory.”

Ask to meet at ...

Optimizing your site for Google, Yahoo, and other search engines definitely begins with choosing the most important keyword phrases. Keyword phrases should consist of three to five words and use plain language that your customers would most likely use to find you or your services. For example, you might have found Omega Transcripts’ blog by Googling phrases such as “general transcription services,” “audio transcription services,” or “what is transcription.”

If you have no idea what keyword phrases are commonly used to find services or products such as yours, you may want to use a keyword tool such as Google Adwords Keyword Tool to build a list.

However, you must also find ways to ...

Oh, joy! Even more reasons to love your iPhone—podcasting apps.  If you listen to several podcasts and/or are subscribed to several RSS feeds, you probably need a little help keeping everything organized and easily accessible. Here are three podcast apps, as mentioned on AppAdvice.com, that could help you do just that:

Stitcher Radio - by Stitcher, Inc.

Stitcher Radio is a very unique and powerful app. The app not only does podcast playback, but also live web based radio shows too! The app will “stitch” your favorite podcasts or radio shows together to offer an entire days worth of content without you touching a thing. The app includes tons of podcasts. It does not have every podcast out there, but most of ...

In Part 1 of this blog post, we discussed the first four tips for creating the best oral history audio or video. Here, we will discuss the final four.

5. Choose an area for the oral history interview that is comfortable, familiar, and relatively quiet. Even noise from a busy street nearby can be picked up by your recording devices and make it difficult to hear your subject. Definitely avoid restaurants and/or any place with high foot traffic.

6. Try not to interrupt your subject with unnecessary questions or make excessive affirming comments such as “Okay,” “Yes,” or “Mm-hm.” However, do ask the subject for clarification if something is unclear or needs more explanation.

7. Use items such ...

1. Determine beforehand what areas of the subject’s life will be discussed (childhood, military career, achievements, etc.). This will allow you as the interviewer and your subject to stay on track and remain focused.

2. Ask questions that require more than a yes or no answer.

3. Keep the number of subjects interviewed to one or two at a time. Interviewing more than two subjects at a time will often create an audio or video with excessive crosstalking (people interrupting or talking over one another). Important information will often be lost in this situation.

4. Make sure you have quality recording devices and that your subject is close enough to the device. Always perform a “test” before starting the ...

You may have heard that YouTube added auto-captioning capabilities to its videos in March 2010. But why is captioning your videos on YouTube so important? YouTube says it’s all about accessibility. In addition, providing captions for the videos you post on any video-sharing website including YouTube, Viddler, and Vimeo can benefit both you and your video-watching audience in more ways than one.

Having your YouTube videos transcribed/captioned provides three main benefits:

• Captions help the deaf and hard of hearing to understand your video content.
• Captioning can significantly boost your video’s SEO (search engine optimization) by encouraging Google and YouTube to index your content.
• Posting the ...
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Improve Your Home Office Week is the second week in October. As transcriptionists, our workplace is often our home office. Since we spend so much time there, what better time to find ways to improve productivity and make our home office more comfortable?

Get Organized

--Buy a new desk organizer

--Come up with a better more efficient way to store client/customer info

--Keep your workstation clean so that finding what you need is easier and faster

Improve Your Health and Stamina

--Buy a new ergonomic chair to fight fatigue and neck and back strain

--Buy typing gloves and an ergonomic keyboard to fight carpal tunnel

Decorate Your Surroundings

--Incorporate plants, pictures, and your favorite things ...

I have to admit, most people are familiar with medical transcription but are absolutely clueless about general transcription. It’s not hard to see why that is, as medical transcription plays a very important role in the healthcare industry. Without medical transcription, a patient’s medical record would be almost barren to say the least.

I spent about five years working as a medical transcriptionist before venturing into general transcription. I may delve into the whys of my transition into providing general transcription services in a future post. It’s such a long and tedious story. But back to the subject at hand…

General transcription usually falls into four specialties:

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