Lecture transcription in your browser

An hour of audio holds perhaps eight thousand words, and the two minutes that explain the thing you did not follow are somewhere inside it. Scrubbing for them costs almost as long as attending again.

As text you can search for the term, read the passage around it, and use the timestamp to hear exactly that moment if the wording matters. Revision stops being a second listen and becomes a read.

Each file can contain up to 60 minutes of audio. Plenty of lectures run to 90 minutes, so this is the one limit that affects this use more than any other on the site.

Split the recording into two parts before transcribing, or record in two halves with a break between. Both parts transcribe the same way and the text joins together afterwards.

A lecture is someone else’s work delivered out loud, and many institutions have their own policy on recording it. Some require the lecturer’s permission, and some prohibit sharing a recording even where making one is allowed.

The transcription itself is private: the file is decoded on this page and nothing is uploaded. That covers where the recording goes, not whether you were entitled to make it.