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Hey HN! Craig from YC here. This project is a follow-up to SpeechBoard, which was a text-based audio editor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15670827 htt
by craigcannon 8y ago
Hey HN!
Craig from YC here. This project is a follow-up to SpeechBoard, which was a text-based audio editor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15670827 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15670827. Thanks for all the feedback there :)
We were surprised to find that many users just wanted transcripts, so Podscripter is an attempt to solve that.
Here's how it works: every time you publish an episode (or give us a file) we run it through a speech to text service. Then we split up the speakers by hand, which ends up being a fair bit of work and is why it's 24hrs instead of minutes . Then we email you the transcript.
Before I was podcasting at YC I had my own podcast and couldn't justify paying $1 a minute for transcripts. These machine generated transcripts get you most of the way there for a lot less money :)
Let me know what you think!
- jtbayly 8y agoFor $10, I'd expect above 99% accuracy, especially since I can get an automated transcript for $5 for 60 minutes that presumably has a similar error rate to what you are offering. Also, I'd expect it sooner than 24 hours, since I can get automated ones back in under an hour. Not trying to be cold water. I am actually interested, but what sets you apart from the other cheaper automated solutions? Am I wrong about the error rate I can expect elsewhere?
- craigcannon 8y agoThanks for the feedback. Ours are diarized accurately. I've yet to see an automated service that does that well.
- jtbayly 8y agoThat's a valuable piece of info that I didn't see mentioned on the site. I'd add it if I were you.
- craigcannon 8y agoUpdated. Thanks for the feedback.
- ghaff 8y agoBy way of context, human transcriptions cost about $1 to $1.50 per [EDIT: minute] --which is what I use for my podcasts. Accuracy is extremely good, especially if you flag obscure terms when you submit.
- craigcannon 8y agoThat's super cheap! Who do you use?
- ghaff 8y agoUggh. Per minute. Sorry. So it costs me about $25-30 per podcast typically. Which is pretty reasonable but obviously adds up for longer transcriptions.
- mindwork 8y agoFor a podcasts with good audio quality(which is usually a case for podcasts) you probably can use speech recognition tools that will cost you a fraction of this price. They are pretty good nowdays
- ghaff 8y agoThey're really not--at least for my purposes. And $25-50 for an episode requiring minimal cleanup versus spending 30-60 minutes going back through the audio and fixing things up is a no-brainer for me. ADDED: Machine transcriptions are pretty good for a lot of things such as search and quickly skimming content. But if you want something that people can read as an alternative to listening to the podcast, you pretty much have to use human transcription or budget a bunch of time to fix up.
- seanwilson 8y agoIs there a way you can record then edit a podcast but keep track of which microphone different voices are coming from? Seems like you could make speaker identification easier that way?
- 8y ago
- knuththetruth 8y agoWhat automated service do you use?
- craigcannon 8y agoGoogle
- raghavtoshniwal 8y agoHey Craig, I wrote a service, (nowhere close for public release), that segments audio based on speakers. You have to identify one speech segment, it is then capable of labelling others. It uses GMM and MFCC. Is something like this in the works? Cool idea! I consume a fair bit of podcasts, I can affirm that there is definitely a need for this
- craigcannon 8y agoNice! Let me know when it's ready :) I've tried what's out there and still haven't found a solution that can consistency diarize well. So I'm doing some experiments on my end too.
- braindead_in 8y agoDo try out https://scribie.com/transcription/free https://scribie.com/transcription/free as well once. Our diarisation system is around 90% accurate on longer paragraphs and will be out this week.
- joelrunyon 8y agoWould this integrate directly with zencastr? They record tracks individually - and then mix them - so you'd have direct access to the individual tracks. Seems like if you did that or made a way for people to upload their unmixed tracks, you could save some time on the whole thing?
- craigcannon 8y agoYeah, that's an awesome idea. I had kicked it around with some potential customers but went with this simpler model just to see if anyone was interested. Will most likely go for that next because you're right, diarization is insane :)
- mdocherty 8y agoHello, Just curious if you are able to speech-to-text phone calls? Or if any point you plan to do so. Thanks
- genieyclo 8y agoAre you using AWS Polly?
- craigcannon 8y agoGoogle actually
- viridian 8y agoHey Craig, I appreciate the hard work! Is there any way to demo this service for free, or any plans to in the future? The $10 isn't a big hit or anything, but I, as well as many others, I'm sure prefer to try a service before handing off their credit card info.
- craigcannon 8y agoYeah, we'll definitely have something free in the future. :) For the launch we wanted to make sure we could handle all the first orders quickly.
- lf275 8y agoWould you also do YouTube videos? There are many lectures online and it would be nice if more people transcribed them.
- craigcannon 8y agoYeah, we could definitely do videos.
- ocdtrekkie 8y agoI think this is super neat. The podcasts I am on do not make $10 an episode, so sadly, I can't justify it. But if I could, I would. I shared it with my podcasting friends.
- craigcannon 8y agoThanks!
- jeena 8y agoI'm able to upload one WAV file per speaker, like most of the podcasters I would pressume. Would that make it easier to automate the split and this make the service cheaper?
- craigcannon 8y agoI need to test this out more thoroughly. Is your speaker audio totally clean when they're not talking?
- jeena 8y agoFor all practical reasons I'd say yes, I'm using https://auphonic.com/ https://auphonic.com/ which does use machine learning to mute the parts where no human speaks, then they send this audio to third party (like yours) https://auphonic.com/blog/2016/12/02/make-podcasts-searchable-speech-to-text/ https://auphonic.com/blog/2016/12/02/make-podcasts-searchabl... then they get the files back so auphonic can bundle it for download with the rest.
- michaelmior 8y agoSo the real value add is when you have multiple speakers? Any suggestions on a reliable service that can handle a single speaker?
- asdsa5325 8y agoYou wouldn't need a "service", you can just run it through a TTS program locally.
- michaelmior 8y agoTrue. Although I assume you mean speech recognition and not TTS. Good recommendations there would be great :)
- asdsa5325 8y agoOops, yeah, STT.
- roadrunner201 8y agoCan your service handle corrupted files? I record on the fly and I have some great interviews that I cannot play.