In the world of transcription, platforms are mostly AI-based or use human transcribers, and the service is just a means of organizing the workload.
Verbit is, almost uniquely, both things at once.
Software AI technology thinks about the audio and does its best to interpret what is being said, and once that stage is complete it is passed on to people to pick up on any mistakes.
By combining 35,000 or more people with an artificial intelligence model, the best chance of accurate transcription can be reasonably assumed.
But Verbit is more than just a well thought-out methodology.
Verbit: subscriptions and prices
Verbit has custom speech-to-text packages designed to best serve a specific market. These include plans for Corporate Learning, Court Reporting. Education and Media Production. It also offers audio description and live transcription services.
The technology used on each of these is the same, and the only major difference is that some of these have inherent timestamp captioning, while other services don’t include it. Because the subtitles are timestamped, it is possible to use them as video subtitles.
But the critical questions that we normally answer in this section are not available, as Vebit has decided that it offers an enterprise-oriented service for which they have no fixed costs.
Some companies do not like this approach as it is difficult to know if the service offered is good value for money compared to the same service provided to another company.
What Verbit will say is that the cost is “competitive” compared to just human transcription, even if they aren’t willing to say what that cost is, and volume users can expect a discount.
Verb: Functions
The Verbit platform gives you access to advanced AI speech recognition technology, which speeds up transcription and delivers results faster than a human-only transcription service.
When you use Verbit to transcribe audio, the AI algorithms adapt to the sound file’s unique signatures by creating acoustic, linguistic, and contextual event models. These features allow Verbit to reduce background noise, distinguish accents, and pick out terms related to current news issues.
You can monitor your tasks throughout the transcription process with real-time status information available through the Verbit Cloud portal. Verbit also interfaces with various third-party services so that you can easily distribute the transcripts.
Verb: set
Submitting a transcription request to Verbit is simple and requires no technical experience. The first step is to contact Verbit’s staff through the Contact Us webpage to create an account. Verbit will offer a rate for your transcription job based on your chat and, if you accept that rate, create an account for you.
All you need to do to start a transcription is submit an audio file to the Verbit Cloud account you were given. Verbit’s AI technology will transcribe it, and the findings will be double-checked by two human transcribers. You can download the finished work in a suitable file format once the procedure is completed.
This sounds very simple, and for the most part it is.
Verbit also offers a live captioning service, but this is a separate product with its own pricing structure and methodologies.
Verb: interface
The Verbit interface is a clean and minimalistic design that is easy to use.
The user’s home screen shows a list of all transcription jobs and their current status. At a glance it can be determined what has been completed, pending supervision, or was deemed ‘inaudible’ by the human transcribers.
From this web page it is possible to add new files, both audio and video, and if you run into a problem, there is a handy chat portal available where a support person can provide assistance.
The interface is not designed for large numbers of documents, but it is workable for the requirements of a single user.
Verb: Achievement
The very best human transcription claims 99% accuracy and the best AI technology we tested achieved scores in the 95-98% range.
When processing our test audio, an accuracy level of close to 99% was achieved for a wide variety of content, including public lectures and court proceedings. That’s an impressive feat, given that the rate at which these files were transcribed was significantly faster than the rate assigned to human-only services.
One aspect of the Verbit approach that probably contributes a lot to the level of accuracy is that two human transcribers are used as a collection point for errors. Anyone can have a less than perfect day, and many times the complaints that people-only services get are due to people not being their best or having problems with accents.
With two people in the chain of command outside of AI processing, a file with major errors is much less likely to be transcribed and then returned to the customer as completed.
Another unique Verbit facility is available when captioning is included. Timestamps are created word by word, allowing the words in the caption to be highlighted as they are spoken.
Verb: Support
A service involving business customers is usually expected to provide a high level of support, and many companies see this as what it pays to get.
Verbit’s reputation is very high in this area as all accounts have a dedicated customer success manager as their first point of contact. Obviously, managers don’t work 24/7, so as a fallback, Verbit has a live chat service that’s available 24 hours a day and can answer most questions right away.
For those looking to make better use of an account they already have, Verbit has created a series of webinars that discuss how transcription across industries can help deliver the commercial benefits it can.
Verb: Final judgment
The special blend of machine intelligence and human intervention is a winning formula for delivering the most accurate levels of transcription.
Verbit not only provides exceptionally accurate transcriptions, but also gives you useful tools for subtitling movies, searching for key phrases, and sharing your content via third-party app integrations.
What we can’t say is whether the price of that service is right for your business. Since that’s the part of this puzzle, you’ll only get there by talking to Verbit first.
The competition
There are no other hybrid systems that exactly fit the Verbit approach, so we have to either compare it to fully human services or fully AI processes.
Where this service surpasses even the best human transcription is speed, with a turnaround time of approximately four hours. That’s faster than most, even with express charges, where the best services generally start around 6am.
GoTranscript (opens in new tab) has a turnaround time of 6 hours and also transcribes more languages than Verbit. What GoTranscript (opens in new tab), and other missing services are the features specific to court statements and lecture subtitling. These are invaluable to those who need this type of transcription, and Verbit provides these and much more.
Learn more about Verbit’s competition in our guide to the best speech-to-text software.
