Outsourcing your Back Office

You can follow the steps below to record a telephone conversation in digital format in a cost effective way if you don’t have a high end Meridian phone system. -          Install Skype on your computer from www.skype.com.  -          You can sign up for a Skype $3.00/ mo. unlimited calls to N. America plan.  This what we use on our end.-          Install Audacity which is a free audio recorder and editor.  You can download it from http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/windows.  If you want something higher end, you can use Goldwave which is available at www.goldwave.com.  We use this on our end.-          Install the LAME MP3 encoder also available on the same page, which will allow you to save the final file in mp3 format.-          Set up your speaker recording settings to Mixer instead of Mic or Line-in.  When set to Mixer, the computer knows to record PC sound which means a mix of Mic, Line-in, and audio played back on speaker as opposed to just a single input-          Start Audacity, and set it to Record-          Start the call on Skype

-          Once the call is complete, stop recording on Audacity and save it as an mp3 or wav, whatever format you require

And don’t forget, before you start recording someone, make sure you tell them they are being recorded

There are instances where you might want a transcript of a video that you’ve made, perhaps of a seminar or an interview.  In such cases, instead of providing us with a video when requesting a transcript, you can provide an mp3 which is much smaller and quicker to upload.  There are several free tools out there, one of which is Switch and is created by a company called NCH.  It is available @ http://www.nch.com.au/switch/mp3.html.  It is fairly simple to download and set up.  Once you’re done setup, you can use it to convert various different file formats to mp3 fairly quickly.  And then, all you have to do is register @ www.edecree.com and upload your files using our web based file upload system.

With so much multimedia content available online today searchability of your content through Google and other search engines is important to drive traffic to your site.  Providing an audio to text transcription of your content gives search engines the ability to catalogue your videos when crawling through your site. 

Currently, video sites such as YouTube provide this ability to a limited extent through the keyword feature.  Wouldn’t it be cool if someone could get to your video by searching for a phrase mentioned in your content? 

This feature would be such a convenience in the online educational and informational video market.  You go to a site and type in text that you anticipate will be spoken in the video and receive a catalogue of all the videos that use that text.

Imagine that you’re a journalist looking for multimedia clips online.  With a few short keystrokes you will have access to relevant audio and video clips that you can quote.

If you’re the owner of premium content worried about giving away too much information, this would be the ideal way to provide your potential clients with a teaser with very little marketing investment.  They can be directed to your site using a search engine such as Google which can catalogue your content using the transcript text.  They can have a peek at your premium content by using your site’s search feature.  And they would have to register to access complete transcripts and the corresponding audios and videos. 

With transcription services such as eDecree you can get transcripts starting at 80 cents per audio minute which amounts to as low as $48 per audio hour. 

That’s some great bang for the buck.

When using an audio transcription service, you will often have situations where you need to get content off a CD uploaded to the company doing the transcription.  In most cases, companies such as eDecree will have an online file upload service available which will accept audios in any digital format.  It is cheaper to upload the audios this way than snail mailing the CDs to the company.  Here are the steps you could follow using a free application available online to extract the audios from the CD and upload them in mp3 format. 

- You will have to download an application like CD-DA X-Tractor so that you can “rip” the CDs and convert the audios on each of them into mp3s.

- The application I have mentioned above is available online completely free, and can be downloaded from http://xtractor.sourceforge.net/intro.html.  It will let you extract the audios from the CD into mp3 format and copy it to your PC.

After extracting the file, if you want to forward the file to eDecree to have it transcribed.

- Register on the eDecree website at https://www.edecree.com/RegistrationUI.aspx.

- Once you have registered, it will automatically take you to the page where you can upload your audio files.  Please enter the required information in the form and attach your audio files.