Otter is a real-time transcription application that records and transcribes conversations. It has built-in highlighting, commenting, and image features that let the user mark up the transcription as they go. The user can review conversations by listening to the recording and watching the program read the transcript at the same time. The transcript is editable to fix errors. Lastly, users can share recordings and transcripts through Otter.
Pros
- 95% accurate transcription
- Transcription synced with recording: easy to listen to a section of the recording while reading the transcription
- Meeting Gems feature shows all of the text notes, highlights, and comments in one place
- Many ways to share a transcript
Cons
- Difficult to highlight; some bugs
- The “text notes feature”, which lets you type in notes about the recording, is useful but doesn’t timestamp the notes, so it’s difficult to match notes to the transcript
Our Experience
The OAT found Otter very useful and usable. The transcription was about 95% accurate, which is a similar accuracy to other transcription services. The team found the ability to listen to the recording and see where you are in the transcription at the same time incredibly useful for reviewing notes. The highlighting and commenting features were OK but it was sometimes difficult to select the text to highlight/comment. The team found that highlighting wasn’t easy enough to do during a conversation without significant interruption but was useful when reviewing the transcript afterwards. We found that when we were recording someone else talking, but weren’t an active participant in the conversation, we were able to use the highlighting features during the conversation.
A feature that we found more usable than highlighting was the “text notes feature”, a feature where you can take notes during the conversation in a texting format (essentially typing out a short note then hitting send). The text notes are then displayed in the order they were ‘sent’, but not time stamped to match when they were taken during the conversation, which makes it difficult to match text notes to the transcription.
Our Recommendation
The OAT team highly recommends Otter for anyone who struggles with note-taking during class or often forgets content that they need later. Otter allows students to keep their attention on the class and have a backup transcript to review. That being said, reviewing Otter transcripts does take a significant amount of time compared to taking notes in real time.
Otter might also be useful for instructors interested in recording their classes, as it allows them to share those recordings in multiple formats (text and audio). Instructors can also export the transcript separately if they would rather not share audio recordings.
How to Access
You can try out a free version of Otter at Otter.ai.