Record and Transcribe Conference Calls on Mac

Audio Transcription

Record conference call audio to file and generate a transcript on your Mac. The solution is not free but it works well.

Total cost of this solution: $99 onetime for software + $0.024 per minute of audio transcription (approx. $1.44/hour)

Software required

  1. macOS (You got this) – This guide is for Mac users
  2. Audacity (Free) – Dead simple audio recording and editing
  3. Loopback ($99) – For audio routing to make sure you can capture everything
  4. AWS account (Free to signup, pay as you go usage rates) – s3 for file storage and AWS Transcribe for transcribing the audio

Process

STEP 1: Configure Loopback to take two inputs: (a) your conf. call application, and (b) your microphone input.

STEP 2: Record Using Audacity

macOS Catalina workaround: Launch from the Terminal.app using:

open /Applications/Audacity.app/Contents/MacOS/Audacity

After the first time launching, be sure to hit “Record” after Audacity launches to show the prompt for microphone permissions.

STEP 3: Upload the file to S3 – Copy the file path to use when setting up the Transcribe job.

STEP 4: Start the Transcribe Job

Tips

  1. AWS transcribe charges by the minute: Use Audacity to trim the audio to the minimum length containing only the parts you want transcribed