How to transcribe a lecture without losing hours

Why students transcribe lectures

A written transcript lets you review exactly what the lecturer said, fill the gaps in your notes and prepare for oral exams, where remembering precise wording and reasoning matters. It's also essential for students who need accessible study materials.

Record well: half the work

The quality of the transcript depends mostly on the recording:

• Sit near the front, close to the speaker, away from fans and open windows.
• Use your phone's recorder in high quality, with the microphone facing the lecturer.
• Turn on airplane or do-not-disturb mode: notifications cause noise and gaps.
• Always ask the lecturer's permission: recording a lecture requires their consent or compliance with your university's rules.

All common formats work: iPhone M4A, MP3, WAV, OGG, FLAC, OPUS, WEBM and the audio track of MP4 videos.

By hand or automatic?

By hand you control everything, but it takes hours. Automatic transcription produces the text in minutes; its limit is that it can make mistakes, especially with proper names, technical terms and noisy audio.

The efficient approach combines both: let the machine do the long work and check only the doubtful spots by hand. That's why Sbobina Subito flags uncertain words and links them to the minute in the audio: instead of replaying the whole lecture, you replay only the few seconds that matter.

Checking the uncertain spots

Words the system is less sure about are highlighted in yellow. The report on the side lists each doubt with its minute and type: unclear word, proper name to verify, passage not understood. Click, the audio jumps there, fix the text and mark the spot as resolved.

Focus on author names, dates, numbers and definitions: they matter in exams and they're where automatic transcription errs most often.

Verbatim or clean?

Speech is full of fillers, repetitions and half-finished sentences. The verbatim version keeps them; the clean version removes them and fixes punctuation and syntax, without changing the meaning or touching uncertain words. For studying, the clean version reads much better; to quote the lecturer word for word, use the verbatim one.

From text to revision

When you're happy with the text, download the Word file to print, highlight or merge with your notes. From the same text you can create question-and-answer flashcards, based only on what was said in class, and print them double-sided.