Transcription Services

Our Process

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Duplicating Your Original Materials

Please send only duplicates of your originals to us unless absolutely necessary. While we have never lost a client's tape, it still is not a good policy for you to send your only copy of any source material to anybody, including us.

Duplicating to VHS

Use a HiFi Stereo VHS deck in SP mode (Standard Play). Do not use a non-HiFi deck or record in any form of extended play such as SLP or EP. Sending One-on-One Interviews on VHS in SLP mode will often result in your otherwise good sounding audio being classified as Type-2 because of the poor dub. Orders requesting timecoding from SLP tapes will be bill an additional $0.33 per minute to offset the additional time it takes to transcribe and timecode from SLP/EP tapes.

Try to keep your tapes to 1 hour in length. There is no price break between sending us 1 two-hour tape versus 2 one-hour tapes. It will however slow down your turnaround time. (VHS tapes more than 2 hours in length will be billed an additional fee of $15.00 per 1/2 hour increment above 2 hours.)

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Duplication to DVD

It is possible both on Windows computers and Macintosh computers to convert video and burn it to a DVD. Instructions on how to do this is beyond the scope of this tutorial. Please consult your software manuals and/or computer vendors for more information on this. Macintosh owners can start here with a iDVD tutorial.

Important Guidelines for DVD duplication

• When creating your DVD, make sure that it plays continuously from chapter to chapter and title to title.
• Discs should only contain 1 'Title', use additional 'chapters' instead of 'Titles' if possible.
• We can not transcribe 'interactive' DVDs that require navigation to play the various audio segments.
• Do not put more than 120 minutes of material on any single DVD. DVDs longer than 120 subject to additional fees.

Duplicating Audio Cassettes

Use a dual-well play-recorder. Be sure to set the record level such that the average VU level is about 0 to +3 db.

Duplicating MiniDisc

Recording Tip: Do not record more than 80 minutes of audio per MiniDisc. (MiniDiscs more than 2 hours in length will be billed an additional fee of $15.00 per 1/2 hour increment above 2 hours.)

MiniDisc presents some unique problems due to the fact that cartridges can not be directly duplicated due to Sony's copy protection scheme. Instead, consider coping the Audio to a VHS tape using a HiFi deck and SP mode (Standard Play). Take the audio outputs of the MiniDisc and plug it into the audio inputs of the VHS tape. See our notes on submitting VHS tapes.

Long Tape/File Fee

This only applies to any particular tape or file submitted for transcription. It does not apply to the cumulative length of all your tapes.

Any single tape or file submitted that is longer than 2 hours will be billed $15.00 for each 1/2 hour beyond the initial 2 hours. To avoid this surcharge, record your audio or split it into smaller pieces. For example, send three 60-minute pieces of audio instead of one 180-minute piece of audio.

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--Maya Lin