Live Transcription for Meetings

Live transcription is a service which uses ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) technology to present real-time machine-generated captions within meetings. After turning these options on all spoken content in a meeting will have an accompanying text version. In Zoom this will be available as captions as well as a transcript sidebar including identification of each speaker. Live transcription is available to Whiting School of Engineering faculty, staff, and students in both Zoom and Teams meetings.

Note: Automated transcription services should be considered a helpful addition to a meeting and are not a substitute for human transcription as they are often in the 70-80% accuracy range. Please contact your school/program’s disability services office if you have an accommodation need.

Zoom Live Transcription

  1. In your meeting, you will see a Live Transcript option in the main control bar, click Live Transcript and then click Enable Auto-Transcription, the options above this are only used for providing human captions and may be ignored.

    zoom controlbar showing live transcription option
  2. That's it! Enjoy high-quality live transcription in your Zoom meeting.

    example of live transcript display in zoom

To enable live transcription in a meeting hosted from an instructional studio, see our article Live Transcription with Zoom Rooms.

Teams Live Transcription:

  1. Start a meeting and go to your meeting controls and select More options.

    teams meeting controls
  2. In the More options menu, select Turn on live captions.

    teams menu to enable transcript
  3. That's it! Enjoy high-quality live transcriptions in your Teams meeting.

    example of live transcript display in teamsPlease note that Teams does not save captions. 

Powerpoint Live Transcription:

  1. With your slide deck open, navigate to the Slide Show ribbon tab. Click Always Use Subtitles to enable live transcription. 

    Slide_Show_Tab_2.png
  2. By clicking on the chevron icon on the Always Use Subtitles button, you can specify the Spoken Language, Subtitle Language (to offer translated transcription), and the location where the subtitles will appear. Audio Settings will allow you to review which microphone is selected for use.

    Subtitle_Options-02.png
  3. Play your presentation and begin speaking. Live transcription will appear according to the specifications you made in the subtitle settings.

    Subtitle_Demo_2-02.png
    NB: This feature is available in the desktop PowerPoint application for both Windows and MacOS, and is compatible with the following browsers for use within PowerPoint for the web: Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome 34+, and Mozilla Firefox 25+.  

For more information about recording and generating captions for a PowerPoint presentation, please see our article: Recording and Captioning PowerPoint Presentations

Best Practices

To make sure your live transcript is as accurate as possible follow the suggested tips below.

  • Conduct your meetings in a location free from background noise. 
  • Speak clearly into your microphone. 
  • Make sure you are using the highest-quality equipment available to you. 
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