CommunityData:Otter.ai
Otter.ai is a software service that automates transcription of audio from audio and video files. This is very helpful in qualitative research studies, such as interview studies, that rely on transcripts of audio. It could also potentially be helpful in quantitative content analyses that require text as data from video or audio files (e.g. podcasts or videos).
We currently have a subscription to a Business Otter.ai account running 1 year, ending around February 20, 2022. This account has one user seat that we share.
Access to the CDSC account
Multiple projects under the ecology grant benefited from getting this software service, and the username/password was shared the ecology-group listserv via email in Feb 2021. You can get in touch with Sohyeon for login details.
Best practices
- We have one user seat on a business account that gives us 6,000 min of transcription a month. This is 100 hours. While this is generous, since there are multiple people using the same account, please be mindful of how many minutes you consume in a month.
- As far are we can tell, there are no particular data privacy measures on Otter.ai, and audio is used (in aggregate with other audio data) to continue training their transcription AI. If your audio contains sensitive and private information (e.g. health information), this may not be the best service for you to use. Sohyeon has emailed the support team to get more precise details and will update accordingly.
- For now, as best practice, (1) *decouple your audio files* from any identifying metadata as much as possible, (2) download your transcription to your secure machine, and (3) then delete it/the audio from the Otter.ai system.
Questions and problems
Feel free to ping Sohyeon with any questions or issues. The Otter.ai support team is also pretty responsive, in Sohyeon's experience.
