Go Paperless With Digital Transcripts

In the second quarter of 2014 people watched approximately 38 billion free videos online. This is a huge jump of 43 percent over the same quarter in the previous year of 2013. The year 2015 is different for videos.  This report on The Independent suggests that Facebook is planning to become a competitor to Youtube. Facebook received nearly 1 billion video views in a day. That was a growth of whooping 74 percent globally over last year.

So big companies have realized the potential of video.As there is a surge in the number of videos being viewed digital marketers are optimizing videos for better viewership. Having a digital transcript on videos being watched is one such way of optimizing videos for a better viewing experience. 

When Are Printed Transcript needed?

1. Conference Calls: Multiple participants taking part in a conference call may be given a printed transcript at the end of the conference session. This saves the participants saves the efforts to take lengthy notes. Remember if the number of participants in a meeting are too many then that many pages have to be printed. 

2. Business Meetings: Business meetings such as minutes of a meeting, press meetings, annual general meetings are usually taped and then transcribed professionally. The transcripts are given to all the stakeholders and important persons such as the C-Suites executives, Directors and managers. 

3. Academic Research: PhD students need to present dissertation for completing the requirements of obtaining a PhD certificate. In the dissertation paper the PhD students need to collect quantitative and qualitative research data. Qualitative data the student usually conducts one on on research interviews with the participants belonging to their field of research. All these interviews are to be converted into text. This process also known as dissertation transcription. After the dissertation transcription is over the research transcripts are printed out and attached to the final research paper. 

4. Video Seminars and Telepresence: Video seminars and telepresence (a type of video conferencing) are usually transcribed into text as well. For example conference done over the  web based platforms such as Nextiva, Digium, 8X8 etc. maybe be recorded and transcribed be professionals such as trainers, coaches, mentors etc. The transcripts are then cataloged for later use. 

5. Medical Reports: Healthcare conferences, important research findings etc. are transcribed and converted to text.

Going Green

As we discussed above there are a lot of cases where transcripts are required to be printed on paper. Imagine when we aggregate the total number of transcripts printed worldwide the number will run into millions of pages. Imagine how many trees will have to be cut down in order to produce the paper for those transcripts. Let's take an simple example. A large tree roughly produces 10,000 A4 size sheets. Again this figure is an approximation but good enough for this example. 

So in order to print out 1 million video transcripts can you guess how many large sized tress will have be brought down? When we divide 10,000 by 1 million we obtain a figure of 100. So that is 100 trees. Though it does not sound bad but remember that the figure is for printing 1 million pages. As per this article which was published a few ago,  estimated the number of pages printed every day is an earth shattering 3 billion. The billion pages printed every day! So imagine if you are printing several millions of transcripts we are losing thousand of trees to it.

Saving paper by using Digital Transcripts

Instead of using printed transcripts one should shift to a better alternative of using digital audio-video transcripts. Digital transcripts are similar to printed except in the fact that they are not typed manually using a typewriter or printed using desktop laser printers. 

Most people use some sort of smart device such as a smart phone, tablet or a laptop. Digital transcripts can be easily shared among these smart devices. So that eliminates the need to print the transcript. Also there is no need to carry the transcript as it can be stored digitally on a harddrive or on the cloud. 

At Etranscriber.net we have been encouraging businesses to make the habit of using more and more transcripts in the electronic form such as a PDF and Word, and use less of printed materials. Avoid wherever possible and print only when necessary. Becoming a greener business is good for your business and good for planet Earth.

About the Author

Etranscriber.net is an online typing service company which provides audio-video transcribing service. The company's mission is to provide cheap transcription services to everyone while providing highly accurate transcripts in return. Etranscriber.net can be contacted online at Etranscribers Blog site. 

Links and Resources

1. Paper printing facts
2. Community naturalization projects across Canada
3. 7 Ways to put Youtube transcripts to use