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Zoom, Teams, Otter & AI transcripts

Already have a Zoom or AI transcript? Here’s what cleanup costs for research interviews

The rate is the same as standard transcription — from $1.99 per audio minute for one-on-one interviews and from $2.69 per audio minute for focus groups and recordings with three or more speakers. We don’t charge less when you already have a Zoom, Teams, Otter, or other auto-generated transcript, and you don’t need to send it: we transcribe from your recording with our standard workflow. In our experience, auto-generated drafts of research interviews need so much correction that fixing one is slower and less reliable than starting from the audio.

Why an AI draft doesn’t lower the price

A transcript you can code, quote, and put in a methods section has to be checked against the audio word by word. A transcriptionist correcting a draft still listens to the entire recording — and also has to read, untangle, and re-label the draft while doing it. These are the problems we see most often:

Speaker attribution
Drafts merge turns, split one speaker into several, or label the wrong person; in focus groups the labels are rarely usable. Every turn has to be re-listened to and re-assigned.
Overlapping talk
When two people speak at once, the draft keeps one of them or neither. A research transcript marks [crosstalk] and captures each voice where it is audible.
Names, places, terminology
Participant names, medications, instruments, local places, and discipline jargon are guessed phonetically. A wrong guess reads like a real word, so skimming does not catch it.
Sentence boundaries
Punctuation is inferred, and a moved comma or full stop changes what a participant meant. Fillers and false starts are dropped or kept inconsistently, which matters for clean vs. full verbatim.
Accents, soft speakers, poor audio
Draft quality falls fastest exactly where research interviews are hardest: a quiet participant, a phone-in, an echoing room, a second language.

Starting from the audio, an experienced transcriptionist produces a clean or full verbatim transcript, and experienced professionals review each file in detail to reach 99%+ accuracy. That is the same product, at the same price, whether or not a machine transcribed the recording first.

What to send instead

  1. 1

    Send the recording, not the transcript

    Zoom cloud recordings usually include an audio-only M4A file — the smallest upload and all we need. A local Zoom recording gives you an M4A or MP4; Teams saves meeting recordings as MP4 in OneDrive or SharePoint. Any common audio or video format works: MP3, WAV, M4A, FLAC, MP4.

  2. 2

    Upload through your Landmark account

    Files go through the HIPAA-compliant platform, never email. Choose clean or full verbatim, and add speaker identification or timestamps if your analysis needs them.

  3. 3

    Keep the VTT for yourself

    Your Zoom or Teams transcript is still useful to you for finding a passage quickly. It does not change the price or the turnaround, so there is no need to send it.

Still recording? Headsets, one speaker at a time, and a quiet room do more for the finished transcript than any transcript-cleanup step. Step-by-step upload instructions are in the help center.

When your Zoom transcript is enough

If you only need to find a passage, remember what was discussed, or write up meeting notes, the auto-generated transcript may be all you need — it is searchable and costs you nothing extra. Have the recording transcribed when the words themselves are the data: coding in NVivo, ATLAS.ti, Dedoose, or MAXQDA, quoting participants in a paper, or documenting procedures for an IRB. Those uses need every word attributed to the right speaker, and that is what the rate pays for.

What you get, and what it costs

Standard transcription (clean-verbatim one-on-one interviews) starts at $1.99 per audio minute; Plus (focus groups, three or more speakers, full verbatim) starts at $2.69 per audio minute. HIPAA Safe Harbor de-identification and a dedicated project manager are included. Speaker identification and timestamps are optional add-ons priced with your quote. Standard turnaround is 3–5 business days; rush (24–48 hours) carries an additional charge based on project size and current capacity.

Get a quoteSee a full sample transcript

Questions researchers ask

Is the rate lower if we send you the Zoom transcript along with the audio?
No. The rate is the same as standard transcription: from $1.99 per audio minute for one-on-one interviews and from $2.69 per audio minute for focus groups and recordings with three or more speakers. We transcribe from your recording rather than correcting the auto-generated draft, because in our experience correcting one is slower and less reliable than starting from the audio. You do not need to send the Zoom transcript at all.
Can you clean up or edit an AI-generated transcript from Otter, Zoom, Teams, or Temi?
We do not edit AI-generated files. Send the recording and we produce a verified transcript from the audio at our standard rate, with speaker identification and timestamps available as add-ons. The result is the same document you would get if you had never run the recording through an AI tool: every word checked against the audio by an experienced transcriptionist, with 99%+ accuracy.
What should I send from Zoom?
The recording. Zoom cloud recordings usually include an audio-only M4A file, which is the smallest upload and all we need; a local recording gives you an M4A or MP4. Upload it through your Landmark account. Keep the VTT transcript and chat file for your own notes if you like; they do not change the price or the turnaround.
Does it cost more because the interview was recorded on Zoom or Teams?
No. The recording platform does not change the rate. What sets the rate is the number of speakers and the verbatim level: one-on-one interviews in clean verbatim are the Standard rate, focus groups, three-plus-speaker recordings, and full verbatim are the Plus rate. Speaker identification and timestamps are optional add-ons priced with your quote, and rush turnaround carries an additional charge based on project size and capacity.
Will the transcript work in NVivo, ATLAS.ti, Dedoose, or MAXQDA?
Yes. Transcripts are delivered in the format you choose and import into the major qualitative analysis packages. If you add timestamps, every speaker change or fixed interval is marked in [hh:mm:ss] so you can jump from a coded passage back to the audio.
Is a Zoom recording of a research interview handled under HIPAA?
On our side, yes: recordings are uploaded and stored on Landmark’s HIPAA-compliant platform, handled only by U.S.-based staff, and HIPAA Safe Harbor de-identification is included at no extra charge with transcription. Business Associate Agreements are available for institutions that need one. We cannot speak to how Zoom handles data inside its own service; check your institution’s Zoom agreement and IRB protocol for recording and transcript settings.