Best Rev Alternatives (That Help You Better Use Your Transcripts)

Peggy Pan
October 2021

Rev is an easy-to-use, online transcription service that offers computer and human transcription, captioning services, and subtitling for video and audio files. It's a popular transcription service because it's quick, cheap, and gives users a human transcription option (many transcription sites only offer computer transcription). In addition, many users like Rev because the platform offers subtitles in a variety of languages.

However, Rev isn't great for everybody. While it might be ideal for somebody who needs a quick transcript every now and then, some people stop using Rev because:

Rev.com can be glitchy and will sometimes reject video or audio files if they're not super great quality.
Their human transcription service can take a while if you're transcribing videos any longer than 20 or 30 minutes. You can opt for their "rushed" human transcription option if you're in a pinch, but it's expensive (~2.75 per minute of audio).
You need to pay for add-ons if you want to get instant machine-generated drafts while waiting for final transcripts, or if you need transcripts with timestamps.
Their platform doesn't actually add captions or subtitles to your videos for you; Rev only provides an SRT file. So while, yes, users can use that SRT file to manually add captions or subtitles to videos, the process is long and requires extra video editing software.
They don't provide options to store transcripts/videos or work with your transcripts after you have them in your hands. Instead, users are left to download transcripts and a) save them in another drive or b) upload them to whatever tool they're using to edit, analyze, or share their video recordings.

So we put together this post with the best Rev alternatives — starting with our video transcription software, Reduct.Video — so you can compare other fast, accurate transcription services and find one that fits your needs.

Reduct provides accurate AI-powered and Human transcription.

Try Transcribe by Reduct →

Our Rev Alternative: Reduct.Video

Reduct.Video is a leading video-to-text transcription tool that offers both computer and human transcripts that are highly accurate and really affordable. But beyond transcription, what really makes Reduct stand out is what you can do with the transcript. Specifically, search, analyze, tag, collaborate and organize large numbers of transcripts; and, as we'll explain below, easily create video clips or highlight reels by just highlighting the parts of the transcript you want to showcase.

So it really shines for:

Researchers who need audio/video transcription to review video recordings and conduct cross-transcript analysis
Video editors who use transcripts to do paper edits, pull video clips, or create captions
Teams (i.e., research agencies, filmmakers, marketers) who work together on video projects
Individuals or teams who want to share transcripts or highlights with stakeholders

Plus, since our platform is entirely web-native, you can share videos and transcripts with team members in the cloud, and work on projects together via collaborative tools. Then, once wrapped up, you can share video presentations with external stakeholders (or anybody else you need) just by sending a share link.

We accept video and audio files of all formats and codecs; you can import videos directly from your computer, or push them from another platform (i.e., YouTube, Vimeo, Zoom, Google Drive, DropBox) to our software.

Let's walk through Reduct's platform and how it works.

Reduct Transcription Services: Computer & Human Transcription

As we mentioned above, we offer both computer and human transcription.

Our computer transcripts are ~85% accurate (on par with the industry standard) and ready in minutes. They're editable in case you want to fix any inaccuracies while you review — we also have a built-in text editor to streamline proofreading. We recommend computer transcripts when working with really clear audio since computers can have a hard time when audio has background noise or unclear speakers.
Human transcription is better when you have poor quality audio or need a really accurate transcript you can trust; human transcriptionists can tune out distracting noises and decipher unclear dialogue to deliver a super polished transcript — Reduct's human transcripts are ~99% accurate. We guarantee a 24-hour turnaround on human transcripts no matter the length of your video files , but most transcripts are done and delivered in less than four hours. We also offer the cheapest one-day human transcription service available, charging only $1 per minute of audio — compared to Rev's rate of $2.75 per minute of audio for rushed transcription.

Our transcription services are also highly secure — our platform meets SOC-2 compliance standards and we have a "chunking " method for human transcription that ensures no single transcriber has access to your entire video or audio file:

First, we break your audio/video file into 5-minute chunks and send each chunk to a professional transcriptionist.
Each transcriber listens to their portion of audio and transcribes the voice recordings to text, identifying and assigning speakers when possible.
Then voice recognition AI analyzes the audio file and adds speaker names throughout the entire transcript.
Then we piece the transcript back together and send it back to you!

We also do a few quality control checks throughout these steps to make sure the transcript text and speaker names are correct.

Note: We offer two types of human transcription services for enterprise users. Both options are ultra-secure, and we can provide recommendations on which to choose based on your individual needs during your free product demo.

You can use Reduct as a high-quality transcription service and that's it: Once your computer or human transcript is ready, you can download it from our platform for whatever you need.

But we've found that most people who need transcription services plan to use their transcript for one thing or another — video analysis, paper edits, captioning/subtitling, sharing research, creating video presentations, collaborating with team members — and uploading your transcript to every individual tool you intend to use in your workflow can be a giant headache (not to mention, time-consuming).

So we designed Reduct so you can work with transcripts, and other team members, right within our platform; this is not only convenient but it helps teams operate more efficiently.

Reduct's Tools to Work with Transcripts & Videos

As we said above, beyond offering fast, accurate and affordable transcription, what really makes Reduct shine is what you can do with the transcript. These analysis and editing features we discuss below are popular with researchers (UX, UI, & market researchers, research agencies, etc.) and filmmakers (documentary filmmakers, brand storytellers, content creators, etc.), or anyone that analyzes and works with lots of video transcripts.

Using Your Transcript for Video Analysis

After uploading your video to our platform, you can save it in a Project-Based folder. This lets you organize your video recordings and transcripts by project; as a result, your video library is cleaner and easier to navigate, and sharing is simplified.

You can also find transcripts or specific quotes using our powerful Fuzzy Search feature. This lets you find individual transcripts based on the content you're looking for, and it also makes cross-transcript analysis (a.k.a., Scanning a batch of transcripts for common patterns and themes) easier.

Fuzzy Search is perfect for scanning through video recordings — and it's just really user-friendly, in general — because it searches by concepts and themes instead of limiting results to only exact search terms. That way you don't have to remember exact dialogue to find specific video clips; you can just type a word or phrase that's relevant to what you're searching for and Fuzzy Search will pull all related video files.

For example, say you work for a retail brand and you want to look back through all of your customer interviews for their input on comfortable cold-weather clothing. You can type "winter pants " or "gloves " into Fuzzy Search, and Reduct will pull video clips with terms like "snow pants, " "ski pants, " or "mittens, " so you can see all of your content that relates to your search query.

Note: You can also use the Fuzzy Search functionality to search within a single transcript, or to scan your entire video library. Fuzzy Search is versatile to assist with different types of projects.

Reduct also has a popular Highlights feature so you can keep track of key moments and important findings while you review your video footage, and tags let you organize all of your Highlights by topic.

Highlights: Highlight words, phrases, or sections of your transcript to call out everything that's important. When you make a highlight in Reduct, our platform automatically pulls the corresponding video clip and saves it in the Highlights tab. You can download and share these individual clips, or you can use Highlights to create Highlight Reels. More on that below.
Tags: Categorize your video clips by adding relevant tags to your highlights. You can also easily manage all your tags in Reduct, establish a common language for tags, and speed up the tagging process.

Going back to our retail example from above: Say you're reviewing the transcripts from all of your customer interviews on winter clothing. You can highlight all of the transcript text regarding "what interviewees wear in the winter, " and organize all of your highlights by clothing type (e.g., pants, jackets, shoes, hats, etc.). Then you can quickly search back and find all of your interview clips on "winter pants " with ease.

Then, if you want to put together shareable video presentations from your video footage and Highlights, you can use Reduct's suite of word-based editing tools. We promise it's so easy that anybody — even users with absolutely no video editing background — can make engaging video narratives with it.

Edit Your Videos by Editing Their Transcript

Reduct has an intuitive Highlight Reel maker that lets you create longer stories from your video clips by dragging and dropping your Highlights into a sequence. You can arrange and rearrange these clips as you go, and, if needed, add custom text slides between clips to build context, provide extra details for viewers, or insert imagery.

Then, you can use our Strikethrough editing feature to edit out everything from your video presentation that you don't want or need — without worrying about timestamps or making perfect cuts. This is great for getting rid of unrelated tidbits, long tangents, filler words, or interviewer interjections. Our word-based video editor creates seamless transitions between video clips and edits so your video presentation flows nicely and you don't have awkward or choppy jumps.

Reduct automatically adds captions to your video files by pulling transcript text; you don't have to worry about downloading an SRT file and then fussing with that in another software to caption your videos — which is just one big way Reduct is more convenient than Rev.

Captions are handy when creating social media collateral, or really any video that is meant to be shared with others, because they allow viewers to watch (and actually follow along with) your video presentations even when they can't turn on audio. Video captions have been shown to improve video accessibility and increase viewer engagement.

We should mention: Although we don't offer subtitling services, we do provide SRT files for every Highlight Reel, so you can always download and use that SRT files to add subtitles to your video files when posting them online.

Reduct also integrates with video editors like Adobe Premiere Pro and Apple Final Cut Pro X so you can push video files between software to do more advanced fine-tuning.

Reduct's Options to Store and Share Transcripts & Videos

Reduct doubles as a cloud-based video storage solution because it saves all of your recordings in our platform — and as we discussed above, allows you to organize them in Project-Based folders. This gives you a central repository for your video files, so you're never wondering where to find a specific recording, and it lets you clear up space on your computer.

Plus, keeping all of your video files in our platform makes sharing videos with other teammates more convenient (no more emailing large files!) and guarantees your team members can access the video files they need, when they need them.

In Reduct, you can add other users to Project-Based Folders, or specific video files, with User Permissions. By adding users via permissions, you can control exactly how they engage with your video library and modify your video files.

With permissions, you can let others: View your recordings, add other recordings to your Project-Based Folders, leave comments on your transcripts, directly edit transcripts/videos, and more. Our Presence feature lets you track other team members and their edits in real-time, so you always know the status of a project.

Check out our other article to learn more about our collaborative video editing features.

You can also share your edited videos with stakeholders, external collaborators, or other non-Reduct users with a share link. Every Highlight Reel is assigned a unique share link that can be copied and pasted across email platforms, messenger applications, and workspace collaboration tools. We allow free unlimited sharing, too, so you can send videos as much as you want without extra fees.

Reduct's share links direct end-users to our website where they can view your Highlight Reel and its accompanying transcript. All transcripts are interactive so viewers can switch between listening and reading, search for the information they're interested in, or adjust the video playback speed to review on their own terms.

When sharing videos with outside parties, you can choose to enable comments if you wish to receive feedback. (You can also leave comments turned off if you don't want back and forth on your video files.) We also provide unlimited free commenters, so you don't have to worry about monitoring comments when sharing with people outside of your organization.

Get Started With Free Trial

Reduct is a video transcription + video editing software for users who need more than just a basic transcript. Our platform's features help teams: Conduct research and analyze video recordings, edit videos and put together shareable video presentations by editing the video's transcript, work on video projects with other team members, and share finished video presentations with others.

To see how our platform works and start transcribing your first video, get in touch with us to start a free 30-day trial of Reduct.

Runner-Up: Descript.com

Descript is another popular online transcription software that's built with extra features to utilize transcripts and video recordings (you can read our full comparison of Descript and it's alternatives here. Overall, their software gets good reviews: Users say it has a clean, modern interface and its word-based editing features are pretty easy to use.

It's a suitable option for:

Podcasters and vloggers
Users who want screen recording software
Users who need more advanced video editing options and have the background to use them

Although Descript is appropriate to polish up single recordings, it's not a suitable option for users who need to work with more than one video file because it doesn't (easily) let users: 1) Search through their video library to find specific clips, 2) compile moments from different video recordings, or 3) analyze transcripts to conduct research, identify patterns, and pull related video files, and more.

We only recommend Descript if you're creating podcast videos or you want to create engaging screen recordings to share with others.

You can also read more about Descript and popular Descript alternatives in our other guide.

Other Cheap & Fast Transcription Services to Try

If you just need a Rev alternative for the occasional transcript and you don't need a super robust solution to utilize those transcripts, you can try Otter, Happy Scribe, or Temi. All three transcription software provide instant computer transcripts, and they're comparable with other transcription sites in terms of accuracy and reliability.

Let's talk more about these other three Rev alternatives.

Otter.ai

Otter is a popular transcription software for voice conversations like meetings, lectures, and interviews. It can quickly convert audio and video files to text, and it's fairly accurate as long as you submit good-quality audio. They even offer mobile apps for Android and iPhone so you can transcribe audio and video recordings on the go.

Otter has added a few new features in recent years, like live captioning and notetaking assistants for virtual meetings, but reviews say those extras can be glitchy and need a bit of tweaking before they're truly useful. Otter's core function is basic audio transcription, so we recommend it for users who need computer transcription and have clear recordings.

One downfall to Otter's platform is that they don't offer human transcription, and their transcripts can be messy if audio has background noise or speakers are (even somewhat) hard to understand. If you just need a transcript for your own reference, Otter.ai works well, but if accuracy is necessary, you may want to use a different transcription provider.

Otter has different plans for different types of users — personal plans for individuals and tiered business plans for startups, medium-sized, and enterprise companies — so they can appeal to a variety of users (and budgets).

Happy Scribe

The next option on our list, Happy Scribe, offers transcription and subtitling services, so it's good for Rev users who want an alternative that does both (or anybody who wants to use their transcripts to add subtitles to videos).

Users have access to both computer transcription — or as Happy Scribe calls it, automatic transcription — and human transcription within Happy Scribe's platform. Both transcription options are highly accurate, and Happy Scribe's 24-hour human transcription option is cheaper than Rev's rushed transcription service at only $1.95 per minute of audio.

Happy Scribe is a popular option for those who need subtitling, specifically, because they offer subtitles in dozens of languages; where many transcription services that also do subtitling typically only offer subtitles in a handful of languages. This makes Happy Scribe a great option if you need subtitling in a language that isn't commonly offered, like Cantonese or Latvian.

Happy Scribe seems to mostly appeal to individual users, rather than teams, but they do have an enterprise plan for businesses who are interested in their software.

Temi

The last Rev alternative on our list is Temi, an inexpensive computer transcription software. Temi only does transcription, so it doesn't have the extras like Otter or the subtitling like Happy Scribe — it's really only good for users who just need basic transcription and don't plan on using their transcript for much else.

Temi is convenient because they accept all file types, deliver transcripts back in under five minutes, and allow users to edit transcripts to polish them up.

Even though the platform is very basic, Temi does have some advanced features, like machine-learning algorithms and speech recognition software so it can learn from your edits to more accurately transcribe audio/video files in the future and correctly identify speaker names in transcripts. You can also leverage Temi's API to connect it with other tools your teams use (e.g., Gmail and Dropbox) and streamline certain workflows.

The only complaint we commonly hear with Temi is that their platform will reject poor-quality audio files, so you have to make sure your recordings are really clear if you want to use Temi's transcription.

Temi is good for non-profit organizations and small businesses with a limited budget since they have affordable pricing.

Did You Find the Best Rev Alternative for Your Needs?

When shopping for Rev alternatives, stop and think to yourself: Why do I need transcription software in the first place?

If you just need a transcript for your own reference and accuracy isn't super important, you can get away with basic transcription services like Otter, Happy Scribe, or Temi.

However, if you plan on using your transcripts for other things, or you need a high-quality, polished transcript, you're better off finding a reliable transcription servicethat goes beyond transcription. Or in other words, a transcription software that's designed with additional features to help your teams (better and more efficiently) utilize your transcripts and video recordings — like Reduct.Video.

Reduct offers online video transcription services, as well as tools to analyze videos and transcripts, edit videos by editing their transcript, and more. To learn about how you can use Reduct to support your video projects, get in touch with us for a 30-day free trial.