Getting your talk recording ready to upload
Most speakers end up with one of three sources: a phone left running on the lectern, the venue's official recording, or a video export from the AV team. FastScribe accepts uploaded audio and video files directly, so you can upload the video as-is without extracting the audio first. If the conference published your talk online, download the file to your computer first, then upload it. FastScribe works from your uploaded file, not from a link.
A full conference slot usually runs well past the ten-minute free tier, so plan around the limits: your free first file covers ten minutes and fifty megabytes, a free account raises that to thirty minutes and one hundred megabytes, and Pro handles files up to two gigabytes and five hours, enough for a keynote plus the entire Q&A that followed it.
From transcript to blog post, in your own words
What FastScribe gives you is an accurate, timestamped transcript of exactly what you said on stage: raw material you can quote verbatim instead of paraphrasing yourself from memory. When you sit down to write the blog post or LinkedIn article version of the talk, you write it; the transcript is there so your best lines survive the trip word for word.
Talk audio has a quirk that reading the transcript makes obvious: on stage you reference slides aloud, so phrases like 'as you can see here' or 'this chart on the right' lose their meaning on paper. The timestamps on every line let you jump back to that moment in the recording, check which slide you were on, and rewrite the reference so it stands on its own.
Captions for the clip, text for the archive
If you are cutting a highlight clip of your strongest two minutes for social media, export SRT or VTT and you have a caption file whose timing lines up with the video. For everything else, pulling quotes, searching for the moment you answered a specific question, keeping a record of the talk, plain TXT is the format you will actually work in. Pro accounts add DOCX export when you want a formatted transcript to send to an event organizer or editor.
Frequently asked questions
Will FastScribe handle the audience Q&A at the end of my talk?
It transcribes everything in the audio, including audience questions, though a question asked far from the room microphone can come through less clearly than your own miked voice. The transcript does not label who is speaking, so use the timestamps to mark where the Q&A begins and separate questions from your answers yourself.
Can FastScribe write the blog post or article version of my talk?
No. FastScribe produces a transcript and downloadable transcript files: TXT, SRT, and VTT, plus DOCX on Pro, and nothing more. It gives you an accurate record of what you said so you can write the article yourself, quoting your own wording exactly.
The conference posted my talk on their site. Can I paste the link?
Not directly. FastScribe only works with files you upload, so download the video or audio file from the conference site to your computer first, then upload that file. Video uploads work fine; there is no need to strip the audio out beforehand.
Do you keep the recording of my talk after transcribing it?
No. The uploaded audio or video is deleted the moment your transcript is ready. Only the text is kept, so you can come back later to reread the transcript or export it in another format.