Meeting Recording Transcription

Why it helps

Built-in meeting transcripts often depend on your plan and language settings, and meeting bots raise privacy questions. Transcribing the recording afterwards works with any platform's export.

Step by step

1. Download the cloud recording (Zoom saves MP4 and M4A; Teams and Meet save MP4).
2. Use the M4A audio file if you have it — it's smaller and faster to read.
3. Transcribe in text-only mode, optionally into another language, then draft minutes from the timestamped lines.

Tips

• Ask participants for consent to record; many jurisdictions require it.
• For international teams, run the same recording with a target language to share a translated transcript.

Example

Cost: 55 credits (5.5¢).

Limitations to know

• Recordings only — not live transcription.
• No speaker labels; meeting apps' own transcripts can name speakers.

Getting a usable file out of the meeting platform

mydubly has no connection to Zoom, Teams, Meet or any other meeting platform and never joins a call. You download the recording yourself and drop the file in, so the work starts with choosing the right export.

• Prefer an audio-only export when your platform offers one. The transcript only needs the voices, and a smaller file is quicker to move around.
• If the platform saved a separate audio file per participant, mix them into one track in an audio editor first so every voice is in the file you upload. Mixing multiple microphones explains how.
• Screen-share recordings are fine as they are. In transcript mode only the speech becomes text; the picture plays no part.
• Check the length. Day-long workshops need splitting into parts under 2 hours, ideally at the breaks.
• If you recorded a dial-in phone bridge rather than a video call, expect narrowband audio and plan a closer review; see phone call recording transcription.

Consent comes before any of this. Tell attendees at the start that the recording will be transcribed, and that the audio goes to an outside service for processing, where it is deleted within 30 minutes of the job ending. For performance reviews, disciplinary meetings or anything covered by a confidentiality agreement, check your organisation's policy on external processing before uploading.

From transcript to minutes, by hand

mydubly does not write summaries, action items or minutes. What it gives you is the raw material: every sentence with a timestamp. A practical pass for a one-hour meeting:

1. Skim the timestamped transcript once without editing, marking lines where something was decided, assigned or postponed.
2. For each mark, play the surrounding minute of the recording to confirm who committed to what, since the transcript does not name speakers.
3. Write the minutes in your own template: decisions, actions with owners and due dates, open questions. Keep the timestamp next to each item.
4. Circulate them with a note that timestamps refer to the recording, so anyone who disputes a point can check it themselves.

Meeting recording to notes goes further on structuring notes and on participants' privacy.

Matching the meeting to the output

Weekly team call in one language

Transcript mode; the timestamped transcript feeds the minutes

Cross-border project review

Transcript mode with a target language for colleagues who read it more comfortably

All-hands for staff in several countries

Transcript mode per language, or dub mode if staff will rewatch it as video

Client workshop longer than 2 hours

Split at the lunch break, transcribe each part, note where part two starts

Recorded hiring panel

Transcript mode; attribute speakers manually only where it matters

Translated transcripts for colleagues abroad

Many meetings run in one shared language that some attendees follow with effort. Choosing a target language turns the recording into a transcript and subtitles in that language, which colleagues can read at their own pace. Each target language is a separate job at the same 1 credit per minute. Two habits make these useful: label the file as machine-translated, and ask a bilingual attendee to check any passage that records a decision or commitment before it is quoted back to anyone. Dub mode exists too, but one stock voice reads every participant, which makes a many-voice discussion harder to follow than reading along.

Keeping a meeting archive you can search

Uploaded recordings and outputs are deleted within 30 minutes of the job ending, so the archive lives wherever you save the downloads. Name each transcript with the date, team and topic (for example 2026-09-14-platform-roadmap.txt), keep it next to the recording, and ordinary desktop or shared-drive search will find a phrase across months of meetings. Decide upfront who may open the folder and how long transcripts are kept. Searching meeting recordings covers naming schemes and retention choices.

Using the tool on this page

• The spoken language is detected automatically; you select the output language — the spoken language itself for an untranslated transcript, or another language for a translation. Files can be up to 2 hours long.
• Only the audio is sent for processing — the video stays on your device — and audio and text are deleted within 30 minutes of delivery (how files are protected).
• You can download a timestamped transcript, subtitles (SRT and VTT) and plain text. Every output, step and limit is explained on the video to text page.