Otter.AI is an advanced AI-powered transcription tool that converts spoken language into written text in real time. It’s particularly useful for researchers, students, and professionals working in Digital Arts & Humanities who need to process and analyze spoken content efficiently. Whether you’re conducting oral history interviews, or transcribing lectures, Otter.AI can save time and improve accuracy. Instead of manually transcribing hours of audio, users can focus on interpreting and organizing the data.
Step 1: Where to Start?
In the upper right corner, there are 2 buttons: Import and Record.
If you are participating in a live conversation, you can simply click the Record button to start recording and transcribing your conversation in real time. If you want to transcribe an audio file you previously recorded, you can choose Import. Otter.AI supports AAC, MP3, M4A, WAV, WMA, MOV, MPEG, MP4, and WMV formats. You can either drag the file to the Dropbox or select Upload to add your audio.
Step 2: Check the Transcript!
Once you finished recording, Otter.AI will lead you to the Note page.
In the upper right corner, you can see the Edit button. Click the button, and then you can refine the transcript manually.
When you move your mouse over each sentence in the transcript, a small toolbar will appear next to it. In this toolbar, you can choose to highlight a sentence, comment on it, or copy it from the transcript.
Step 3: Transcribing For Online Meetings
The best thing about Otter.AI is that, in addition to recording live conversations and uploading audio, you can also use it during online meetings.
On the right menu, you could see 3 options: Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, and Zoom Meetings.
By clicking one of them, Otter.AI will automatically link all meetings in your schedule to the website. And then you could use Otter.AI in the online meeting!
Step 4: Channels vs. Folders
Channel is more like a message group. Click the Channel button in the left menu. By inviting people via email addresses, you could create a public or private channel in Otter.AI. Every person in the channel could see the transcript/ audio you shared to this channel.
Creating a new folder is similar to create a channel. Just click the Folder in the left menu, which is just below the Channel. Folder is more about personal organizing. You can categorize your notes into different folders based on your own preferences. Unless you shared them, the notes in folder will not be available for anyone else.
Step 5: Basic Settings
Otter.AI supports not only English.
In the homepage, click the account name in the upper left corner, and then select the Account Settings. You will then be directed to the settings!
Click on the language button, you can then choose which language you want to transcribe. Otter.AI supports English, Spanish, and French.
Still Confused?
Here is the official instruction published by Otter.AI.
Also, there is a YouTube video introducing the process of using Otter.AI.
2 thoughts on “Otter.AI Tutorial”
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Thanks for publishing this tutorial! I used to use Otter.ai in high school when I would interview subjects for the newspaper, but I never got into its more sophisticated features, like you do here. There was one time when I used Otter.ai for a French interview, but I didn’t know you could change languages, so the transcript was nonsensical! If only I had had this expertise back then 😉 I’m glad you’ve made this info available to other DH practitioners, since it’s so useful for this field!
This is a great tutorial! Being able to use this software to translate in real-time seems like a great way to cut-down on hours o sorting through and transcibing audio as you mentioned! In the future, I am sure this can be used to further break down collaborative barriers through supporting more languages and improving accuracy for live conversations. This is such a cool resource!