Common uses
- Journalism. Transcribe interview recordings so you can quote people accurately and find a line you half remember.
- Podcasts. Produce episode transcripts for show notes, accessibility, and searching back through old episodes.
- Case studies and marketing. Transcribe customer calls you plan to write up, and cut clips from them for a landing page or a social post.
- Talks, webinars, and internal meetings. Keep a searchable record of what was said for people who did not attend.
- User research. Analyze interviews and usability sessions in depth. Experience research covers that case in more detail.
Step 1: Create your account
Go to dovetail.com/signup and create a workspace. A workspace is your organization’s space in Dovetail, and everything you import lives inside it. If your organization already uses Dovetail, ask a colleague to invite you instead. See Manage users.Step 2: Create a project
A project is a folder for one body of work: a podcast season, the interviews behind an article, a set of case study calls. Dovetail does not create a project for you. Select+ New, then Project, and give it a name.
The Free plan includes one project, which is enough to follow this guide. See Projects for what else a project holds.
Step 3: Add your recording
- Upload a file
- Import it automatically
Open your project, select
Import or + in the top right, and choose the file from your computer. You can select several files at once, and each becomes a separate item in the project.If the recording does not exist yet, you can record inside Dovetail instead. Open the project’s Data tab, select Create (+), choose Take notes, and click the microphone. Dovetail transcribes as you speak. See Transcribe and translate.Step 4: Let Dovetail transcribe it
Transcription starts automatically once the file finishes importing. Dovetail detects the spoken language and can transcribe 82 languages. It also identifies separate speakers, so an interview or a panel is broken up by speaker. Once the transcript is ready you can rename the speakers, merge or split sections, and correct mistakes.Two related features need the Enterprise plan and are not part of the Free plan: custom vocabulary, which teaches Dovetail names and jargon it keeps mishearing, and translation into one of 75 languages.
Step 5: Work with the transcript
Dovetail summarizes each recording as it imports, so you can see what it covered without opening it. See Data summaries. It also suggests highlights, which are passages it considers significant. You accept the ones you want, and you can highlight anything else yourself by selecting the text. Every highlight stays linked to its timestamp, so the video plays from that point. See Highlights. To search the content rather than read it, open Chat and ask a question in plain language, such as “what did she say about her first job” or “where do they disagree”. Answers cite the transcript, so you can open the source and check it.Step 6: Share it
Preparing a video for download takes time. Dovetail shows progress in the bottom right and emails you when the file is ready.
Common mistakes
- Importing before the transcription language is set means regenerating the transcript, which deletes the highlights made from it.
- A separate project for every recording prevents Chat from comparing them.
- Speakers left as “Speaker 1” make later searches and quotes harder to place.
- A transcript exported and edited elsewhere loses the link between each quote and its point in the recording.
Where to go next
Transcribe and translate
Languages, speaker names, custom vocabulary, and translation.
Highlights
Marking the moments that matter and keeping them linked to the video.
Continuous discovery
Set up once so recorded calls arrive transcribed and highlighted.
Experience research
Analyze a set of interviews in depth when the transcript is the start.