A recording is only useful once it becomes text. This page takes you from hitting record on your phone to a checked transcript, ready to sort into an outline or to edit into a post.
Before you begin
- A microphone. Your phone always has one. A laptop has one built in. A desktop computer needs a separate microphone.
- A recording app that turns your voice into text on its own, installed on both your phone and your computer and signed in with the same account, so the files sync. Cường uses Tana Voice: it records up to 2 hours, sends the file to a server for safe keeping when you have Wi-Fi or 4G, turns it into text, and pulls out the highlights.
- Something to talk from. For the Idea step, take your set of guiding questions (see Build an outline from a one-line topic). For the Write step, take your locked outline.
Steps
Turn off the internet and calls
Recording is when you dig out what you know yourself, so you do not need the internet. Turn off the internet and calls, so you can give 100% of your focus to recording with nothing to break it.
Read each question aloud, then answer it
Read the question or the idea in your outline, then talk. Skip any question you do not know. For a question you know, say it all: numbers, memories, everything related. Where you do not remember well, say you do not remember well, because you need the truth. Try to say it right the first time, instead of saying the same thing two or three times.
Speak Vietnamese, with few English words
Speak Vietnamese the whole way through. Mixing Vietnamese with English makes the recording messy, and the AI is more likely to get the text wrong. Repeating yourself, saying “uh”, or saying something wrong and then saying it again is fine: the speech to text model drops “uh” and “um”, fixes spelling and splits the text into paragraphs.
Turn the internet back on to get the text
When you finish, turn the internet back on. The app sends the file to the server, turns your voice into text, then syncs it to your computer. Do the rest on the computer, because it is faster and easier than on the phone.
Check the names in the transcript
Open the transcript on your computer and check the names of people, products and tools. The rest is usually about 95 to 99% right, so you do not need to proofread all of it.
Check the transcript
- Are the names right? If the name of a person, product or tool is wrong, fix it in the transcript right away.
- Is the transcript thick enough? 3,000 words of recording make a published post of about 1,000 words. If 20 minutes only gives you 3,000 words and you want a longer post, record longer next time, talk faster, and come up with more ideas.
- Did you say something wrong higher up and correct it further down? The AI may not notice. Mark that place, so you can fix it in the Edit step.