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Fremantle is one of the world’s foremost content production and distribution companies, known for creating and licensing iconic television formats such as Got Talent, Idol, The X Factor, and Farmer Wants a Wife. With operations in over 30 countries and content distributed to more than 180 territories, Fremantle delivers thousands of hours of programming annually across unscripted formats, high-end dramas, documentaries, and digital-first content. Its global catalog, spanning over 30,000 hours, positions the company at the center of international entertainment.
As one of Fremantle’s most dynamic regional divisions, Fremantle Italy plays a vital role in adapting global formats for the Italian market while also producing original scripted and factual content with international appeal. Its dual focus on local relevance and global distribution requires precision in every stage of production, including subtitling and localization. With increasing demand from broadcasters and streaming platforms, Fremantle Italy’s content must meet the highest standards of linguistic accuracy, speed, and accessibility across multiple languages and formats.
“The demand for creating subtitles for Italian productions has grown significantly over the past two years,” shared Alessandro Murgante, Post Production Manager at Fremantle. “Initially, only international streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon, and Disney required Italian-to-English subtitles. But the industry has shifted, now also the Italian national broadcasters and streaming platforms, like RAI, are requesting subtitles and translated subtitles as well, making it essential for us to find a reliable partner.”
Before partnering with Amberscript, Fremantle Italy lacked a consistent, reliable subtitling solution. Each production was handled on a case-by-case basis, requiring the team to outsource to different subtitle vendors and build new workflows from scratch every time. This fragmented approach wasn’t very efficient or scalable.
Communication problems and misaligned workflows were frequent challenges with previous providers. Given Fremantle’s demanding post-production timelines, often requiring fully finished subtitles for a 50-minute episode within just four days, the company needed a subtitling partner who could deliver fast, high-quality results, while remaining flexible and responsive to shifting production needs.
After an initial conversation, Alessandro Murgante decided to try out Amberscript’s services through a trial, where he could test the quality of delivered subtitles, before committing to a full production cycle. This test provided Fremantle Italy with a low-risk opportunity to assess the quality, speed, and reliability of Amberscript’s subtitles solutions. Pleased with the results, Fremantle decided to start working with Amberscript on “Rhythm and Flow,” an underground rap talent show, streamed on Netflix.
Amberscript provided Italian-to-English translation services that aligned with Fremantle’s production schedule. The subtitling work typically starts when episodes are about 90% complete, with room for adjustments before the content goes to broadcasters for weekly airing.
A crucial part of making this work was setting up clear communication with a dedicated contact person at Amberscript. This relationship made it possible to get quick responses to urgent requests and allowed both companies to adjust their processes as they learned to work together effectively.
The results of Fremantle’s switch to Amberscript became clear within the first few projects. As both teams adjusted to the new partnership, Alessandro shared three important changes that have made his team’s work significantly easier:
For Fremantle, finding a subtitling partner that could consistently deliver quality work while fitting into their production schedule has made a real difference. The relationship with Amberscript has eliminated the need to reinvent subtitling workflows for each project, reduced stress around tight deadlines, and solved previous communication problems. When asked to sum up the relationship in one phrase, Murgante simply called Amberscript “a good partner.”
Looking for a subtitle partner that delivers without the constant back-and-forth? Get in touch with Amberscript to discover how we can streamline your next project.
In municipalities across the Netherlands, local council meetings are where important decisions happen. Elected officials gather to debate and vote on issues that affect everyday life for residents, from parks and schools to roads and public services. For citizens, being able to follow these discussions isn’t just about staying informed. It’s also about participating in the decisions that shape their communities.
Many Dutch municipalities use Company Webcast, part of Euronext and a leading webcasting provider in the Netherlands, to put their meetings online. About 120 Dutch municipalities use Company Webcast’s services to make their council meetings available to the public. But a significant portion of citizens couldn’t fully benefit from these recordings.
For people who are deaf or hard of hearing, which is about 10-15% of European Uinion citizens, following these important municipal meetings was difficult or impossible. Company Webcast was using Google’s automatic subtitles, but the quality just wasn’t good enough.
The subtitles often got political terms wrong, mixed up the names of political parties, and misunderstood laws being discussed. This created a real barrier for people with hearing problems who wanted to know what was happening in their municipalities.
Making matters more urgent, in October 2016, the European Union passed a law called “Digital accessibility” (Directive EU 2016/2102). This law requires all public organizations in EU countries to make their websites and apps accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities.
Dutch municipalities now faced two challenges: they needed to help all citizens participate, and they had to follow this new law. They needed a solution that would:
To solve this problem, Amberscript teamed up with Company Webcast. This partnership allowed Amberscript to offer its subtitle technology to municipalities through Company Webcast’s existing platform. Municipalities could keep working with Company Webcast while getting much better subtitles.
Some municipalities, like Enschede, started using Amberscript’s automatic speech recognition technology to create subtitles. This was already much better than the Google subtitles they had before. To make the quality of automatically generated subtitles better, Amberscript used the Dictionary feature, available on the platform. The feature allows to add words and phrases commonly used in municipal meetings. Using this list, the technology was then trained to recognize political terms that regular speech recognition technology usually suffers with.
Other municipalities, like Barneveld, chose Amberscript’s “human-made” subtitling service, which combines automatic speech recognition with quality checks done by professional subtitlers. This solution delivers an even better quality, which is important for council meetings.
Patrick van der Geest, CEO of Company Webcast, commented:
The specialized subtitles made a real difference. People with hearing loss, like Jaco, can now follow municipal meetings and understand what decisions were being made in their communities.
The special training for political terms was key to making this work. By focusing on the unique words used in municipal meetings, the system got much better at understanding and transcribing these specialized discussions.
The technical setup was smooth because it worked with systems that municipalities were already using, so they didn’t have to change their entire process or learn new technology.
Looking for a subtitling solution to make your content accessible? Get in touch with Amberscript to see how we can support your next project.
Ballandi is an independent Italian production company known for creating TV shows, documentaries, and films. Based in Rome, they’ve been a major player in the entertainment industry, producing content mainly for both Italian and global streaming platforms and broadcasters, like Rai, Paramount and Discovery. Their work includes popular shows like Ballando con le Stelle, Drag Race Italia, Danza con Me, and Via Dei Matti n°0.
The first challenge Ballandi faced happened when they were working on the TV show Drag Race Italia, where they needed quick-turnaround English translated subtitles for Paramount and Discovery streaming platforms. Ballandi’s previous vendor couldn’t deliver on time with the project’s demanding schedule, which required delivery within just 24-48 hours.
“We needed an effective, fast, and precise service with native translators available to translate the program for our American and British clients,” says Marco Bocancea, a Post-Production Coordinator at Ballandi.
Another Ballandi project, a movie Coppia aperta, quasi spalancata also had complex production requirements. This time the challenge wasn’t only to deliver fast. The project required managing three different subtitle versions simultaneously – for streaming platforms, Rai Cinema and Netflix, but also SDH captions for hard of hearing people. As Marco notes, “The triple version is complicated to manage, and the film was extremely challenging because it was all direct sound recording and sometimes very hard to hear.”
Another challenge Ballandi faced was the need to qualify for the Italian tax credit system, which required providing subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing, plus audio descriptions for the visually impaired. “We access this tax credit because we care about producing documentaries that promote Italy and its culture,” Marco explains. This is why Ballandi needed a subtitle vendor that is able to provide SDH captions.
Before discovering Amberscript, Ballandi worked with other service providers that offered affordable pricing for tax credit-related productions. However, when Drag Race Italia demanded faster turnaround times, they began searching for alternatives.
“We discovered Amberscript because we were looking for something faster”, says Marco.
Though Amberscript’s services came at a slightly higher cost, the quality and speed justified the extra spending. As Marco explains, “Your efficiency demonstrates a level of professionalism and expertise that truly stands out. While your rates may be higher than our previous vendor, the quality of work you deliver is incomparable. This exceptional service is why we’re committed to continuing our partnership with you.”
For Drag Race Italia, Amberscript took a smart approach by choosing a translator who brought exactly what the project needed – a native English speaker from the UK who also spoke fluent Italian and understood the show’s specific language and terms. This meant less time spent on explanations and corrections, helping Ballandi meet their tight international deadlines while keeping the show’s unique style intact. Amberscript consistently met the 24-48 hour turnaround requirements.
The film Coppia aperta, quasi spalancata showcased Amberscript’s ability in handling complex projects. The team successfully delivered three different subtitle versions – for Rai Cinema, Netflix and SDH captions. The project achieved something unbelievable: immediate approval from RAI Cinema’s Televideo service.
When asked to summarize his experience with Amberscript in one phrase, Marco chose “Competence and speed.” The partnership has proven valuable beyond just meeting deadlines, with Amberscript consistently demonstrating flexibility in the approach and fast communication.
Looking for a subtitling solution that keeps up with your production schedule? Get in touch with Amberscript to see how we can support your next project.
Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (HvA) is one of the largest educational institutions in the Netherlands, with over 50,000 students. Located in the heart of Amsterdam, the university focuses on practical education that prepares students for real-world careers.
The university’s research center CAREM (Centre for Applied Research in Economics and Management) regularly conducts interviews as part of their research projects. Like many research institutions, they faced the challenge of converting these recorded interviews into written text efficiently. This is the story of how they transformed their transcription process.
CAREM’s research team was dealing with a time-consuming transcription process that was affecting their research timeline. Their original approach relied on student workers to transcribe recorded interviews, which created several challenges.
The process looked like this: first, they had to find interested students through email announcements. Then, they needed to train these students on proper transcription methods. After the students completed their work, researchers had to review everything and often send it back for corrections. The entire process typically took three weeks to complete.
While working with students offered reasonable rates, it came with complications. Students would occasionally step away from projects when their coursework became demanding, forcing researchers to find replacements. More importantly, researchers were spending a lot of time managing the transcription process instead of focusing on their research.
HvA found a better approach by partnering with Amberscript. Amberscript provides advanced transcription software that automatically turns the interview from audio or video into text. After that, the files are reviewed by professional transcribers who perfect them to 99% accuracy. When the whole process is done, HvA researchers receive a notification and can export the files in different formats.
The most significant impact was on timing – transcripts were now ready in 5 working days instead of 3 weeks. The university saved lots of time and reduced a big amount of administrative work, making the whole process simpler. Researchers no longer need to recruit, train, or supervise transcribers, and can focus on their actual work.
The improvement in HvA’s transcription process shows the value of finding the right tool and partner to outsource tasks that become a bottleneck in a process. By working with Amberscript, HvA’s researchers can now dedicate more time to their core work.
Are you also a university looking for a transcription solution that helps your researchers focus on the actual research part instead of repetitive tasks? Get in touch with Amberscript to see how we can help!
The University of Barcelona, with its 5,715 academic staff based in Catalonia, Spain, took on a significant research project funded by the State Research Agency. Their mission was to investigate emerging security challenges facing Spain and Europe, from pandemics and financial crises to cyber-attacks and foreign investment in strategic sectors. The research aimed to rethink the role of armed forces in addressing these evolving threats.
The research team from the University of Barcelona started an ambitious project involving more than 50 hours of interviews with political, financial, and military elites. However, they quickly discovered a bottleneck in their process – there were too many interviews to analyze. They had to be distributed among different researchers, and traditional word detection software like Atlas.ti wasn’t helpful to do an accurate analysis. It could take up to six months to complete, severely slowing down their research progress.
At the same time, the quality of the data had to be perfect. As the Delphi method is highly complex, requiring iterative rounds of analysis and expert feedback, any errors in transcription or misinterpretation of responses could distort the research findings.
Another challenge was to meet all the data protection and ethics commission standards. The interviews were of a sensitive nature, and there could be no possibility of data breaches or leaks. This required not only secure storage solutions but also strict access control measures and anonymization where necessary.
The University found their perfect fit with Amberscript’s manual transcription services. This solution brought together a transcription software, that could quickly transcribe all interviews, with a team of expert language specialists who understood technical jargon and specific vocabulary. To make the transcripts even more accurate, Amberscript also did quality checks.
Another important part was data security. Amberscript checked all the boxes there. The service was fully GDPR-compliant, and the software offered all the needed security features: data was stored exclusively on secure European servers, and built-in anonymization tools protected sensitive information. With ISO 27001 certification and strict data protection measures, including NDAs and DPAs signed by all language professionals, Amberscript guaranteed the data security.
What previously took months could now be completed in days. Amberscript delivered 50 hours of interview transcriptions within just 4 business days.
The quality was impressive too. 99% accuracy meant researchers could trust every word on the page. This meant the research team could start analyzing the interviews right away. For a project focused on understanding emerging challenges to Spain’s security, this timing made all the difference.
Thanks to Amberscript, what started as a daunting challenge of processing 50+ hours of expert interviews turned into a smooth research process. The University of Barcelona’s experience showed that even the most complex research projects can be finished fast with the right tools. By solving their transcription bottleneck, they could focus on their real goal: helping Spain and Europe prepare for future security challenges.
As one of the leading direct sales enterprises in Europe, LR Health & Beauty is on a mission to bring high-quality “Made in Germany” health and beauty products to the mass market.
With over 3000 community members, LR Health & Beauty runs annual events where they hold corporate panel talks and presentations and honor the community members. Over 3000 people usually attend these events, and as many of the sales partners are hearing impaired, LR Health & Beauty events are accompanied by sign language interpreters.
Along with the rest of the world, the COVID-19 pandemic meant that LR Health & Beauty Systems’ in-person events had to turn virtual. Instead of incorporating a sign language interpreter, they switched to captions to make digital content accessible to everyone.
However, manually creating captions is often easier said than done. LR Health & Beauty aimed to have the captioned content live within two days of the event. However, it took a team of 5 people almost two weeks to complete the captions!
After this experience, the team realized that they had to outsource their captioning and look for an external provider that could help. Amberscript was top of the list.
With Amberscript’s Manual Subtitling service, the LR Health & Beauty team can upload content into our secure platform. From there our team of professional German captioners gets to work captioning the audio.
Before delivering the captions, our team of Quality Checkers synchronizes and formats the text while making sure the text is 100% accurate. We then send the caption files back to LR Health & Beauty within two business days.
“We’re totally satisfied – there is nothing that could be improved. After our horror experience of doing it ourselves, Amberscript and the workflow were the absolute highlights for us, with a fast delivery time and error-free captions. For us, the topic of captions no longer exists, because we no longer have any to-dos in this regard. We like to use Amberscript for it again and again.” – Max Paus, Senior Project Manager Events at LR Health & Beauty
Now, Amberscript supplies LR Health & Beauty Systems GmbH with HQ captions regularly to ensure that all their virtual events are digitally accessible for all attendees.
Get affordable, accurate, and fast captioning and subtitling solutions for your virtual events.
Cheflix is the latest streaming service on the block for those who have a passion for cooking and food. Dubbed the ‘Netflix of Michelin Star Chefs’ the platform provides viewers with access to online masterclasses from the world’s renowned chefs, including Jacob-Jan Boerma , Ron Blaauw and Hans van Wolde. After cementing their foothold in the Dutch market, the team were looking to reach new markets.
We sat down with Carlijn de Visser, Operations Manager at Cheflix and Jan Hans Kuipers, Solution Architect at Onbrdng to learn more about the collaboration.
Cheflix is growing rapidly and has big plans to develop its target audience and expand internationally.
“If we wanted to grow into something really cool, it had to be international.” Carlijn described ” We wanted the Dutch chefs to be accessible to the foreign market, then we’d have different types of chefs from every country with all sorts of different cuisines, who would teach you to imitate their culture or their cuisine.” The problem that was standing in their way was that Chefs are not usually used to presenting at all, especially in English. The content would need to be recorded in their native language and subtitled to be ready for an international audience. It was no easy task as there were over 26 hours of content that needed subtitling and more in production!
The team set to work on finding a translator that could help. “The problem was that there are people who’ll translate the audio literally. Not every translator is suitable for that, because they are culinary terms, so you have to find a party that can translate really well”, said Carlijn “For example, in Dutch, you say ‘een snuf salt’, but in English that’s not ‘a sniff’.
Finding the right translator was one thing, but making subtitles for the content was a whole other ball game. The trick there is text compression and still showing something relevant on-screen, which is relevant with the audio of course. You need different knowledge for that than just translating.
The team tried many options such as translators on Fiverr but weren’t happy with the results. “It didn’t make any sense at all!” said Jan Hans “So that proves that you do need a serious company that works with quality subtitling because that’s a special technique, to keep the story relevant.”
The team always had Amberscript as a potential partner on the table and liked the idea that there was a combination of Automatic Intelligence and Human accuracy.
The combination ensured a lower price point in comparison to traditional subtitling service, without compromising on the accuracy and synchronization of the subtitles. Jan Hans added “We did a trial with an episode, and the speed and quality were the deciding factors for us. Amberscript managed to accurately localize the message with a fast turnaround. It was the total package!”
Now Cheflix can accurately localize their unique content and help more people discover the joys of Michelin Star cooking from home!
Researchers from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) were working on a project for Horizon 2020, funded by the EU, to identify and build programmatic responses to expressed needs of vulnerable populations during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The research project consists of 5 phases over 1.5 years:
1. To develop, implement and analyze vulnerability assessments for Covid-19
2. To apply findings to actionable recommendations
3. To scale definitions of vulnerability to national health data set
4. To develop ongoing, integrated assessment training programs
5. To scale the program to global networks
The research team needed a partner to help them accurately transcribe their qualitative interviews into multiple languages in a safe and secure environment.
During Phase 1, the ten-member research team held 83 2 hour-long interviews with participants from vulnerable populations in various languages, including German, English, Farsi, and Turkish.
To interpret the results of the interviews, they would first need transcribing.
“As you can imagine, it wasn’t an easy task. We had over 166 hours of content in many languages and only ten people on our team. ” – The research team.
With a long process ahead of them, 1 hour of interview recordings can take up to 5 hours of manual transcription.
As transcribing an -hour-long recording can take up to 5 hours of manual work, that would total 830 hours of manual transcription for the team. Divided between the 10 group members would mean 83h of transcription work for each member! The arduous process would mean stalling the project and taking the focus away from other areas.
“We needed a transcription provider that the whole team could use, fit in our tight budget, facilitate the languages we needed and handle sensitive data. Amberscript was the right solution.” – The research team.
Thanks to Amberscript’s automatic transcription tool and the Multi-User-Account, the team reduced the initially planned time spent on transcription of 830 hours by over 50%.
The results were achieved by the power of AI joining hands with a human touch in the form of an intuitive editor so that each researcher can improve the subtitle themselves for 100% accuracy.
“Amberscript offers a great variety of transcription languages – especially Farsi and Turkish were languages that other solutions didn’t cover. The account manager was also very helpful when someone on the team had a question with the platform. ” – The research team.
Amberscript’s solution results in much higher productivity and time savings and lower costs. With a world-class team of experts in technology, language, and science, Amberscript aims to make all audio accessible to positively impact society.
Sporters, a sports education platform hailing from Milan, Italy, is in the business of helping its audience access video lessons from athletes of each discipline, telling their secrets, teachings, and challenges.
RedFir, the video production agency helping Sporters with technical support, needed a partner to help caption Sporters content to become digitally accessible to their rapidly growing audience.
The internal team spent hundreds of hours manually captioning the video in Adobe Premier to ensure accessibility for their entire customer base.
With the mission to help more young people get into sports, Sporters creates video content documenting the lives of many top Olympic and Paralympic athletes from less mainstream sports. By showcasing their technical skill sets, Sporters motivates young people of all abilities to pursue a career in sports or get involved in sporting activities.
“We want all of our content to be accessible for viewers of all abilities, but we found that the current workflow wasn’t going to work long term. We needed a reliable partner that could help.” – Andrea Barosi, CEO of RedFir.
With Amberscript’s subtitling solution, the time spent on making the manual workload reduces significantly. With the previous workload, one hour of video content required one person more than two days of manual post-production work.
“With Amberscript, the time saved is a game-changer. The workload is reduced by over 40%” – Andrea Barosi, CEO of RedFir.
Now, the RedFir team simply uploads the video content to Amberscript, where our team of professional captioners handles the process from start to finish, formatting and synchronizing them according to broadcasting criteria. For 100% accuracy, a quality checker also examines the text to ensure that everything is ready to go!
2 Jun 2021
Industry: Content and Media productionLocation: Headquartered in Utrecht, The Netherlands
As of December 2020, shows of food and cooking channel 24Kitchen, part of The Walt Disney Group, started to be available on its VOD streaming services. Therefore, the demand for delivering produced content containing highly accurate and high-quality closed captions was raised.
Camfactor, a Dutch video production company, is no stranger to creating high-quality video content. For many years, they have been creating concepts and shows for 24Kitchen, RTL4 and other broadcasting companies.
But the real big step, the one that required involving Amberscript into the process, was the beginning of fruitful cooperation with the third-largest (June 2021) international streaming platform.
The media industry is evolving rapidly and launching our content on an international VOD platform allows us to reach a truly global audience. Offering captions is a crucial step in localizing our TV shows!Bart Meuleman, Executive Producer/Owner Camfactor
The media industry is evolving rapidly and launching our content on an international VOD platform allows us to reach a truly global audience. Offering captions is a crucial step in localizing our TV shows!
Camfactor creates various entertaining food-related shows in Dutch, one of which is very popular: Rudolph’s Bakery. In this program Master Chef and Master Pastry Chef Rudolph van Veen shares his knowledge and passion for baking. These shows were so popular and interesting that The Walt Disney Company saw a big potential for them to be presented for a wider international audience, outside of the Netherlands. Therefore they required content with highly accurate closed captions to be delivered along with the TV shows so that Disney could translate those in different languages.
Every week Camfactor delivers several episodes of shows like Rudolph’s Bakery to Amberscript. Amberscript’s professional captioners use the AI-powered Amberscript captioning platform to deliver high-quality captions within a very short time. There is a constant flow of content being submitted to Amberscript and high quality captions being retrieved so that Camfactor can hand-in the finalized versions to the streaming service.
The deadlines are tremendously important as for some shows there is an expected date to be published on TV or the VOD platform.
Camfactor was looking for a sustainable partnership with a company that can constantly provide caption services with flawless quality, according to the deadlines and for an affordable price. Camfactor realized it was difficult to find any reliable partner from the pool of “traditional” partners and knew that creating captions internally would require too much time and resources. Thankfully Amberscript leverages technology to make it as easy as possible to order captions, to guarantee the highest quality and to always deliver according to the promised deadlines.
The ease of use and the close contact with Amberscript’s team had a large impact on the decision to use manual captions offered by our company.
Amberscript so far has proven to be a very reliable partner – the process of submitting material within Amberscript’s platform is easy, the communication works well and they deliver according to the quality standards and delivery times. I wouldn’t want to miss them in the production process!Bart Meuleman, Executive Producer Camfacto
Amberscript so far has proven to be a very reliable partner – the process of submitting material within Amberscript’s platform is easy, the communication works well and they deliver according to the quality standards and delivery times. I wouldn’t want to miss them in the production process!
Amberscript specializes in creating captions, subtitles and transcriptions as fast, as easy and as accurate as possible. Amberscript uses a combination of the latest technology developments in artificial intelligence and a large group of qualified transcribers and captioners. Every submitted file is first processed by Amberscript’s highly accurate speech recognition software. Afterwards, a team of at least 2 qualified captioners with years of experience in the media industry make sure that the captions achieve 100% accuracy. Every file is checked again by Amberscript’s internal quality team before the final product is delivered to the client.
Industry: The education sectorCompany size: 4,800 academic staffLocation: Montpellier, France
Audrey Rouyre – Ph.D. in Strategy and Research in Management from the University of Montpellier was conducting a research project on how competitors can work together on big innovation projects. With the example of Project Galiléo. Galiléo is a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) that went life in 2000, created by the European Union through the European Space Agency (ESA), operated today by the European Union Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA).
In order to fulfill the task, Amberscript was asked to do 30 hours of verbatim transcription of qualitative interviews.
Audrey admits that at the beginning she tried to conduct manual transcription by herself. Results? 1 hour of recorded audio took her approximately a full working day (including brakes), which isn’t different from the estimation that can be found on our blog post. Transcribing audio manually is possible, but this can be a really time-consuming task!
With 30 hours of audio to be transcribed, it could take her up to 30 working days, under the condition she would be solely committed to the transcription process, without handling any other side tasks. That’s where Amberscript’s support comes in handy.
“Thanks to Amberscript I could focus on my research, instead of doing the time-consuming task of transcribing.“Audrey Rouyre, Ph.D. in Strategy and Research in Management, University of Montpellier
“Thanks to Amberscript I could focus on my research, instead of doing the time-consuming task of transcribing.“
Anyone who has ever worked on any kind of research, probably knows that’s it’s much better to have a transcript of an interview recording, than having to scan through the whole audio file. It is just much simpler to find and highlight the most interesting or important part. At Amberscript we know how crucial it is to have a highly accurate transcript, that’s why next to automatic transcription, we offer manual transcription, with clean read (text made more readable) or verbatim (all words typed exactly as said) text.
We were able to deliver 30 hours of transcribed audio in 5 days. Which reduced the amount of time by over 83%!
“I’ve experienced great and fast customer service, before and after the order with French-speaking support.“Audrey Rouyre, Ph.D. in Strategy and Research in Management, University of Montpellier
“I’ve experienced great and fast customer service, before and after the order with French-speaking support.“
Amberscript is building SaaS solutions that enable users to transform audio and video into text and subtitles using speech recognition. Our speech scientists train the best speech recognition engines in European languages. Our online text editor and human transcribers bring the text up to 100% accuracy. Thousands of transcribers and subtitlers work at Amberscript and provide manual services that make up our human layer. In a nutshell, Amberscript helps its clients avoid the pain of manually transforming audio or video into text and subtitles.
Grundl Leadership Institute stands out as the leading institute of high-quality management training for executives. Boris Grundl, the founder of the institute, is a longtime experienced manager of various teams and companies. Besides his work as a management consultant and coach, Grundl also lectures on the topics of personality development, individual responsibility, and HR management. He has also written and published several books, including “Steh auf – Das Ende aller Ausreden” (“Get up – The end of all excuses”) in which he comes to terms with his life-changing accident in 1990.
Grundl Leadership Institute clients include some of the most successful companies in the world. Executives use the Grundl Leadership Institute to develop their skills in management, motivation, and communication.
According to Grundl Leadership Institute CEO Jochen Hummel, they anticipated in 2018 that online content would be essential in the future and play an indispensable role in the education sector. For this reason, the institute already began to develop a hybrid form of learning at that time, consisting of live lectures and online seminars. Grundl began recording all its internal and public appearances, set up its own video studio, recruited a professional cameraman and thus began transferring all content into a digital format. The first fully digitized seminar was completed in May 2020.
The professional reputation that Grundl Leadership Institute has built and maintained over many years, resulted in high expectations for offering digital content. For this reason, Grund Leadership Institute partnered with a variety of experts, including those in content creation, participant learning assessment, illustration, and 3D animation development. Amberscript was selected as the expert and partner to create HQ captions for the Institute’s videos.
“The most important thing is that we deliver the same high quality to our customers that Boris Grundl would deliver to you in person. Subtitles are part of that.”
In the past, Institute made attempts to create subtitles by their own part-time staff. It turned out that creating high-quality subtitles is an extremely time-consuming process. Further, subtitle creation requires expertise and technical know-how.
Not only the video content needs to be transcribed – which in itself takes a lot of time – but it also needs to be formatted and time-stamped. After hours spent trying to create high-quality subtitles for a video, Hummel’s team knew they would need professional help.
“Speed, quality, and reliability were very important to us. We need to be sure the subtitles meet the quality standards of our video production.”
After careful research and comparison of providers, with regard to their requirements, Grundl Leadership Institute has decided to work with Amberscript. The main task was to create subtitles for its digital learning content. Hummel has indicated that the quality and price of the subtitles were not the only factors. Also, speed and customer service played a vital role in the selection of providers.
“Amberscript offers their service cheaper than the competitors, thanks to a largely automated process. Besides, the customer service is great. Usually, everything runs so smoothly that I don’t even notice anything during the whole process”reports executive Jochen Hummel.
“Amberscript offers their service cheaper than the competitors, thanks to a largely automated process. Besides, the customer service is great. Usually, everything runs so smoothly that I don’t even notice anything during the whole process”
After two years from when the Grundl Leadership Institute has launched the virtual learning world, it is already a great success. Customers are responding with a lot of enthusiasm. Hummel confirms they are also perceived by major companies as being serious and professional. Thanks to that they are being booked for big-scale and significant projects.
“Our videos are very popular among clients, and the call for more content is getting louder.”
Looking ahead, Hummel predicts the demand for Grundl Leadership Institute’s online content will grow internationally. One way to tap into foreign markets would be to offer English subtitles for German content as well. This would make it possible to tap into international markets. Without too much effort and by offering foreign-language viewers a pleasant customer experience. After the first translation into English with Amberscript’s translation service, Hummel says:
“We are very pleased with our partnership with Amberscript. Amberscript outperforms the competition with lower prices, shorter turnaround times, and better quality. Also, Amberscript provides translation services. That makes them a long-term strategic partner for us.”
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Leon Birdi is recognized as one of Denmark’s most talented lecturers in business development. He is a graduate of the consulting company Cultivator and has gained his experience from Avis Biludlejning and a number of IT companies.
Leon works proactively with the production of videos on e.g. social media like LinkedIn where he addresses directly to a wide audience of his clients, but also his more in-depth webinars and online courses.
I save time and I save money.
I can with Amberscript in a few minutes create subtitles and transcription, which would normally have taken me about an hour. It has saved me approx. 80% of the time I spend creating subtitles. This generally means two things:
1) I can increase my revenue and earnings as I am depending on billable hours.
2) I get more time for either family, vacation or other hobbies.
In addition, I spent an incredible amount of time ‘aligning’ time codes in the past, so that my subtitles matched the video. Amberscript’s ability to export it in the correct format and precise time codes makes subtitles fit – almost – perfectly every time.
I was looking for services to automate the work of subtitles and searched for options online. One of Amberscript’s consultants contacted me directly and quickly got me started on their platform. I was pleasantly surprised by the level of service and how easy their platform is to use. It is extremely intuitive and straightforward.
It’s impressive how precise and accurate Amberscript’s technology works in a small language like Danish. I would estimate that the accuracy is approx. 90-95% when I speak clearly and not too fast. It is a far better result than when I have tried similar services.
“It’s impressive how precise and accurate Amberscript’s technology works in a small language like Danish. I would estimate that the accuracy is approx. 90-95% when I speak clearly and not too fast.”
Leon Birdi
I can see that there is a direct connection between the subtitled videos and new customers. When I have subtitles on my videos, I reach a larger audience. I get my SEO optimized as I can export the transcript and attach it to my videos on e.g. Youtube. Last but not least, the competitive pricing means that with a minimal investment I achieve great results. It’s a win-win business case.
Skyhigh TV is one of the Netherlands’ leading production companies and produces TV programs for both commercial and public broadcasters. The company mainly produces reality TV shows, docusoaps and documentaries.
The key goal of any production is to find the best story possible. A crucial part of this discovery process is ‘logging’ of raw video footage (also called ‘rushes’). Loggers and transcribers usually have the task to go through the entire amount of raw video footage to transcribe conversations and to mark scenes for the final edit. By definition, there is always more video recorded than is used in the final edit.
It is the task of the Director or Edit Producer to finalize a final edit from hundreds of hours of video material. In order to accelerate this process, loggers and transcribers are used who type out all suitable fragments with their corresponding time codes.
“Normally we use people for this, who transcribe all conversations in the video material. For an interview of 2 hours, a logger usually takes up to 10 hours. That’s almost one and a half days of work’, says Sanne, Producer at Skyhigh TV.
In addition, it is an operational challenge to manage spotters, often students or trainees. If a whole batch of 10 hours of material has to be logged, 3-4 people are put to work who have to comply with deadlines and who have to spot according to certain standards. “This ‘people management’, of course, also takes a lot of time.”, says Sanne.
The scripts are then loaded into Avid or Premiere so that editors and directors can quickly access a selection of the right video material.
Skyhigh TV recently started working with Amberscript to automate the process as much as possible.
SkyHigh TV uses Amberscript to have videos transcribed using automatic speech recognition (ASR). The workflow changes. After production, video material is loaded into Amberscript und producers receive a complete transcript within only a few minutes. Amberscript automatically distinguishes between speakers and every word gets a timestamp.
In order to type out an interview of 2 hours, loggers now need around 20 minutes. Afterwards, some adjustments have to be made in some cases because speech recognition does not always work 100% accurate.
“For recordings with good sound quality like interviews it works incredibly well. I think many of our teams can’t think of working without Amberscript anymore – we literally save hundreds of hour of work. The trainees are of course very happy and our producers have much more time at our disposal. It’s a huge relief to spend less time distributing video files to different people and to monitor deadlines. In the end, this is time we can now use for creating high-quality TV programs.”
Apart from SkyHigh TV, Amberscript also provides services to filmmaker Rogier Kappers, read more about that here!
Award-winning filmmaker Rogier Kappers needs to transcribe a huge amount of interviews for the creation of his new documentary. He used to hire students and transcribers to manually transcribe his interviews so that he could find the best quotes and storylines. Now he uses Amberscript, which automatically converts his interviews into text. He uses the Amberscript editor to highlight striking quotes, to find a compelling storyline, and to generate automatic subtitles so that he can find the golden nuggets among hundreds of hours of video and audio.
Rogier Kappers is a renowned Dutch documentary director and producer. He has 25 years of experience in creating and producing high-quality documentaries. His most famous documentary, Lomax The Songhunter, won him the Golden Calf (the highest Dutch film prize), and an Emmy nomination.
Currently, Rogier is producing “Glass”, a story about his dream of being a street musician.
When creating high-quality documentaries, filmmakers and producers usually conduct long hours of conversations and interviews to gather insights they can use to build a striking storyline. Usually, only a small fraction of the conversations are used in the final film piece and it is a tedious process to find those fragments that make the difference between a mere documentary and an award-winning piece of art. Just like finding the needle in the haystack.
Transcription of the conversations helps to call quotes back to memory, to find audio and video fragments, and to build a storyline that captures the attention of the viewers. Within the transcripts, the most compelling elements are highlighted. Afterward, those audio and video elements are put together in the final version of the documentary.
For earlier documentaries and projects, Rogier Kappers used to hire students and transcribers to help him transcribe up to hundreds of hours of audio and video material. This process was a complex project in itself as multiple transcribers have to be managed to work together. When so many people are involved, it is difficult to manage deadlines, to generate standardized transcripts and to maintain a high level of quality Rogier reported. On top of the complexity, manual transcription can be costly and usually takes 4-5 hours of work per hour of interview.
For his most recent documentary, Rogier started using Amberscript.
Amberscript delivers automatically generated transcripts in only a fraction of the time that manual transcribers use. Rogier can then quickly scroll through lengthy conversations to refresh his memory and to find those fragments that are useful for the documentary. The search function makes it possible to find moments in conversations where a crucial topic is discussed. “Amberscript changes the way you can approach transcription. Before automatic transcription, you had to listen again and again to get to the right point in a conversation. Now you can simply click on the search function and you have an overview!”
What’s more, automatic transcription can save a lot of time, stress and money. In order to transcribe all his material, Rogier now pays only a fraction of the cost that he budgeted for earlier documentaries.
“Although it’s not yet 100% perfect, automatic transcription is always better than the way we did transcription before” Rogier indicates. “It’s definitely faster and cheaper. Also, it is so much less work for yourself because you don’t have to manage all those transcribers, you don’t have to pay an agency but you can still find all the relevant pieces in your audio and video material”.
Next to filmmaker Rogier Kappers, we also provide our services to SkyHigh TV, read here how we do this!
