CBS News technology analsyt Larry Magid speaks with Otter.ai executives Simon Lau and Mari Mineta Clapp about the new integration with Zoom video conferencing to create real-time live transcripts of Zoom meetings. Scroll down for Otter.ai’s transcript of our conversation:
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Below is an unedited transcript of the podcast. It’s not perfect, but pretty close.
Larry Magid 0:00
Hi, I’m CBS News technology analyst Larry Magid. otter.ai could probably best be described as an automated transcription service. You can talk into its website or app or load a file, and it will automatically turn the voice into written text. I’ve been using it for a long time, though the technology is not yet perfect. It’s quite good. There may be an error here and there, but not many considering how hard this task would have been. Just a few years ago, the company just introduced a new feature that allows you to transcribe zoom conference calls. To find out more I spoke with otter executives, Simon Lau and Mari minetta clap Simon Lau Can you describe the new feature?
Simon Lau 0:44
Hi, Larry, thank you so much for the opportunity to talk about live video meeting notes for zoom. So this is honor, newest feature integrate with zoom to provide live transcription of all of your zoom meetings and What it does is that within the zoom window, the participants can, within two clicks of a button, be able to open up a live transcript. And this is way more than a live transcript. Because you can also the meeting hosts, and anybody who’s a collaborator or participants can highlight the important moments, and also insert photos. So at the very end of that online meeting, you get a meeting notes that can be referred back to so this is very useful for online meetings for online education, especially during these times when most of our meetings and lectures and all sorts of interactions are happening online. So yeah, so we’re very excited to talk more about it.
Larry Magid 1:46
So if I want to listen to the Rolling Stones instead of the speaker, but still capture the gist of what he or she is saying. I could actually look at that transcript can look like open captioning, as I’m watching the program. Is
Simon Lau 1:58
that right? Yes, yes, absolutely. For people who may have joined a meeting late, they can scroll back. And for people who have a momentary multitasking moment and being asked a question, you can scroll back and see what the question to you was, for students who want to share notes, and maybe they miss a lecture, that’s very useful. So all in all is for everybody who is participating live, who wants to recap and understand and study the information again, or for people who missed a meeting or missed the lecture. It’s all very useful.
Larry Magid 2:30
So another factor is it’s some people different people have different learning modes. So for example, I like watching videos and listen to people speak, but sometimes I can absorb information better to me better from reading it, because I can go back I can reread it on my own time, I can slow down speed up, skip ahead, if necessary. So reading does have an advantage in some cases, to video. In fact, I have to confess that often. If I’m looking for information online, I do a Google search. I’ll find a video on it. Sometimes I’m disappointed as much as I like video. Sometimes I just want to read it because I may not want to sit through a video to capture a certain amount of information.
Simon Lau 3:08
Totally, totally, you hit it on the nail, Larry, this is a new form of medium to consume information in a very efficient way. And it really caters to whether you are better at understanding material by weeding, skimming, searching, or at other times you might prefer to listen to it, and that’s great, you get options. So the author transcript is an audio transcript that synchronizes audio and text. And in some cases, if you have photos that are inserted in line, for example, it could be a lecture slide. It could be a chart, it could be a photograph of someone presenting something. All in all, everything synchronized is searchable. You can scan it, you can listen to it, you can view it, you can share it. It’s very easy. flexible.
Larry Magid 4:00
Another advantage I could see for academics, whether it’s k 12, or college is a instructor might want to later write a book or an article or something based on a lecture. And so rather than having to reconstruct their lecture notes, they could literally take the lecture, of course, they’d probably have to edit it, because speaking is a little different than reading in a formal sense, but at least they have the basis from which to create a printed document or written document.
Simon Lau 4:24
Absolutely. And the usability of the content is there are so many use cases. You mentioned one of them. For educational institution, they want to use it for online learning, they want to edit down the content or just post it as is, and they insert it and put it into their learning management system. LMS. That’s one way podcasters for example, they also want to provide a transcript in there. That’s another way video producers when they want to create video content they need captions to the added as part of the video are also provides that capability to generate the SRT file to be merged in with the video as well. So
Larry Magid 5:09
another advantage if you publish the text along with the video or whatever it is, and you have something that search engines can more easily access, which means you might increase increase the possibility of the content being found. So for those of you who are watching, I know some of you who are listening but for those of you watching, Simon, I think we’re going to see if the zoom gods are going to smile at us and you can share your screen. But for the listeners, why don’t you explain what you’re doing so that those who don’t have the advantage of the video can still get an understanding of what we’re seeing.
Simon Lau 5:41
Sure, let me go ahead and share my screen. So the first demonstration I’m going to show you will be our the newest feature called Live Video meeting notes. This is going to be a recorded demo because we’re doing zoom were recording it so not all the zoom windows Gonna be placed next to it. So bear with me. This will be a recorded video, but it gets the point across anyhow, you know, the fact that this works at all is pretty amazing. So we’re all used to compromises right now. Nope. All right, so I’m going to show you expand the video. All right, I’m gonna click play. Can you speak specifically on because we have one client calling and talk about the Florida reemployment Assistance Program. Can you speak specifically on how that works in particular? So let me pause right here. What you’ve seen so far is that es otter is integrated with zoom so that at the upper left corner, when you see the live button, you click on it to launch a browser window, in this case, the Chrome browser. And you can just set it aside put it side by side so that you can watch the zoom window and also follow along the live transcription.
Larry Magid 7:01
Just a comment I did set that up myself the other day and it took a you know, it took a little bit of work, but not much just a few minutes to follow some simple instructions to configure your resume to interact with otter.
Simon Lau 7:11
Yeah, it’s very simple. It’s like 10 minutes. And it’s a one time setup. Because every single time when you host a new meeting is automatic, you don’t have to do the setup is one time. So that’s really key. And I will
Larry Magid 7:23
say something for those few people who are in the situation I’m in. If you’re also doing Facebook Live or Google YouTube Live, you can’t do both at the same time because it’s the same API, but you can very easily and quickly disable it and re enable it. So if you happen to be in that situation, which most people aren’t, it’s not a problem. You just have to remember to quickly disable it, and then re enable it when you’re done with your Facebook or YouTube Live segment.
Simon Lau 7:50
Great tip. Now I’m going to continue to play the video for the next part of the demo. Yeah, you know, we have we have printouts on just about every single state in the United States. I think we have Every state, we may be missing some of these, you know, work sharing programs, let’s just call them work sharing programs. That’s one of the most common terms for this. These work sharing programs all. So here, I’ll pause it right here. What you saw is that as you are watching, so in a, you’re watching the zoom video, you are taking notes, if you heard something important, whether it is a quote, it is a key point, it is a decision. And you can absolutely highlight it like this. I’m gonna skip for a little bit. So this is showing that the user keep highlighting more. And at some point the user is taking a screenshot and inserting it. So let’s watch this part this are going to be that the employee must be a full time employee. No part time and no seasonal employees are eligible for this plan. Number two
Larry Magid 8:58
you just did it
Unknown Speaker 9:00
Because we have one, Curt,
Larry Magid 9:02
you inserted a graphic basically a JPEG or something into the this document that’s on your screen. So you can basically annotate and illustrate as you go along. That isn’t
Simon Lau 9:12
my understanding. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So it’s all part of your. So that’s why we call live video VA notes. This is for your live video meetings. And it takes notes for you. It’s more than just cat is not just captioning. This is live transcription plus automatic note taking through AI. You saw the accuracy of the transcription, and also providing you collaborative note taking capabilities. Now, just to be clear,
Larry Magid 9:39
you are screen sharing, because we didn’t want to do this as a live demo. But the reality is that you don’t screen share to do this. You simply have the zoom window off to the right. I’m sorry, the the the otter window off to the right, integrated into your zoom window. that correct?
Simon Lau 9:53
That is correct. Yeah. Now here’s the second demo. What I’m showing you right here is the web. version of the otter, the other application. And once you have logged in, you can start recording. So you click start recording. And you’re taking notes right now this is live, I’m talking, you’re seeing the real time transcription. So in a sense, this is very similar to what you just saw. Essentially, we have provided this live transcription and note taking capability and making it instantly available with a click of a button from the zoom window.
Larry Magid 10:31
Now just capture my voice as well. Oh, there it is. So this is Larry Magid speaking you’d want that and it doesn’t know my name. Okay. Got it wrong. Understandable. By the way, when I use my own auto account, it does know my name it learned it. But yes, I see that it can pick up your guests as well as a host.
Simon Lau 10:51
Absolutely. Now, that’s a good segue. Let me show you where that that I can fix that problem. If you go into So otter has something called custom vocabulary. Oh, and if you just go to your account settings and manage vocabulary here I can add
Unknown Speaker 11:13
Larry’s name in it. Larry Magid.
Simon Lau 11:20
Okay, so added. So now let’s try again. Okay. I’m gonna stop recording I’m gonna start a new one. Here we go again.
Larry Magid 11:30
Go Okay. Hi. Hi. It’s Larry Magid. And let’s see if you know how to spell my name. There we go. You didn’t capitalize it, but you got the spelling correctly. Congratulations is more than most people can do. You know, I use otter a lot and I’m not gonna lie and say it’s absolutely perfect, but it’s pretty close. And what I you might do my CBS, debriefs and transcribe them yeah, I have to correct an occasional thing. For example, I said CDs. It heard me say CBF. Maybe I was listening. I don’t know but it’s good. it right the next time. So it’s close enough and in quite accurate. I’m curious though how it handles accents and other issues and, and can it do languages other than English?
Simon Lau 12:12
otter currently is English only. And it can handle a wide variety of accents. We have users from the UK, we have users from Australia, we have users who know Southern Southern American accents, Indian accents, I have a little bit of Chinese accent and you can as you can tell, otter can handle it pretty well. So yeah, it’s a we have an all otter also has a very wide vocabulary. So even though there are certain proper names that you can add into the custom vocabulary already other learns, knows a lot of vocabulary.
Larry Magid 12:48
Right and if it can translate British English into us, then I could say elevator in New Britain could see lift that we have to work on that.
Simon Lau 13:01
Yeah, so and another functionality that’s really cool is that otter can allow you to share. So what in, in what we call groups. So in fact, we also created some public groups where, and we were hosting live transcripts for TechCrunch Disrupt, for example. We’ve done it for many years. And all of the transcriptions are hosted in here. And you get to see all the speakers being identified. So this is a transcript. That’s more than a transcript. It has highlights in a speaker tags. It has keywords. When you click on a keyword IPO, it would jump to right that part. And you can only play those parts. I’m going to click play right now. Well, I feel this septum IPO process. IPO process is just like that. IPO quiet period, right. So this is this is very big. Powerful for you to skip to the key points. I mentioned highlights before. So if you don’t want to listen to the entire session, you can just listen to just the highlighted portion, you can export the highlights. So if you were using it for a meeting or for a lecture, then these are the key points from the meeting or lecture that you want to export and study.
Larry Magid 14:20
And you can even use it on your phone with a conversation hopefully with permission to the person you’re talking with. If for whatever reason you want to, for example, maybe be out in the field, you’re doing an interview, or whatever reason you just want a transcript of your conversation.
Simon Lau 14:35
Absolutely otters cross platform. So unlike other other apps that does live transcription that’s only on Android or only on iOS, others support it on the web, which is why I’m showing you right here, and also for iOS and Android. And from integration standpoint, we integrate with Google Microsoft for calendars. Why would we do that because you have meetings already scheduled on your calendar, So wouldn’t it be nice if you click the Record button and instantly, it will title your otter meeting notes with the title of the event site so it saves you from typing. Also, if you want to share the meeting notes with the people that you meet with within another click you can share and it will automatically share to all those email addresses so you don’t and it integrates with Dropbox and Zoom Zoom we show you a couple of the integrations so far Dropbox will be great for media producers or for anybody working with audio and video It connects your Dropbox automatically transcribe in order and sync all the transcript back to your Dropbox so this is a very amazing automation
Larry Magid 15:46
night. Simon if you wouldn’t mind stopping your screen share so we can say goodbye properly. Thank you very much and Marie Marie give me I don’t know if you have any closing comments you want to add Simon did a great job but
Unknown Speaker 15:59
no, it’s It’s available now and you can find us@otter.ai and, and we’ll look forward to helping folks be more productive through this.
Larry Magid 16:09
Maria and Simon from otter.ai. Thank you so much.
Simon Lau 16:12
Thank you. Thank you, Larry.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai