Verbal Histories with Transcription
Submitted by Dale E. Lee
2022.04.20
One of the things I enjoy when attending RootsTech is to review all the new up and coming Innovations in the area of Family History.
This year, one of the companies featured for innovation, stood out because of one salient feature they offer.
The name of the company is Rakonto and they can be found at www.rakonto.io. Their offering in the Family History industry is to record and share Life Stories. You can sign up for a free account and immediately start uploading videos of your life stories, either prerecorded or on-the-fly through computers, cell phones, etc.
Once you have created your video, you can add links, photos, maps and timelines to enhance understanding of the events recorded verbally. And you can share a link to your video with others and with social media, either for public use or for secured and private use.
But the innovation that caught my eye was the ability to automatically transcribe the voice portion of the video, meaning that, it will translate what you are say into text and you’ll be able to read what you just said. I wish I had something like this a short time ago when I was transcribing my Uncle’s life story manually, it took me about a week of concentrated effort… stopping and starting the tracks over and over, reviewing them, double checking references, etc. This could have saved a lot of time.
The only drawback is that although the free account allows you up to 1 GB of storage, it does not include automatic transcription, you’ll need to pay for that. Transcription is currently only in English, but this is such a good idea, I expect that to change soon.
Overall, kudos to Rakonto! Great way to add value to the ability for Family Historians to record Life Histories! See their trailer at https://www.familysearch.org/rootstech/session/rakonto-inc, then drop on over to www.rakonto.io. Let them know Seekerz sent you.
(Seekerz LLC is not receiving any compensation for this article, and although we wouldn’t refuse if offered, it is not expected.)
—
Seekerz LLC, © 2022