Audio and video to text · Free hours for students
Interview transcription for your thesis and research.
Upload an mp3, m4a, wav or mp4 and get an interview transcription with speakers and timestamps. Correct the draft against the audio, then download it in Word for your appendix.
7 free hours of audio a month · No card needed
Free hours with a confirmed university email from Denmark, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden or Norway.
Try an example
Interview about student life
English · Two speakers · Fictional excerpt
Interviewer 00:12
What helps when an assignment starts to feel overwhelming?
Student 00:18
It makes a real difference that we can talk it through in our study group. Then I’m not the only one trying to find a way forward.
Interviewer 00:31
Can you tell me about a specific time when that helped?
For interviews in coursework, dissertations, theses and student research projects.
How to do it
From recording to a transcript you can work with
1. Sign up with your university email
Use the email from your university and confirm it with the code we send you. Students at universities in Denmark, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden and Norway get 7 free hours a month; everyone else can buy hours. If your student email isn’t recognised, contact us.
2. Upload the recording and choose a style
Choose cleaned-up or word-for-word (verbatim) transcription to match your assignment. Spirelight drafts the transcript with automatic speaker labels. Processing time depends on the length of the recording.
3. Listen, correct and download in Word
Check the text with the built-in player, fix specialist terms and rename the speakers. Export to Word with timestamps, or carry on with coding in the same project.
Supported file formats
Use the recording you already have
MP3
Voice recorders and recording apps
Upload your saved MP3 file directly. Keep the original recording so you can check quotes against the audio.
M4A
iPhone Voice Memos and other recorders
Save the recording as a file on your phone or computer. There is no need to convert M4A to MP3 first.
WAV
High-quality audio
WAV files upload directly. Record clearly and close to the speakers; the file format alone won’t give you a good transcript.
MP4
Video and recorded calls
Upload the video and get the speech as text. Speakers and timestamps make it easy to find a passage again.
Haven’t recorded the interview yet? You can record a video call with consent in Spirelight itself.
After transcription
Your transcript is only the beginning
Once the text is corrected, you can highlight quotes and assign codes. Keep your interviews in one project so your codebook works across all of them, which helps when you compare what several participants say about the same topic.
Ask questions across the project in the AI chat, and every answer points back to the passages it comes from. The tool helps you keep track of the material; the interpretation is yours. See how it all fits together.
Good audio makes the biggest difference
A quiet room, a microphone close to the speakers and one person talking at a time give the best starting point. Listen especially carefully to noisy passages, names and overlapping speech.
Read the terms and privacy policy, and follow your university’s rules on consent and storing interview data before you upload.
Questions about interview transcription
How do I turn an interview recording into text?
Sign up, upload the recording and start the transcription. You get a draft with speaker labels and timestamps. Go through it with the built-in player, correct mistakes and download the result as a Word document.
Can I transcribe audio to text for research?
Yes. Spirelight is made for interviews in student research: you get speaker labels and timestamps, can code the transcript in the same project and export it for your appendix. Get your participants’ consent first and follow your university’s rules for research data.
Should my interview transcription be verbatim or cleaned up?
It depends on your method. A verbatim (word-for-word) transcript keeps every hesitation and false start, which matters for discourse or conversation analysis. A cleaned-up transcript leaves out filler words and reads more easily, which is often enough for thematic analysis. You choose the style before each transcription; ask your supervisor if you are unsure.
Can I transcribe an interview recorded on my phone?
Yes. Share or save the recording from Voice Memos as a file and upload it; M4A is supported. Recordings from Android phones work too, for example as MP3, M4A or WAV.
Does it work with several speakers and accents?
Spirelight labels speakers automatically, and you can rename them afterwards. Background noise, overlapping speech, strong accents and specialist terms can cause errors, so listen to the recording while you correct the text.
How much does interview transcription cost?
Students who confirm a university email from Denmark, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden or Norway get 7 hours of audio free every month, with no card and no trial. Everyone else pays €2 per hour of audio, or €14 a month for Spirelight Plus with 10 hours included.
Can I upload interviews that contain personal data?
That depends on your university’s rules. Transcription runs on AssemblyAI’s servers in the EU, files and transcripts are stored with Google Firebase in the US, AI summaries and chat are processed by OpenAI in the US, and we don’t offer a data processing agreement (DPA). Get the consent you need before you upload, and check with your supervisor if in doubt.
Get started
Stop typing out interviews by hand
Your next step is simple: sign up with your university email and upload your recording. You get a draft you can correct and download in Word.
7 free hours a month with an eligible university email · No card · No trial