If you already caption your meetings live, you are most of the way to meeting transcription. Government meeting transcription doesn't have to be a separate project: the same captions residents read in the chamber can become text files staff can search, quote and share.
How live captions become a transcript
With SentraCaptions, captions are produced during the meeting and saved as the meeting goes. After adjournment, transcripts are available in every language you captioned or translated, as two kinds of file:
- TXT: plain text, easy to open, search and paste into a document.
- SRT: a subtitle file with timestamps, which video players and platforms use to show subtitles on a recording.
A few details matter for the record:
- When captions are paused for recess or closed session, nothing is captioned, translated, stored or billed. Closed session content does not end up in the transcript.
- If several rooms or meetings run at once, each has its own transcript.
- Transcripts come from automatic captions and may contain errors, the same as the live captions.
What transcripts are good for
Transcripts save staff time in places you might not expect:
- Drafting minutes. The clerk can search for a motion or an item rather than scrubbing through video.
- Answering questions. When a council member or resident asks "what was said about the parking item," a text search finds it in seconds.
- Publishing subtitled recordings. The SRT file can be added to the posted meeting video so it has subtitles. See adding subtitles to recorded meeting videos.
- Sharing in other languages. Translated transcripts give residents who missed the meeting a way to catch up in their language.
- Internal follow-up. Department staff can pull the exact discussion that led to direction from the council or board.
Transcripts are not minutes
It is worth saying plainly: a transcript is not your official minutes. Minutes are the record your body approves, written to your agency's style and rules. A machine transcript is a working tool that can help staff prepare minutes faster and more accurately.
Keep a few cautions in mind:
- Automatic captions can mishear names, numbers and motions. Always confirm against the recording before relying on a quote.
- Translated transcripts are machine translation. Translation quality varies by language, so have a fluent speaker review the languages that matter most before you publish them widely.
- How long you keep transcripts, and whether they are public records, are questions for your records retention schedule and your city attorney or county counsel.
For more on this, read transcripts for minutes and records.
Getting better transcripts
The transcript is only as good as the captions, and the captions are only as good as the audio. Practical steps:
- Fix the audio first. Every speaker on a microphone, no side conversations, and a clean feed from the sound board to the encoder. See chamber audio tips for better captions.
- Build a glossary. Add council members, staff, streets, neighborhoods and program names so they are spelled right. See building a caption glossary of local names.
- Pause when you should. Pausing for recess keeps chatter out of the transcript, and pausing for closed session keeps it out entirely.
- Name the item. Asking the chair to read the item number aloud makes it easy to search the transcript later.
Setting it up
Transcription comes along with live captioning, so setup is the same:
- Add SentraCaptions as a destination on your existing encoder (Pearl, OBS, vMix and others) over RTMP or SRT. No new hardware.
- Choose your caption and translation languages, up to 8 per meeting.
- Run the meeting. Captions appear about one second after speech on the chamber screen, the phone page and, if you like, YouTube Live in one language.
- Download TXT or SRT transcripts after the meeting.
If you use CivicCA, CivicCA starts captioning when the meeting starts and pauses it for recess and closed session. Transcripts and subtitle files can go with the meeting video, so they sit alongside the agenda and recording residents already use.
For platforms and IT teams
If you build or run your own meeting platform, the SentraCaptions API lets you create a meeting, stream to it, read captions as JSON or Server-Sent Events, and receive a webhook when it ends, which is a natural trigger to fetch transcripts. Details are on the developers page.