After Lecture Capture guide

Automatic Speech Recognition was enabled on Lecture Capture recordings from Monday 1st November 2021. This produces an automatic Interactive Transcript feature that students can choose to display or hide as they are reviewing Lecture Capture recordings. As a student plays the Lecture Capture recording, the relevant text is highlighted in the transcript.

Transcript availability

Only Lecture Capture recordings that are associated with a Moodle module have a transcript applied. This means that Lecture Capture scheduled and shared via a public link will not generate an automated transcript. The automated transcript takes at least 30 minutes to generate after the Lecture Capture recording has processed. It can take up to a few hours for a transcript to generate.

If you need to apply a transcript to a recording made prior to November 2021, you need to make a small edit to the recording. Your recording will be reprocessed and a transcript will generate.

Benefits

• An Interactive Transcript can be a useful study feature: Students can quickly search a long lecture for a specific keyword and navigate to the relevant part of the recording.
• Students can use the transcript feature when they are in an environment that makes it difficult to listen to the recording.
• Transcripts are also used by some disabled students as an assistive technology.

Limitations

While there are many benefits to automatic transcripts, students should also be advised that:

1. The automated transcripts are considered a supplementary resource. Students should not rely solely on the transcripts when reviewing their Lecture Capture recordings. They should make sure they check the transcripts against the PowerPoint and readings to ensure they have a good understanding of the topic and the terminology used.  
   • If students require accurate transcripts as part of their reasonable adjustment, they should use the support@city form to outline their requirements for fully accurate transcripts. This will then result in human intervention to make corrections on the automated transcript. This usually substantially improves the accuracy of the transcripts, but the accuracy can still be impacted by terminology used, accent of the lecturer and audio quality of the recording.
2. The transcripts are only available for Lecture Capture recordings. There is no transcript or caption feature available on Lecture Capture live stream for students joining lectures online.
3. Students will need to access the Interactive Transcript feature via a browser on desktop or tablet. The transcript feature is not available on the Echo360 app and is difficult to use on mobile browsers.
4. Lecture Capture recordings from 15th August 2022 onwards have captions applied from the automated transcript, where the transcript is estimated to have an 85% accuracy level. The accuracy level of the transcript is estimated by the Automated Speech Recognition system in Echo360.

Related guidance

1. Wear a lapel microphone to improve the audio quality in your recording.
2. Do not speak over any multimedia (e.g. YouTube videos) that you play during the lecture. The transcript cannot transcribe your audio and the audio of the multimedia resource.
3. While this step won't improve the quality of your transcript, it will help ensure that students have easy access to key terminology. Ensure key terms and concepts are included on the presentation/notes used with Lecture Capture so that these are available on screen as students are reviewing the recording with the transcript.

Next steps

1. Select the link to Lecture Capture from the Module dashboard. 
   • For new modules using Grid format, open the Block drawer, navigate to the Module dashboard block, and select the link to Lecture Capture under Activities.

     

   • Please note: For 2024/25 modules using Grid format, open the Block drawer and navigate to the Module dashboard block, select the link to Lecture Capture.

2. If there are multiple links to Lecture Capture, select the relevant link.
3. Select the link Open in new window. The Echo360 Lecture Capture module homepage will open in a new tab displaying all associated recordings and live streams for the module. These are organised by date and time, with the oldest recording at the top of the list. 
4. Open the video menu to the right of the relevant recording. From the menu that opens, select Edit Transcript.

   

5. The transcript editor screen will open. Select the Edit Transcript button from the top right of the screen.
6. For the most up-to-date information on correcting the transcript, review the Echo guidance on editing a transcript using the transcript editor.
7. After editing the transcript, select Apply to CC to update the captions to match the new version.

Related guidance

From 27 August 2024, the transcript is available for students to download from the recording. To download the transcript, advise students to open the link to the relevant Lecture Capture.

1. Select the transcript icon at the bottom of the player. This is the second icon on the right at the bottom of the player and displays as a T in a bubble. A Sidebar will open on the right-hand side with the transcript for the audio. 
2. From the Sidebar, select the download transcript icon represented by a downward arrow in a cloud.

   

3. A modal window will open. Select the TXT option to download the text of the transcript. 

We recommend that students access the transcript feature through a desktop or tablet device. The transcript feature does not work on the Echo360 mobile app and is difficult to navigate using a mobile browser. 

Related guidance

Lecture Capture recordings from 15th August 2022 have captions applied from the automated transcript, where the transcript is estimated to have an 85% accuracy level. The accuracy level of the transcript is estimated by the Automated Speech Recognition system in Echo360.

Where the accuracy level of the automated transcript is estimated to be lower than 85%, then captions will not be automatically produced for the Lecture Capture recording. You can follow the guidance below to manually apply your transcript as captions for individual recordings if required.

1. Select the link to Lecture Capture from the Module dashboard. (For new modules using Grid format, open the Block drawer, navigate to the Module dashboard block, and select the link to Lecture Capture under Activities.)

   

2. If there are multiple links to Lecture Capture, select the relevant link.
3. Select the link Open in new window. The Echo360 Lecture Capture module homepage will open in a new tab displaying all associated recordings and live streams for the module. These are organised by date and time, with the oldest recording at the top of the list. 
4. Select the play button to the right of the relevant recording. From the menu that opens, select Edit Transcript.

   

5. The transcript editor screen will open. Select the Apply to CC button from the top right of the screen.

    

There may be occasions where you need to remove the transcript. For example, if the transcript is very inaccurate and is impacting on the effectiveness of the recording.

To remove the transcript:

1. Login to Echo360.
2. Select the Library tab on the top left of the screen.
3. Select the recording to open the media details page.
4. Follow the instructions from Echo360 for the most up-to-date information about removing a transcript.

Automated speech recognition can be inaccurate. Captions or transcripts of your recordings may contain words incorrectly transcribed as profanities e.g. swear words or inappropriate words. Alternatively, you might find that the captions or transcripts on your recordings are censoring words with a row of asterisks which means that students relying on captions are missing key information.

LEaD are gathering information on the impact of profanities and censorship in recordings. If you find any examples, please raise a ticket with us via the LEaD General Request Form on IT Self Service Portal. 

Please include as much information as possible, including system used - Lecture Capture, Teams, Zoom, links to the recordings on Moodle and timecodes.