How long should QA take?

For automatic drafts of clear audio, a common rule of thumb is a third to a half of the recording length. Poor audio, heavy accents or many speakers can push it past real time.

Should QA fix grammar?

Only if the brief asks for it. Clean verbatim removes fillers and false starts; it does not rewrite what someone said into better sentences.

What is the most common avoidable failure?

Inconsistency rather than inaccuracy — labels, timestamp formats and tags that change partway through the file.

Should QA re-listen to the whole recording?

For an automatic draft, a targeted pass usually beats a full re-listen: check names, numbers, silence and music beds, and the first and last thirty seconds. Full re-listening is reserved for poor audio or high-stakes material.

Is a second reviewer worth it?

For high-stakes material, yes, because the first reviewer adapts to the speaker and stops hearing errors. For routine content the cost rarely justifies it.

Definition

What Is Transcript QA?

VideoText editorial team. Updated September 13, 2026.

Direct definition

Transcript QA is the review pass after drafting — checking words, speakers, timestamps, tags, and style-guide rules before delivery. It is separate from the act of capturing speech.

The sections below explain how transcript QA is used in transcription and subtitle work, what people often mix up, and which VideoText workflow applies when the next step is a file or review pass.

Key takeaways

QA is a job step, not a confidence score.
Proper nouns and glossary terms are the usual first search.
Proper nouns, speaker labels, and style-guide tags are the usual first checks on a QA pass.

What a QA pass usually includes

Listen against the text for misses, confirm speaker labels, scan for hallucinated sentences, apply verbatim rules, and verify timestamp interval if the client asked for them.

What a QA pass checks

A review usually separates two questions. Is the text right — names, numbers, technical terms, sentence boundaries, and anything the recogniser may have invented. And is the file right — speaker label consistency, timestamp format and interval, tags, headers, and the client style rules.

The second set is what most marketplace rejections are about. A transcript can be word-perfect and still fail because labels changed format partway through or timestamps were placed on a different interval than the brief specified.

Where to spend review time

Not evenly. Proper nouns, figures and units carry the most downstream risk and are exactly where recognisers are weakest, so they deserve a targeted pass rather than a read-through.

Silence, music and the first and last thirty seconds of a file also deserve a listen, because that is where invented text tends to appear and where a skim read will not catch it.

Frequently asked questions

How long should QA take?: For automatic drafts of clear audio, a common rule of thumb is a third to a half of the recording length. Poor audio, heavy accents or many speakers can push it past real time.
Should QA fix grammar?: Only if the brief asks for it. Clean verbatim removes fillers and false starts; it does not rewrite what someone said into better sentences.
What is the most common avoidable failure?: Inconsistency rather than inaccuracy — labels, timestamp formats and tags that change partway through the file.
Should QA re-listen to the whole recording?: For an automatic draft, a targeted pass usually beats a full re-listen: check names, numbers, silence and music beds, and the first and last thirty seconds. Full re-listening is reserved for poor audio or high-stakes material.
Is a second reviewer worth it?: For high-stakes material, yes, because the first reviewer adapts to the speaker and stops hearing errors. For routine content the cost rarely justifies it.

Related terms

Sources

Rev: Rev Transcription Style Guide