Interview transcription, built for the deadline
Upload the recording or paste a link and get a speaker-labeled transcript you can search by quote, plus the themes, notable quotes, and a Q&A recap pulled straight from the conversation.
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How do you transcribe interviews?
To transcribe an interview, upload the recording or paste its link and Pepys returns a speaker-labeled, fully searchable transcript in minutes, plus an AI recap that surfaces the themes, the most quotable lines, and a Q&A breakdown. It is pay-as-you-go with no subscription, and credits never expire.
Made for journalists
A recorded interview is a deadline trap. The quote you need is buried somewhere around the thirty-minute mark, the source talked over you twice, and scrubbing the timeline by ear is the slowest part of the whole story. You already did the hard work of getting someone to talk on the record. Turning that audio into a clean, searchable transcript with the speakers separated should not cost you the rest of your evening.
Reporters live in the verbatim. A misquoted concession, an attribution swapped between source and reporter, a number paraphrased into something the tape never said, any of those can sink a story and your standing with an editor. So interview transcription has to hold up to fact-checking, not just give you the gist. Pepys returns word-level timestamps and keeps each speaker labeled, so you click a line to hear it back, confirm the exact phrasing, and export the cleared quote to DOCX or a captioned SRT for the cut you publish.
Find the quote in seconds
A fully searchable transcript, so you jump straight to the line you half-remember instead of scrubbing the timeline by ear.
Notable quotes pulled for you
The most quotable, on-the-record lines surfaced automatically, with the exact words ready to drop into your copy.
Who said what, separated
Speaker labels keep the reporter and the source apart, so attributing a quote is never a guess on a noisy recording.
Interviews in any language
Transcribe a source speaking another language, with the spoken language detected automatically and a translation on request.
Built in, not bolted on
The angle, the quotes you can run, and a recap of the exchange
Every interviewis analyzed automatically the moment it’s transcribed. Here’s a real sample, run through it.
City Housing Director Admits Rent-Relief Fund Has Reached Less Than a Quarter of Its Money
In an on-the-record interview, housing director Okonkwo concedes that only about $4 million of an $18 million emergency rent fund announced in January has reached tenants by June. The director attributes the delay to two failures: a lease-and-bank-statement requirement that excluded the informally housed people the fund was meant to help, and a six-person team processing nine thousand hand-reviewed applications. Okonkwo confirms the lease rule was dropped eleven days earlier in favor of a utility bill or landlord letter plus income self-attestation, after which approvals roughly tripled week over week, and ends by urging denied applicants to seek a re-review and apologizing directly to them.
Themes
Notable quotes
- “As of this week, we have paid out about four million of the eighteen.”
- “We built a door and then asked for a key half of them were never given.”
- “We are processing nine thousand applications with a team of six.”
- “We let the fear of a few bad actors design a program that punished thousands of honest ones.”
- “Since that change, approvals have roughly tripled week over week.”
- “You did everything we asked and the system we built failed you.”
Q&A
How much of the $18 million emergency rent fund has actually reached tenants?
About $4 million of the $18 million had been paid out as of the week of the interview, a little under a quarter, five months after the fund was announced in January. The director called that slower than anyone wanted and declined to spin it.
What was holding the money up?
Two things. First, the application required a signed lease and three months of bank statements, which excluded many of the informally housed tenants the fund was meant to help. Second, a team of just six staff was hand-reviewing nine thousand applications after the director's request for twelve positions was cut to six.
Tenant advocates warned about the lease rule at a December hearing. Why was it kept in?
The director acknowledged the advocates were right and the office did not listen carefully enough. Legal wanted documentation to guard against fraud, and the director conceded they let the fear of a few bad actors design a program that punished thousands of honest applicants, calling it the wrong trade.
Has anything changed, and did it work?
Yes. Eleven days before the interview the office dropped the formal-lease requirement, accepting a utility bill or a landlord letter plus an income self-attestation form. Approvals roughly tripled week over week afterward, though the director's stated regret was that the fix took until June.
Clean, speaker-labeled, click-to-seek
Ask, don’t scrub
Ask the transcript anything.
An hour-long recording? Don’t skim it – ask. Every answer stays grounded in your transcript and cites the exact timestamp, so you can jump to the moment and check it yourself.
How much of the rent fund has actually reached tenants, and what's the source's own framing of that?
The director says about four million of the eighteen has been paid out as of that week, which they call a little under a quarter. They frame it plainly as slower than anyone wanted and say they won't pretend otherwise.
Did the office know about the lease-requirement problem before this interview?
Yes. The reporter notes tenant advocates warned the office at a public hearing in December, and the director concedes "they did warn us, and they were right, and we did not listen carefully enough." The director says legal wanted documentation against fraud and admits they let the fear of a few bad actors design a program that punished thousands of honest ones.
Grounded in your transcript – if the answer isn’t in the audio, it says so instead of guessing.
Who said what
Speaker labels that survive cross-talk
Automatic speaker diarization. Two people, four people, cross-talk and interruptions – interviews, panels, messy meetings. Pepys keeps each voice on its own line instead of blurring them into one, so you never rewind to figure out who was talking.
So the festival nearly didn't happen this year–
–it almost didn't. We lost the venue three weeks out.
Three weeks? How do you even start to–
You call everyone you know. The whole town pitched in.
And that's how it ended up in the park.
Record in any language – 99+ detected automatically
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Works with the platforms you live in.
Paste a link from YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts – or drop in any audio or video file. We transcribe it once, then you export it however your workflow needs.
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- or any file
Export to any format
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Most useful for journalists: TXT · DOCX · PDF · SRT · VTT
Timestamps, speaker labels, and subtitle timing carry through to every export.
How interview transcription works
Upload or paste a link
Drop your interview or paste its link – any audio or video, in any language.
Get your transcript
A clean, speaker-labeled transcript with AI notes tuned to your format, ready in minutes.
Edit and export
Fix anything inline, then export to SRT, VTT, TXT, DOCX, PDF, or JSON.
Why journalists pick Pepys
Pay per interview, not per month. Buy a block of minutes, use them on the stories that need it, and the credits never expire.
We never train on your audio. A source recording stays yours, which matters when the conversation was off the back of a promise of confidentiality.
A searchable transcript means you find the quote by typing it, not by replaying the tape until your ear catches it.
Speaker labels survive crosstalk, so attribution holds up even when the source talks over you.
What journalists say
had ~2 hrs of interviews to get through on deadline. uploaded the lot, got it back speaker-labeled and fully searchable, so i could jump straight to the quote i half-remembered instead of scrubbing the timeline for twenty minutes. genuinely saved the story.
Tomás H.Investigative journalist · Reddit I transcribe in the original language and receive a translated version with the subtitles still intact. It saved an entire round of contractor work on my last film. Thank you for building this.
Giulia F.Documentary filmmaker · email We run field interviews in two languages and need them written up quickly. The transcripts come back accurate enough to quote directly in our donor reports – it has changed how fast we turn fieldwork around.
Grace O.Nonprofit program lead · LinkedIn
Interview transcription – questions, answered
How do I transcribe a recorded interview?
Upload the audio or video file, or paste a link to it, and Pepys returns a speaker-labeled, searchable transcript in minutes, along with an AI recap of the themes, the notable quotes, and a Q&A breakdown of the conversation.
Can it tell my source and me apart?
Yes. Speaker diarization separates each voice, so a two-person interview comes back labeled rather than as one undivided block. You can rename a generic label to the source's name and it updates across the whole transcript.
Can I search the transcript for a specific quote?
Yes, and it is the fastest way to work on deadline. Type the words you half-remember and jump straight to that moment in the recording instead of scrubbing the timeline. Click any line to seek to it in the audio.
Do you train on or share my recordings?
No. We do not train any model on your audio, and your recordings are not shared. For sensitive source material recorded under a promise of confidentiality, the file stays yours.
What about interviews in another language?
The spoken language is detected automatically across 99+ languages. You can keep the transcript in the original language for accuracy, or request a translation while keeping the timestamps aligned.
How accurate is it with accents, crosstalk, and field noise?
It handles a range of accents, overlapping speech, and the background noise of a real interview rather than a studio. Anything it mishears you can correct inline in the editor before you quote it.
Do I have to subscribe?
No. Pepys is pay-as-you-go. Buy a block of minutes, use them whenever a story needs it, and the credits never expire. You can start free with 60 minutes, no card required.
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