Rev.com Review

Rev provides video and audio transcription, captioning, and subtitling services. Its solutions are not only useful for making your videos more engaging and more inclusive, but they can also help you:

• streamline the post-production process 
• discover insights more easily
• reach non-English markets

It has more than just speech-to-text software powered by artificial intelligence. It also has an army of 70,000+ freelancers called Revvers. All of them are native English speakers and have been thoroughly vetted.

Founded by five MIT classmates, this Austin-headquartered company has been in the game since 2010. It has transcribed and captioned countless audio and video recordings for the likes of:

• Amazon 
• Google 
• NBC
• BuzzFeed

Rev has flexible pricing options, serving the needs of different types of content creators. Likewise, it has special offerings for enterprises and developers.

Services and Performance

Let’s have a look at Rev’s different services and how each one works:

Human Transcription

Rev combines the power of its AI-powered speech-to-text software and Revvers to deliver 99%-accurate transcripts.

This transcription service provider can handle the jargon of various industries. Even if your recording has multiple speakers with drastically different accents, you can expect nearly perfect output.

In addition, you can share a glossary of terms and a list of the speaker’s names to help Rev.

And to help eliminate any remaining inaccuracies, you can leverage its free interactive Transcript Editor.

How fast could you receive your transcripts?

It would depend on the quality and length of the file.

With recordings of good quality under 30 minutes, you can expect a turnaround time of 12 hours. Naturally, the transcription process would take longer if the audio is poor.

But the company has a solid reputation for speed. In fact, it’s a common subject of many of the glowing Rev.com reviews.

For an extra fee, you can expedite the transcript delivery process up five times.

Likewise, you have the option to include timestamps and capture filler words, false starts, and non-verbal communication. And you can also order for machine-generated transcripts separately, which you can receive in minutes.

Can you upload any audio and video files?

Here are the formats this transcription service provider supports:

• AAC
• AIF
• AMR
• AVI
• MOV
• MP3
• MP4
• M4A
• OGG
• WAV
• WMA
• WMV
• VOB
  

Rev.com lets you upload video and audio recordings from your device in a drag-and-drop manner. You can also copy-paste public URLs.

Currently, the company doesn’t accept:

• tapes 
• CDs 
• SD cards 
• other forms of physical media storage

If you need to make your files more manageable, you’ll have to use a third-party media converter.

Automated Transcription

To enjoy a faster delivery time at a cheaper price, you can entrust everything to Rev’s AI.

Mind you, content quality will suffer if you choose to not hire any professionals. By taking the auto transcription route, you can expect at least 90% accuracy. Conversely, Descript’s automatic transcription solution promises 95%.

That said, you’ll be able to receive your transcription in minutes instead of hours. Plus, you can drive down the cost per minute by more than 80%. Also, you can use the transcript editor to polish your content before publication.

Ideally, you should use this service if your audio quality is clear. But you can go ahead and place your automated transcription order even if your recordings are far from perfect.

At the time of writing this Rev.com review, the company’s software can only transcribe to and from English. Being monolingual, Rev pales in comparison to Transcribe by Wreally, which supports a whopping 80+ languages.

English Captions

By default, Rev.com provides closed video captioning. But it offers an option to permanently burn the text into the video.

The company accepts all common file formats, including:

• AVI
• MP4
• MOV
• Ogg
• VOB
  

Through the help of Rev’s in-house tools, its English captioners can produce work with 99% accuracy.

For maximum quality, you can pay extra for premium captions. With this add-on, you can benefit from the talents of the company’s most experienced captioners. That way, you can meet the strictest government, broadcasting, and web guidelines.

Using its free Captions Editor, you can make display, grammar, and/or spelling adjustments. And you can preview the final result.

At checkout, you can choose from 16 output files. But you don’t have to sweat over it. You can pick the default SubRip (.srt) option and turn it into another output format using Rev’s free Caption Converter.

For a fee, you can also rush your order.

Global Subtitles

Rev.com supports 17 foreign languages. It can translate your audio recordings with or without English subtitle files. The company’s subtitle prices are as follows:

• $3
  

• Arabic
• Czech
• Hindi
• Polish
• Portuguese (Brazil)
• Spanish (Latin)
• Spanish (Spain)
• Turkish
  
• $5
  
• Chinese (Simplified)
• Chinese (Traditional)
• Dutch
• French
• German
• Italian
• Korean
• Russian
  
• $7
• Japanese
  

Rev produces subtitles that pop on, which means each section would appear on pre-recorded videos at once. The company doesn’t do “roll up” subtitles yet, in which each word would appear once spoken. It doesn’t offer live subtitles either.

Between high- and low-resolution master video files, this subtitling service provider prefers the latter. You can upload them faster, enabling them to start working sooner.

Rev.com subtitles come in the same file formats captions. It has a proprietary tool to simplify timing adjustment. If you spot any translation errors, Rev would be happy to make the necessary corrections.

In addition, you can edit its subtitle files. However, you’ll need a third-party program to carry out revisions. The company recommends:

• Subtitle Edit by Nikse 
• Annotation Edit by zeitAnker 
• Adobe Premiere Pro CC

Live Captions for Zoom

Using Rev’s English speech-to-text software, you can enrich your Zoom meetings with auto captions. Timed to live discussions, they can appear in real time with minimal lag.

Although there’s no professionals involved, you can still expect the live captions to be at least 90% accurate.

For this service, Rev.com doesn’t support foreign languages. So, it can’t caption words not found in the English dictionary.

To get started, you need to be the owner or admin of a non-Basic Zoom account. In other words, you must have a paid license of Zoom’s Pro, Business, Enterprise, or Education edition.

Also, you must have a Rev account. Otherwise, you can’t install the Live Captions for Zoom and link the two apps.

Once you have the two necessary accounts, you should enable Closed Captioning and Custom Live Streaming Service on Zoom. After configuration, you can then grant any user in your account to Rev Live Captions.

For a flat fee, Rev.com can caption your video meetings with no limit. And you can get a free transcript after every session. This way, you don’t have to worry about your expenses and can keep a record of everything.

A note of caution: the company erroneously promotes it as a visual aid for non-English speakers. It even labels its Zoom button as Show Subtitles. Captions and subtitles are not the same, so don’t fall into this marketing boo-boo.

Enterprise Services

If you need to regularly place high-volume orders, Rev for Enterprise is for you. Sometimes marketed as Rev Pro, it has custom pricing since your final bill would reflect your actual usage.

Apart from bulk-order discounts, you can tap the top 5% Rev.com video captioning experts, transcriptionists, and subtitlers on demand.

From a single account, you can create multiple workspaces where you can collaborate with your team more easily. 

Through Dashboards (also called Rev Pro Usage Dashboards), you can visualize your spend-related stats and more. In addition, you can instantly access data-driven insights, reports, and executive-level progress summaries.

To help prevent any billing issues, Rev makes everything centralized. In case you have any concern, you can enjoy priority support plus access to a dedicated Customer Success Manager.

Ease of Use and Interface

Placing an order is as easy as 123.

You only need a web browser, so there’s no need to download any app. If you order Rev.com subtitles and/or captions, you’ll even be able to pull content from your YouTube or Vimeo account.

After your files are in the system, only then you can sign in and make a payment. Immediately, you’d know how much you have owe and the output’s estimated time of delivery. Once it’s ready, you’d receive it in your inbox.

If you need to modify the output, you’ll be able to launch the corresponding editor, if available, through various ways. You can run the tool from the order delivery email, Order Details page, or Rev.com itself.

The whole process is straightforward and foolproof.

Support

Rev’s help desk is available 24/7 through email. I submitted two tickets and got satisfactory answers in about 20 minutes in each case.

Meanwhile, the company’s chatbot is only for scouring its knowledge base. It’s a convenient way to get answers to your questions related to Rev.com billing, account management, etc.

Problem is, this bot may return irrelevant articles.

If you can’t find what you’re looking for, it won’t connect you to any agent.

On social media, you can find Rev on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.

In addition, Rev has a FAQ section for key pages, including checkout.

Not only does it maintain a blog, but it also provides how-to reads, ebooks, and webinars. Plus, it has an extensive library of full transcripts of interviews, speeches, and more from different public figures.

This speech-to-text software company has bonus apps and tools. They’re not just for polishing your outputs, but also for producing and editing raw audio and video files. Its toolkit includes the Rev.com voice recorder and audio trimmer and cutter.

Rev is compatible with many third-party apps. And you can directly integrate it with at least 10 programs on its site.

If you’re a developer, you can leverage the company’s APIs and build with its Automatic Speech Recognition model. Developing asynchronous, streaming, and transcription and caption capabilities with Rev costs money. But you can access its docs at no cost.

Rev.com Pricing

By and large, Rev uses a pay-as-you-go model commitment-free. Trint’s pricing philosophy is the opposite; it involves billing users monthly or annually and limits transcription to seven files.

Services and Prices

Have a look at what Rev has to offer below.

In some cases, you won’t have to fork over cash up front.

For automated transcription, the Rev.com free trial applies to the first 45 minutes. But you’d need to use a permanent email address for registration. So, you can’t enjoy this privilege if you mask your email address with services like Blur.

Moreover, Rev Live Captions is available for trial use for seven days. The first five hours of your English Machine Transcription with Rev AI is free with no credit card requirement.

Add-Ons

Depending on the service, you may encounter these extras:

• Instant First Draft: $0.10/minute
• Timestamping: $0.30/minute
• Burned-In Subtitles: $0.30/minute/language
• Verbatim: $0.50/minute
• Rush My Order: $1.25/minute
• Premium Captions: $1.50/minute

Payment Options and Refund Policy

Rev accepts: 

• Visa 
• Mastercard 
• American Express 
• Discover 
• PayPal

On top of your order’s total, you may also have to pay sales tax. So if you can request for sales tax exemptions before placing any Rev com transcription, caption, or subtitling service order.

If you want, you can set your Rev on autopay and have net 30 invoicing. You can split invoices by purchase order number too.

Also, you can prepay your account for a minimum of $1,000. Keep in mind that once you deposit the funds, they become nonrefundable.

Speaking of refunds, the company issues them only when you submit files with non-English content.

Rev.com Review - Verdict

Due to Rev’s longevity, it’s a puzzle why its speech-to-text software remains one-dimensional. Until it could auto-transcribe recordings in foreign languages, it would never be as versatile as other programs.

That said, the hyperaccuracy of its outputs is commendable. And its free tools and apps can come in useful.

The email address requirement for its automated transcription free trial can be annoying. But I have no complaint about its flexible pricing options.

Hopefully, the company would offer live chat down the road. But for now, you could get by with its super responsive email support.

So as long as your content is in English, I bet you’d love Rev as much as I did!