Transcription in Premiere is wildly inaccurate

[UNHAPPY_ADOBE_USER]

I have often said transcription in Adobe premiere is about 75-80% accurate. Now that I have worked with it extensively, it's more like 50%.  It does not distinguish between speakers, the punctuation is more like 20% accurate and it flat out rewrites what someone is saying.  Whisper Transcription is a helluva a lot more accurate (above 90%). And if I want the ultimate in accuracy, I have to pay $2 per minute - which gets really pricey.  Adobe was all proud of the text-based editing feature - and the idea is great in theory - but in practice it's terrible due soully to the failure of the transcription.  Why is a cheap program ($39 for lifetime access) so much better than the software that I pay over $600 a year for? And you can't import the better transcription into Premiere - so you're still doing things the old fashioned way and scrubbing throught he interveiws to find your quotes. I am not affiliated with whomever does Whisper Transcription. Just disappointed - once again - in Adobe.

[doubleclutched]

Used the filler word removal feature today and it's not nearly as clean as the other software we were using. Doesn't show what the filler word is in the transcript. Ignoring filler feature is buggy. And counts words outside of "um" and "uh" as filler.

Likely going back to using it versus using Premiere Pro. 

[R Neil Haugen]

Where are you from? what language are you working with? What trade or technical terms are included? 

Transcription services are heavily influenced by those things, so a genreral comment of "it ain't accurate" unfortunately ain't of much use to fix anything.

[wilfredrene]

The new transcribe engine is was unauthorized installed on my computer (Version 23.0.0) is complete rubbish for English and Portuguese. During a chat of 3 hours, and various attemps including installing version 24 and Beta, it remained absolute RUBBISH and only 0,03% was correct.

Luckily on my son's computer there was still the old version 23.0.0 transcribe engine which transcribes for 70% correct in English and Portuguese. 
I wish to have the old transcribe version 23.0.0 back on my computer. On newer versions introduce more and more bugs.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi @wilfredrene,

Thanks for writing up your bug report. I'm Kevin from support, a mod here.

Sorry to hear about your transcription problem. You might try the solution here to see if it helps. Let the community know if it does or not. If not, please offer the team more information about your system, media, and workflow. See, How do I write a bug report?

I hope the team can help you with this bug soon. I am sorry for such a frustrating experience.

Thanks,

Kevin

[Ann Bens]

You can still install 23.0 from the CC desktop app.

[Stan Jones]

@wilfredrene,

This is not your issue, but you refer to the version of the "engine." The engine/process used in 23.0.0 (and today) is the local transcription engine (runs on your computer, not in the cloud). This was introduced in PR 22.2, and the cloud transcription process was turned off 2/27/23.

There are "language packs" that are downloaded that contain the details of how transcription works. I believe these are downloaded per version - i.e. they are different for 23.x and 24.x. I do not know if or when any of those files are updated once the language pack is dowloaded. So I do not know if 23.0.0 can have more than one language pack.

In PR, on both machines, look at Help -> About, and be certain that both of your installations are 23.0.0. Version 23 just had an update in the past week or two to 23.6.8.

@alexander-riss @Kerstin Ebert Can you advise?

Stan

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hello @UNHAPPY_ADOBE_USER and @doubleclutched,

I'm Kevin from support, and I'm a mod here. I hope you are well today. I'm grateful for your bug report and the feedback you gave. Are you still having the problem, or has it gotten better? If you are still having trouble, the team needs more info about your system and media to reproduce your bug. See, How do I write a bug report?

I hope the team will respond shortly. I apologize for the bug.

Take Care,
Kevin

[Kerstin Ebert]

Hi @wilfredrene,

thanks for reporting this. In order to find out why transcriptions are not working well for you, can you please answer these questions:

- Which hardware are you using?

- When you say that only 0,03% of the transcription is correct, what exactly does this mean? Do you get an English result for your English audio, but the transcript doesn't match what's heard in the audio?

- Are you transcribing English audio and Portuguese audio separately (e.g. all EN clips on a sequence transcribed to English, all Poruguese clips are transcribed to Portuguese separatley?)

- Do you have "language auto-detection" enabled?

- Did the language pack for Portuguese download correctly from the Creative Cloud app?

Thanks,

Kerstin

[BillJMoline]

Been an issue for years. Currently, running a 3070 gaming rig and transcribing english - the transcriptions provided by premiere pro are wildly inaccurate. Social platform's native transcription (FB / IG / TikTok) has been far superior for atleast 6 years. Thought it would get better in the past year... but it hasn't. If you are looking for specific examples, try it yourself on almost any video... IT IS REALLY BAD - worthy of canceling my subscription over.

[Stan Jones]

@BillJMoline,

Thanks for reporting.

> If you are looking for specific examples, try it yourself on almost any video... IT IS REALLY BAD

Well, that's the thing. I've tested many samples over a number of PR versions and have never gotten the kind of extreme examples you and some others report. Can you upload a short sample clip and exported transcript? (E.g. dropbox) I'll test.

What is your current version of PR?

Stan

[R Neil Haugen]

I'm with Stan ...  nearly all of my work, or at least the vast bulk of it ... is talking head interview or explanatory/tutorial stuff. Some with a fair amount of technical lingo involved.

There are going to be a few things 'wrong', especially in the tech verbiage. I wish we had a "lexicon" thing we could add, as that would be a big help.

But Premiere's transcriptions, for my use, are better than what YouTube or Instagram provide on their own.

So perhaps the actual language ... the verbiage used? ... is at issue here. I could easily see some sections of society having more difficulties with auto-transcription than others. Let alone when you get regional dialects thrown in, word use differences and such.

[wilfredrene]

I am already complaining with Adobe Premiere Pro for three years and they are deaf. It does not accept my dialect. For 60% the transcript (English and Portuguese) is incorrect. The synchronization is hardly for 10% correct. Does not synchronize with the breaks in the spoken text. So for 30 minutes of video, I need 6 hours to correct.
Also the green screen is unstable with a lot of flikkering.

All updates after version 23.1.0 are worse. Features missing and more and more bugs. However, Adobe is deaf, continue to add more features, in stead of solving the bugs.

Wilfred

[R Neil Haugen]

Oh, do you mean mixed language, going into/out of English and Portugese? Or perhaps with a number of Portugese words in generally an English discussion?

Dialects can be problematic. The wife is Scottish background, my family background is Norwegian. Both have numerous local dialects. Truthfully, a lot of Scots I can't understand.

And Norway has still over 400 recognized, official regional dialects in daily use. Min Norke venner have difficulty with transcription services also.

It is interesting that an earlier form of their transcription download service works better for you than the newer. 

How does their online transcription work, if you're not confined with NDA things on your media?