How to use Stenobox

From a recording to a finished transcript in three moves: upload your audio, review it against the synced audio, and certify. This guide walks through every step and every button.

The basics

Stenobox takes a court or deposition audio recording and produces a fully formatted draft transcript — Q./A., speaker labels, court-style numbers and dates, the works. You then review the draft against the audio, fix anything that needs it, and certify. The typing and formatting are done for you; your judgment and certification stay with you.

1. Upload your audio file.
2. Review the draft against the synced audio — click any word to hear it.
3. Certify and export the finished transcript.

Prefer to work in Word or your own software? You don't have to use our editor at all. Open the finished transcript and click Copy all — the whole formatted transcript copies to your clipboard, ready to paste into Word, your CAT software, or any other program. (More on that below.)

Preparing your audio

Stenobox works from an audio file. Supported formats are MP3, WAV, and M4A. A few tips:

• Audio quality matters most. The cleaner the recording, the better the draft. Put the recorder close to the speakers, and minimize people talking over each other where you can.
• Zoom recordings: Zoom usually saves an audio-only file alongside the video — look for audio_only.m4a in the recording folder (or choose “Audio only (M4A)” when downloading a cloud recording). You can upload that directly, no conversion needed.
• Multi-hour recordings are fine — full-day depositions are handled.

Converting video to audio

If your recording is a video (a screen recording, body-cam, phone video, or a Zoom MP4), pull the audio out of it first, then upload the audio. The free, offline VLC Media Player does this in under a minute.

Convert a video to MP3 with VLC

1. Install VLC (free) from videolan.org if you don't already have it.
2. Open VLC. In the menu bar, click Media → Convert / Save… (on Windows the shortcut is Ctrl+R; on a Mac use File → Convert / Stream).
3. Click + Add and choose your video file, then click Convert / Save at the bottom.
4. In the Profile dropdown, choose “Audio – MP3.”
5. Next to Destination file, click Browse, pick a folder, and give the file a name ending in .mp3.
6. Click Start. VLC writes the MP3 (a progress bar runs along the bottom). When it finishes, upload that .mp3 to Stenobox.

Any tool that exports MP3, WAV, or M4A works too — VLC is just the easiest free option that runs on your own machine.

The upload page, field by field

Click New upload on your dashboard to open the form. Everything except the audio file itself is optional — but the optional fields meaningfully improve the result.

Context & Known Participants (optional)

A plain-English note about the proceeding and who's speaking. This helps Stenobox label speakers correctly and spell names right. Example:

Deposition. MR. JONES is questioning (Q). ALAN SIMS is the witness (A). MS. REED appears for the defense.

Number of Speakers (optional)

How many distinct voices are on the recording. When you provide it, Stenobox anchors to exactly that many speakers and matches each voice to the names you listed above or in the caption, instead of guessing.

Case Caption / Spelling Guide PDF (optional)

Drag in the case caption or a spelling sheet as a PDF. Stenobox uses it to spell party names, counsel, and other proper nouns the way the record requires. This is the single best way to get names right.

Audio File (required)

Drag and drop your recording, or click to browse. Accepts MP3, WAV, M4A.

Transcript Style

• True Verbatim (default) — keeps everything exactly as spoken, including “uh,” stutters, and false starts, for a strict verbatim record.
• Clean Verbatim — removes filler words, stutters, and false starts, for a clean, readable record.

Interpreted proceeding (checkbox)

Check this for proceedings with an interpreter. Stenobox will transcribe only the English on the record and skip the foreign-language speech.

Raw transcript only (checkbox)

Check this to skip formatting entirely and get just the raw words. Most users leave this unchecked.

Begin Transcription

Starts the job. The form folds away and a progress bar takes over.

What happens while it runs

Processing runs on its own — you don't have to sit and watch. A one-hour recording is usually ready in well under 10 minutes, and a live time estimate shows on screen. You can switch to another tab or app; keep the tab open and Stenobox will pop up a desktop notification the moment it's done (allow notifications when your browser asks). If you close the tab entirely, no problem — the finished transcript will be waiting in your dashboard.

The review editor

When the job finishes, it opens in the review editor. If you do want to verify the draft against the audio and make fixes, this is where you do it — the transcript on screen is the deliverable, so edit it directly and your changes save automatically.

Listen along

• Click any word and the audio jumps to that exact moment.
• Use the audio bar at the bottom to play/pause. −5s rewinds five seconds for a re-listen; the speed menu slows tricky testimony to 0.5× or speeds through clean stretches.
• Follow audio keeps the transcript scrolling in time with the playback (karaoke-style). Scrolling by hand pauses that until you click ◎ Current word to snap back.

Flags — the spots worth a second listen

Stenobox highlights the places worth double-checking, color-coded:

• Disagreement — the wording is uncertain.
• Missing words — words may have been dropped.
• Dropped testimony — a passage that didn't survive formatting; verify none of it is testimony.
• Wrong speaker — a line may be attributed to the wrong person.
• Low confidence — an optional faint underline on words Stenobox wasn't fully sure of.
• Reviewed — turns green once you've checked it.

Use Prev flag / Next flag to jump between them (the audio starts playing each one). When a spot looks right, click ✓ Mark reviewed (or press Enter) to mark it green and move on. Your check-marks are remembered for that job.

Fixing a flagged spot

Click a flagged spot and a panel shows what the alternate listens heard — labeled Version 1 and Version 2. If one is right, click Use this (or press 1 / 2) to swap it in. You can also just click into the text and retype it yourself.

Editing directly

Click anywhere in the transcript and type, exactly like a document. Edits save automatically a few seconds after you stop typing — or click Save changes to save immediately. Press Tab to indent.

Other tools

• Name spellings — a list of every name found. Fix one and it's corrected everywhere in the transcript, possessives included.
• Q./A. convert — if a stretch came back with name labels (MR. SMITH: / THE WITNESS:) that should be Q. and A., highlight those lines with your mouse and click Q./A. convert. The examiner's lines become Q., the witness's become A. Undo convert puts it back.
• Find & replace (Ctrl+H) — replace text across the whole transcript at once, like in Word. Capitalization matters, so run it twice if a name appears both ways.
• Clipboard — a running history of snippets you've copied; click one to paste it at your cursor.
• Strong flags only — hides the faint, low-confidence wording flags (mostly noise). Missing-word and wrong-speaker flags always stay visible.

Keyboard shortcuts

In the review editor, when you're not clicked into the text to edit, you can run the whole review from the keyboard:

Click into the transcript any time to edit normally — the shortcuts pause while you're typing.

Finishing & exporting

When the transcript is verified, click Copy all to copy the whole thing to your clipboard, then paste it straight into Word or your CAT software to finalize and certify. Your transcripts stay in your dashboard so you can reopen them anytime; you can search them from the dashboard search box. For confidentiality, the source audio is removed within a day of processing and review copies auto-delete after 30 days.