Using Amazon Chime SDK live transcription
You use Amazon Chime SDK live transcription to generate live, user-attributed transcripts of your meetings. Amazon Chime SDK live transcription integrates with the Amazon Transcribe and Amazon Transcribe Medical services to generate transcripts of Amazon Chime SDK meetings while they're in progress.
Amazon Chime SDK live transcription processes each user’s audio separately for improved accuracy in multi-speaker scenarios. The Amazon Chime SDK uses its active talker algorithm to select the top two active talkers, and then sends their audio to Amazon Transcribe, in separate channels, via a single stream. Meeting participants receive user-attributed transcriptions via Amazon Chime SDK data messages. You can use transcriptions in a variety of ways, such as displaying subtitles, creating meeting transcripts, or using the transcriptions for content analysis.
Live transcription uses one stream to Amazon Transcribe for the duration of the meeting transcription.
Standard Amazon Transcribe and Amazon Transcribe Medical costs apply. For more information, refer to Amazon Transcribe Pricing
Important
By default, Amazon Transcribe may use and store audio content processed by the service to develop and improve AWS AI/ML services as
further described in section 50 of the AWS Service Terms
Topics
System architecture
The Amazon Chime SDK creates real-time meeting transcriptions, without audio leaving the AWS network, via a service-side integration with your Amazon Transcribe or Amazon Transcribe Medical account. For improved accuracy, users’ audio is processed separately, then mixed into the meeting. The Amazon Chime SDK uses its active talker algorithm to select the top two active talkers, and then sends their audio to Amazon Transcribe or Amazon Transcribe Medical in separate channels via a single stream. For reduced latency, user-attributed transcriptions are sent directly to every meeting participant via data messages. When using a media pipeline to capture meeting audio, the meeting’s transcription information is also captured.
![A diagram showing the data flow of meeting transcription.](/images/chime-sdk/latest/dg/images/transcription-architecture.png)
Billing and usage
Live transcription uses one stream to Amazon Transcribe or Amazon Transcribe Medical for the duration of the meeting transcription. Standard Amazon Transcribe and Amazon Transcribe Medical
costs apply. For more information, see Amazon Transcribe Pricing
Transcription parameters
The Amazon Transcribe and Amazon Transcribe Medical APIs offer a number of parameters when initiating streaming
transcription, such as StartStreamTranscription and
StartMedicalStreamTranscription. You can use t
hose parameters in the StartMeetingTranscription
API unless the Amazon Chime SDK predetermines the parameter’s value.
For example, the MediaEncoding
and MediaSampleRateHertz
parameters are not available because the Amazon Chime SDK sets them automatically.
Amazon Transcribe and Amazon Transcribe Medical validate the parameters, and that allows you
to use new parameter values as soon as they become available. For example, if Amazon
Transcribe Medical launches support for a new language, you only need to specify the new
language value in the LanguageCode
parameter.