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The short answer is you can't. If the audio you are trying to transcribe has only one voice on it, your odds of getting a decent transcription improve, but are still minimal.There are four problems:1). Speech recognition works best when there is no background noise. Movie files tend to have music and other background noise happening. Even if it is a movie of one person speaking into the microphone, there will still be background noise unless that microphone is connected directly into the device doing the recording. What I mean by this is that a movie of someone speaking at a convention through a PA system will have a bit of echo from the room acoustics and other noises such as people coughing and moving around.2). Speech recognition works best when it is one speaker. Different voices have different characteristics. While today's more powerful computers minimize this somewhat, to get best results, you really need just one speaker without a lot of background noise.3). For the absolute best results, the "one speaker" referenced in #2 above needs to speak their punctuation. This dramatically improves accuracy, because it gives the speech recognition software the context to form complete sentences.4). People giving speeches or performing dialog do not speak in complete sentences, (they way they would type or write the same thought is completely different). Speech recognition software is very rule based. Some of those rules analyze the speech with the expectation the speaker is speaking in the same style they would type. That is, the words all form a complete sentence, and sentences form coherent paragraphs, etc.There is a way to speed up the transcription such as this. Play the audio from the movie back through headphones and you re-speak what was said, forming complete sentences (eliminating "ums" and "ahs" as you go). Once you get the hang of it, it actually goes pretty fast. Mac OS X has basic dictation capabilities built in, but for best results you want to use Dragon for Mac. This software has the ability to learn the unique patterns in both the way you pronounce words, and how you put words together to improve accuracy.If you choose to try the method Russ Conte suggests, that's fine, but unless the part of the movie you want to transcribe is relatively short (less than 5 minutes) I think you will find using my method will result in fewer transcription errors and actually take less time compared to going over all the text and correcting all the mis-recognized text.

A few things come to mind:ONE: People seem to think that once rock and roll became “a thing,” it just kept on exploding and never stopped — except that it very nearly died at the end of the 1950s. By the time Elvis got drafted, Buddy Holly died in a plane crash, and Chuck Berry got arrested for violating the Mann Act (a selectively applied and vague law that typically targeted black men suspected of luring young women into immoral goings-on…), the general sense in the music business, with no small bit of relief, was that rock and roll was an ugly youth fad that had finally passed. Not only did the powers that be in the music business find rock and roll difficult to monetize and control, the racist attitudes of the times took the animus toward rock over the top in the early 60s.It was, to older people, simply “race” music in another form, which appealed to white kids too, and that was just too much to bear. I asked my mother, who was in college in California when Elvis broke, what she thought of him. She didn’t hesitate: “white trash.” (Now she watches rock documentaries with me and we discuss rock as art, so thank heavens for the passage of time, the quest for enlightenment, and curious minds!). Rock, to much of the population, was considered degraded music for one reason or another and it was basically stamped out. So, good riddance.Except for a few things.Meanwhile, over in Britain — and especially in the provinces that hadn’t gotten the memo that rock was dead, like, say, Liverpool — rock music was still a hot commodity and a serious splash of brash in a bleak, grey, post-war land. Long after it lost its cool in the states, British kids were dressing like Elvis circa ‘57. In places like London even older American blues became the ultimate cool.The short version of this is that groups like the Beatles were digging out deep tracks from American rock and r and b, such as Arthur Alexander’s “Anna,” Gene Vincent’s “Be-Bop-A-Lu-La,” Chuck Berry, Ray Charles, etc; and groups like the Rolling Stones and John Mayall were going full blues with Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters covers. A lot of this new music arrived in the UK with US servicemen during and after the war, who were a diverse group of Americans, and left a cultural mark when they left. Additionally, jazz was already very popular in Europe, and record labels in the UK like EMI and HMV did deals with American record companies to bring over American records that were more “niche” (read: black) back at home.Interestingly, though, the blues and rock passion in the UK, which was also briefly mixed with a fad for home-made throw-back American folks songs called “Skiffle,” was still mostly an underground phenomenon, despite some records being available. The charts were, like in the US, filled with lightweight pop music for the most part, created by people you’ve never heard of and likely never will again. The exceptions to this — Cliff Richard, for example — are the ones that prove the rule.Back at home in the US, where rock and roll was born, and then kinda died, black R and B was still ticking along, getting slicker, more pop-focused, and better distributed. Arguably, the most exciting new music coming out of the US in the early 60s was being produced by Stax records in Memphis with people like Rufus & Carla Thomas, Booker T and the M.G.s, and a young Otis Redding. Farther north, in Detroit, the new record label Tamla/Motown was turning out perfectly crafted hits by people like Smokey Robinson, Barrett Strong, and the Supremes.While this music was authentically in the tradition of black R and B, its creators knew they had something that would cross race lines. And it did, no doubt still causing older white folks to clutch their pearls. This is one of the reasons those old Motown performances are so polished and sophisticated — the men in their matching suits, perfectly choreographed, and sculpted hairdos; the women in ball gowns, sequins, and gloves. They weren’t so much succumbing to white norms (at least I’d argue they weren’t) as much as beating white folks at their own game. It worked, and Motown and Stax became phenomenons that lasted through the sixties, topping both the pop and R and B charts in the US.Interestingly, this kind of new American music didn’t really hit the UK charts until people like Dusty Springfield (an American soul music fanatic) pushed it into the mainstream a few years later. And for most British kids, the first time they heard Motown, it was in the form of a Beatles cover. The Beatles were performing this music before they even had a single out (“Please Mr. Postman” and “Money” are classic examples), and so were other US-music-loving groups. Those British artists who were so passionate about the American music they were playing never forgot where it came from and, thankfully, tipped their hats at their forebears whenever they had the chance.So anyway, here we are in the early 60s. Rock and roll is basically dead, but R and B is not. And there is a bunch of British kids listening to all of it — the old rock and roll, the old blues, the new R and B — and they’re recreating it, reimagining it, blending it all together, and building a larger and larger following among british youth.In 1963 and 1964 they explode all over the world, bringing old US music back to the US in a new package, and amplifying the old and new R and B, and effectively merging with it. There has never been a time since the mid-to-late-60s in which white pop music and black pop music were so linked, and during which pop music was REAL music, in the sense that the musicians and the songwriters were either one and the same or in true partnership with each other and a shared passion for the outcome. Of course there are lots of exceptions to this, but when we think of the great music of that era, it’s a viewpoint that withstands some scrutiny.SECOND: There is a trope that rock and roll is just music stolen from black people. While it is true that black artists very typically had their music stolen and rerecorded by white artists and music publishers, and never saw the proceeds or recognition that they deserved, I believe it is much too glib and inaccurate to simply dismiss rock as white theft.A more accurate statement would be that the record companies, music publishers, and everyone else who saw in music only a financial opportunity, and who were almost always white, definitely ripped off black musicians and artists left and right. And they were happy to steal and pander to white sensibilities for a buck. Ever hear Pat Boone do Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti”?Ugghhh.But when we’re talking actual musicians, that is a much more complicated issue. I would argue that, in fact, outside of the European-style classical music establishment, the fraternity of musicians has ALWAYS crossed lines of race, class, sexual orientation, and to a lesser extent, gender, more than most groups. Musicians (real musicians, not just a guy shredding badly at Guitar Center) have always been in partnership and (usually) friendly competition with other musicians, which has kept music evolving. The music matters more than anything else to real musicians.Consider the birth of jazz (one of rock’s important antecedents): New Orleans over 100 years ago was where outsiders and misfits of all kinds came together. Among them were both classically trained musicians and blues musicians who were excluded from white orchestras. The stew of music that became jazz was a combination of traditional African music brought over by slaves and their descendants and classical music from Europe, later with a good bit of Eastern European Jewish folk music thrown in. In short, musicians traded instruments, licks, scales, and rhythms endlessly, and that constant exchange became jazz and kept on going. (Ken Burns’s “Jazz” series is a fascinating primer on this process. I’m no jazz expert so I’ll move straight to rock and roll now…)Now look at Elvis. Elvis didn’t “copy” black singers any more than the Beatles did. He was influenced by it. He was a well-versed, committed fan, and he knew to pay homage to the great musicians before him. He was also a fan of gospel music from both white and black churches, and country music. His sound was an authentic expression of his experience as a poor southern white kid in the 50s and referenced all those influences equally. It wasn’t R and B, it wasn’t gospel, and it wasn’t country, though he could do all of those with aplomb. His sound was a true blend of those influences, which go back to Africa and Europe.He has been considered a thief of black music because he crossed over and became a huge star, doing music that was in large part (but not exclusively) derived from black music traditions, which would have been almost impossible at the time for a black artist doing the same music. Did this mean that Elvis stole this music? That seems a stretch. He did new music influenced by multiple styles that he was regularly steeped in from the beginning but never claimed to have invented it himself. But yes, racism was still very much at play in the fact that he crossed over and got radio play, and in that white audiences and the record companies were willfully deaf to black music unless it came out of a white mouth.This was why Sam Phillips (Elvis’s first producer and owner of Sun Records) famously said that if he could find someone white who could sing “like a negro” he’d be a billionaire. What gets left out of that story is that Sam had been recording black artists for years and became very frustrated at the racism that kept that music from a wider audience. He knew that it was only racism that was keeping that wall up, given the reality of segregated American culture. Phillips was actually a rarity in the music business in that he truly cared about the music, ultimately, much more than his billion dollars (though no doubt he didn’t mind the success of Elvis).Now look at Chuck Berry. I’ve always thought he was as much the father of rock and roll as Elvis, or more so. He created a drums and guitar template that forms the very basis of the rock sound today. Many have said that the only reason he is not considered the “King” is racism. Probably so.But his music was hardly a natural evolution from pure black R and B, blues, or gospel. It was actually a blend of black music and white country music — evolved mostly from British folk music, with blues influences around the edges — and for that he got a lot of flack from the black community. He was playing hillbilly music, for God’s sake! Listen to the twang and the quick, jerky 4/4. Few people hear it that way now, but they certainly did then.OK, moving on…Stax Records, the people who brought you Sam and Dave, Otis Redding, Carla Thomas, Booker T and the MGs, and 100 others. That rhythm section that almost defined 60s R and B was Booker T and the MGs, and made up of black and white musicians (Booker T. & the M.G.'s - Wikipedia). That band not only played behind the artists, they wrote, produced, and arranged most of those songs.It’s also important to note just how much of the music of the late 1950s and early-to-mid 60s in particular was formed in dedicated partnership between Jewish and black artists. This was a natural kinship in many ways: first, the experience of being marginalized and distrusted by the establishment; second, the many similar cultural traditions around music, particularly syncopation and “blue” notes or bent notes. Think of the Leiber and Stoller writing “Hound Dog” for Big Mama Thornton, or Goffin and King writing “Please Mister Postman” for the Marvelettes. Think of Jerry Wexler at Atlantic Records passionately promoting (on Stax and Atlantic, with Ahmet Ertegün) powerhouses like Wilson Pickett, Ruth Brown, Ray Charles, and Aretha Franklin (after Columbia Records tried to make her more appealing to white audiences and failed.)My point is that while racism indeed took a horrible toll on black artists in rock and roll (and jazz, and blues), rock and roll as an art form was much more of a partnership between musicians of myriad backgrounds than it is given credit for. True musicians always care more about trading licks with other good musicians than arbitrary rules about race or ethnicity. And musicians of any background are rarely rich, powerful, or influential.The money and power in the music business, then as now, is primarily held by business people, not musicians. And those are the folks who saw in black music just another pot of money ready to be grabbed, screw artistic integrity, morality, higher aspirations of art and humanity, or a proper version of Tutti Frutti by the man himself:

Question: What is the appropriate use of an endnote or a footnote in policy memos?I think it depends on if you have a corporate or organizational style guide. My preferred method is the Gregg Reference Manual, which seems to apply to many forms of communication and is recommended as a general guide for business professionals.So, that addresses format.Inclusion of an endnote or footnote would follow the style guide. However, when should one include the note?References. In other words, if the policy refers to other policies or formal process definitions, it’s good form to reference that source. This will help readers find traceability through the organizaiton’s policies, processes and procedures systems. Reference to industry standards, specific contract provisions, and regulations should also get this treatment.Contract provisions. This may be seen as a reference, but when the policy is required by contract or regulation, then a full discussion should occur in the body of the text. A footnote may include reference to the specific document, or it may contain a link to where it may be found.Clarification. Many footnotes include clarifying language that helps define a term or provides history for the point made in the policy writing.Research. Perhaps one may see this as “reference.” The point is that outside research, internal studies, and anything one might find in the annual report should also be explained or reference in an endnote or footnote.These are just a few. I might suggest that, overall, the person writing the policy memo refer to a good style guide.