When I tried SimonSays out, I found that upload went smoothly and the service managed to return a decent transcript despite being given a poor quality recording. Of course, there were errors in the transcription, but I expected that because the content I gave it contained a lot of technical language. It still saved me a lot of time to avoid having to laboriously transcribe the whole file myself. The one thing I want that the service doesn't currently offer is the ability to pay for the service using Apple Pay.

While it isn’t perfect (nothing is, except a human being doing the transcription/translation), for the price (one of the lowest out there), it is worth every penny for the amount of time and effort it saves, IMHO. I’ve found that all I need to do is proofread the results, while doing some minor touchup work, but close to 90% of it is accurate for me (versus an old competitor/predecessor program from 5 years ago that would get maybe 25% correct on a good day, making it not even worth the trouble of correcting the 75%. Talk about pulling your hair out.). That being said, the results will be as good as your audio quality (garbage in, garbage out, as they say), so a good quality microphone and a rudmentary knowledge of filmmaking will go a long way with Simon Says. To be able to roundtrip a timeline from Final Cut X to Simon Says and to get a timeline with all the subtitles in a separate track in a matter of minutes is mind blowing. I can edit the video, audio, and subtitle all at the same time. When I think of how painful a process this was only 5 years ago, let alone 10 years ago when I edited 2 feature length docs, I’m truly amazed and grateful. I have yet to find another transcription program with the accuracy and integration of Simon Says. Even readying 3 old documentaries for online distribution, generating closed captions for the distributor, was less than $20 per film and took only minutes. In the old days, hundreds, if not thousands of dollars paying people to transcribe, then getting those subtitles into the film, makes me shudder just thinking about it. Simon Says takes one of the most painful aspects of filmmaking and makes it almost painless. Thank you!

Update 2: The monthly subscription service gets you discounted transcription time, but if you cancel your subscription service, you FOREFEIT THE HOURS YOU HAVE PURCHASED. Let me say that again. You have "bought" transcription hours, but in order to keep them, you must continue paying a monthly subscription. You don't get a refund, they don't freeze until you resume subscription, you LOSE them. Insane. Update: I've been in touch with the developer, and they are working to address my concerns. So far, my biggest UX problem (repeatedly being logged out) has been improved, so I've increased my rating. Basically, I am rooting for them to get this up to snuff, because when it works, it's magic. But I can't fully recommend them to other users, unless they are the type of user willing to be patient when things don't go quite as expected. ORIGINAL REVIEW:I really want to love this. But there are several mission critical UI/UX problems that literally kick me out of the system with no warning and no explanation constantly. I only understand what is happening because I have spoken at length with the developer. Unfortunately, the developer is more focused on rolling out exciting but totally untested new features than getting the features they've got to be stable. I have a very specific desire to roundtrip with FCPX keywords, and despite it's many flaws, this app has the best implementation I can find of that feature. However, until they fix the many problems I have reported, I am on the hunt for an alternative.

This is yet another app that exists, not because thought, testing, planning, and user need was considered, but rather simply yet-another-tech-company deciding “Hey, yep, we need an app.”The FCPX plugin doesn’t work. Uninstalling the app does not ‘talk’ to the FCPX plugin and uninstall/sync to that. Exporting a simple .wav audio file round trip from FCPX fails, the app window disappears, and the buggy, poorly written software shines in all its useless glory.So…Here’s the good news: have you ever heard of a web browser? Firefox? Safari? Brave? Just use a web browser, type in this thing called a URL and, BOOM, you can do EVERYTHING this app tries (and fails) to do and more.Basically, there’s ZERO reason to use this app. It’s a wrapper app, meaning for example, to edit a transcribed file, you must open an embedded HTML web page, login to Simon Says, etc. The same thing you’d do if you just opened Chrome. The lazy developer’s way of quickly building an App. Not native AI, but round-tripping to a web page just as if you opened a Chrome window inside the app window. Don’t bother and just edit/manage your files using their website which works ok enough. The app is useless and I deleted it from my Mac in less time it took to write this review.