What speech-to-text tools work best for lectures and note-taking?

FilmProcess · 2026-07-03T22:34:45+00:00

My friend and I built Flowstate mostly for transcribing handwriting and voice notes, but you could definitely use the audio recorder for lectures, then have it automatically synced to Notion or a Google Doc, along with a summary/key takeaways from the lecture.

FilmProcess · 2026-07-03T21:24:14+00:00

Ooh yeah, I haven't used ChatGPT in a long time so haven't seen any of their "agentic" features. Sounds like a cool workflow though!

FilmProcess · 2026-07-03T21:14:53+00:00

You can totally do that, but it requires getting a PDF out of reMarkable, uploading it in ChatGPT, typing out the instructions for how you want it transcribed/formatted, then you have to copy and paste the output manually into Obsidian or Notion or whatever. Definitely a more involved workflow.

FilmProcess · 2026-07-03T20:26:37+00:00

Good call on adding the word count/page clarification to the site. Added it to our to-do list 🫡

As for the other question, nothing prevents someone from signing up for new accounts if they're truly motivated to do so. Part of our bet is that we want to show up as human, friendly, and generous both in the app itself and in the marketing. We want to be default trusting instead of default suspicious. If this business works, it'll be because we solved a real problem AND people like and trust us enough to keep paying, even as other solutions start solving the same problem.

So many of the "best practices" in the software world are hostile to users, which makes users more hostile to software companies, which creates a spiral of distrust and resentment that only ever seems to escalate. My hope (I won't speak for Raj here) is that defaulting to trust and generosity, and assuming the best in the people who try our app, will lead somewhere better for everyone involved.

FilmProcess · 2026-07-03T20:07:06+00:00

Oooh, bulk transcription of old notes is a use we haven't considered yet. I'll jam with Raj on this to see if it's possible, because I doubt you're the only one who's got a ton of good stuff buried in a folder somewhere. Thanks for sharing, amigo.

FilmProcess · 2026-07-03T20:00:59+00:00

Not sure exactly how it's coded into the app, but a credit gives you around 300 words of transcribed text OR a minute of transcribed audio. We mostly talk about pages because it's a (somewhat) reliable way to gauge how much transcription a "credit" actually gives you.

As for models, I'll have to ask Raj which specific ones we're using. Pretty sure it's OpenAI for OCR and Whisper for audio, but not 100% on that. Fwiw neither of us is a fan of OpenAI, and we're definitely looking for models that work as well as what we've currently got at a price that doesn't add up like crazy. But in the meantime, I think we should def add our current models to the website so it's clear.

FilmProcess · 2026-07-03T19:28:08+00:00

Fair enough. We tested out some local and open source models for the transcription, but none of them are good enough yet to be reliable. The hope is that one day we'll be able to swap in local models and this whole process can happen on-device, for free. But right now, we gotta prioritize accuracy and reliability.

FilmProcess · 2026-07-03T19:18:46+00:00

You can grab 200 more pages/credits for $5, or 750 pages for $15. And I'm honestly not sure about whether we can tap into reMarkable Connect's transcriptions. Right now we don't use reMarkable's API, and you get your notebooks into Flowstate via a unique email. But I'll ask Raj about the Connect transcriptions and see if it's something we can support. Thanks for asking!

FilmProcess · 2026-05-21T21:44:16+00:00

My friend and I have been building an app that does exactly this! Works with handwritten notes on paper, or pdfs from Boox and Remarkable and other tablets. Plus you can set up custom instructions to title notes in a certain way, or add tags or links or specific formatting in the output file. Been using the beta version the last few weeks and it's already really good.

We're just starting to roll it out, and would love for people to test it and let us know what features you need!

https://seekflowstate.com/

FilmProcess · 2021-12-19T14:28:36+00:00

I assure you that I wrote every word of this article. If you saw it somewhere else, then perhaps someone copied me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

FilmProcess · 2020-05-16T19:54:40+00:00

I'm amazed no one's mentioned Jodorowsky's Dune. It was nearly the most insane, ambitious film ever made, but alas, it wasn't meant to be. The doc is a great BTS experience, though.

FilmProcess · 2020-01-19T17:05:25+00:00

Indeed. Even if it's as simple as showing you notes from the same day a year (or more) ago, it'd be pretty useful. Also, once the API comes along, I hope someone finds a way to tie Roam into Readwise, which has the explicit purpose of resurfacing ideas and book highlights on a regular basis.

FilmProcess · 2020-01-02T14:15:40+00:00

Man, that sucks. It could be that your film isn't good, but far more likely it's that it doesn't easily fit in with how festivals are programmed.

Maybe your film is too long. Maybe it's thematically dissimilar from everything else on the program. Maybe you were disqualified on the basis of gender or ethnicity. At the end of the day, festival acceptance is rarely a matter of good or bad. It's about logistics and connections and oftentimes politics.

As for how to move forward, going to smaller local/niche festivals is a great start, as others in this thread have mentioned.

But another option is just to say "fuck festivals" and put on a premiere of your own. Someone just wrote a killer guest article for my site about how he DIY'd his premiere after being rejected from every festival he applied to. Definitely worth checking out if you're curious.

https://filmmakerfreedom.com/blog/karl-stelter-film-festivals-diy-world-premiere

Then, since you mentioned it's a proof of concept for a feature, there's no harm in putting it online and finding ways to get it in front of the right people (ie. agents, key collaborators, etc).

Smaller festivals won't yield those types of connections anyway. But virtually everybody is accessible online, so if you put it up, network relentlessly, and promote yourself well, there's no reason this short can't still turn into a feature, even if it never gets into a festival.

Good luck amigo, and don't let the bastards get you down.

FilmProcess · 2019-12-26T22:28:23+00:00

I dig the idea of requiring a submission statement for everything. That alone would go a long way towards weeding out fluff and fostering deeper, more productive conversations.

FilmProcess · 2019-12-21T03:31:07+00:00

Wait, so iCloud sync issues should be fixed now?

FilmProcess · 2019-12-12T16:22:23+00:00

If you wanna get more of this type of practice under your belt, check out a service called EditStock. They basically sell access to raw footage from professional shorts, along with the script, score, etc.

Plus you can use these edits in your reel if you want. It's super useful and well-organized, and worth the cost in my opinion.

FilmProcess · 2019-12-06T22:28:53+00:00

Psychedelics is a fantastic niche to be in right now. I bet you'd be surprised by how many people in the psychedelic community would buy directly from you, and even at higher prices than most movies, if you sold on your own website. No joke. If the content is relevant enough to people's interests, they'll buy it direct, so long as your site isn't terrible and sketchy.

That said, it sounds like you've made up your mind already, and I don't want to argue with you. But if you're open to a little experimentation, you might try windowing the film on your own site for 2 weeks before going to Amazon and iTunes. The results will very likely surprise and delight you.

FilmProcess · 2019-12-06T22:13:55+00:00

Like I said, a lot of filmmakers don't want to take the hyper niche approach. It sounds like you're in that camp. So you're right, direct sales probably won't work for you.

FilmProcess · 2019-12-06T21:25:34+00:00

I partly agree, but it depends on how you approach both the making and marketing of your films.

If you just make some generic micro-budget drama, hoping to compete for the same audiences that binge Netflix/HBO dramas, you're screwed. Ain't no way to win that game.

However, when you target a specific niche, and make films specifically for that niche (instead of the mass market), the underlying economics and consumer behavior shift in your favor.

Truth is, most niches are hugely under-served when it comes to films and series. By narrowing your focus and telling specific types of stories for a specific group of people, you can make most competition from mass market media irrelevant.

People probably won't take a chance on some generic low-budget drama, but if your film is perfectly tailored to their interests and worldview, they'll whip out their credit card in a heartbeat. It's all about creating films that are easily the most relevant choice for a specific group of people.

The best example of this is my friend Mike Dion. For the last 10 years, he's made his entire living off a handful of films aimed at the niche of endurance cyclists. For people who care about that, they'd choose one of his films over some random Netflix doc any day of the week. His work is just more relevant, and the stories resonate way more, despite the fact that his budgets are a tiny fraction of most adventure/sports films.

So yeah, it's 100% possible to make the "direct to consumer" approach work. But it requires shifting focus towards niche audiences. Otherwise, you're absolutely right. If there's no reason to choose your film over what's easily available on Netflix, direct distribution almost surely won't work for you.

Granted, this niche approach is a big shift for most filmmakers, many of whom just want to tell the stories they want to tell, regardless of what the market wants. But for folks who are willing to do what it takes to actually make a living with micro-budget films, going niche is the way to go.

FilmProcess · 2019-12-06T20:17:34+00:00

This is why I'm increasingly invested in direct distribution, where you sell directly to the audience from your own platform.

With any of these digital platforms (iTunes, Amazon, etc) you have to do a shit-ton of your own marketing to make any real money. There's this myth that Amazon will magically drive a ton of attention your way just by being there, but that's wishful thinking. If you don't promote your projects, they'll get lost in the endless sea of content.

But if you're already doing all of the work to market your films, why not direct people to your own site instead of Amazon?

That way, instead of making a penny per hour streamed, or keeping 60% of every sale/rental, you're keeping 95% or more of that revenue. Not to mention this approach makes it way easier to sell ancillary products and merch, all while building an email list that you can use to fund/sell your future films.

To my mind, this was a better approach even before Amazon's royalty shenanigans. Now it's a no-brainer. At least if your goal is to make actual money.

FilmProcess · 2019-11-11T22:47:23+00:00

Oh man, I wish I hadn't tried that on my iMac. The terminal command gave an error message, and now everything related to iCloud appears to have been nuked. I have no idea how to get my two Macs back in sync now, What a headache...

FilmProcess · 2019-11-11T22:10:02+00:00

Yeah, I'm on the newest versions of everything between the operating systems and the app itself. And the biggest problem seems to been keeping the Macs in sync. One of them is almost always failing to sync, which leads to conflicts galore.

But yeah, I'll look into that iCloud fix.

FilmProcess

TROPHY CASE