dingnotes.com

What It Is

Ding Notes is an interview transcription and research-organization tool created by Australian independent developer Mitchell Jeffrey. It is not simply a speech-to-text service; instead, it is designed around listening back to interviews, taking timestamped notes, and building tag and topic indexes, making it suitable for managing multiple audio or video recordings.

Core Features and Experience

The tool runs in the browser and supports common audio and video formats such as mp3, m4a, mov, mp4, and wav. Users can quickly locate segments via the waveform and transcript text, then add time-coded notes. Its AI features include automatic transcription and speaker identification. The language support page uses both “13 languages” and “30+ languages” in different places, but does not specify whether Chinese is included. Data is stored in a simple JSON file format, making it easy to further analyze with tools such as jq.

Pricing and Privacy

Basic organization features are free and require no registration. AI transcription uses a prepaid model: 1 hour for $5, 10 hours for $20, 30 hours for $50, and 100 hours for $100. The lowest rate of $0.50/hour requires purchasing $100 of credit and using the express service tier. Payments are processed by Paddle. Credit codes can be used across multiple devices or shared with others, and expire 12 months after their last use. In terms of privacy, notes and transcripts are primarily stored in a local folder. Files are uploaded only when automatic transcription is used; results are deleted 24 hours after they become available, or after 7 days if they are not retrieved. The service also states that content is not used for AI training.

Pros, Cons, and Best-Fit Users

Its strengths include no subscription, no monthly limits, a local-first approach, and strong structured organization features. It is especially well suited to journalists, writers, researchers, oral history projects, and students. The limitations are also clear: it only supports Chromium browsers such as Chrome and Edge, with no Safari/Firefox support; there is currently no collaboration feature, and multiple people accessing the same folder concurrently may cause data loss; moving or renaming recordings will break associations; and automatic transcription accuracy is not guaranteed, with refunds generally not offered for quality issues.

Access from China and Alternatives

The crawled text does not provide information on mainland China access, ICP filing, supported payment cards, or localization, so its accessibility status is unknown. If you need Chinese transcription, domestic payment options, or team collaboration, you can compare it with 讯飞听见 and Notta. If you care more about an English interview workflow, consider Otter.ai, Descript, Sonix, and Trint.