What’s the Best Way to Take Notes in In-Person Meetings

Taking notes in an in-person meeting can be difficult. You need to listen, participate, remember decisions, and capture action items at the same time. An AI meeting assistant can handle much of the documentation by recording conversations, creating a meeting transcription, identifying speakers, and generating structured AI meeting notes.

MeetingMinutes and Otter.ai both provide these core capabilities, but they are designed around somewhat different workflows. MeetingMinutes emphasizes direct recording, multilingual transcription, offline use, and structured outputs, while Otter.ai puts strong emphasis on online meeting capture, collaboration, and integrations.

So which one fits your meetings? The answer depends on how you record meetings and what you need to do with the information afterward.

What Should You Look for in an AI Meeting Assistant?

For in-person meetings, focus on a few practical capabilities:

Accurate transcription: Speech should be converted into readable, searchable text.

Speaker identification: Multiple participants should be distinguishable in the transcript.

Recording reliability: Direct and, where necessary, offline recording can matter in physical meeting rooms.

Language support: Check whether the tool supports the languages and dialects your team actually uses.

AI summaries: A transcript is more useful when it can become concise meeting notes, decisions, and key points.

Import and export: Existing recordings and common output formats make the tool easier to fit into existing workflows.

Collaboration: Teams may need shared access, editing, and search after a meeting.

MeetingMinutes Features

MeetingMinutes is an AI meeting assistant and meeting recorder designed for recording, transcription, meeting notes, and post-meeting content organization.

For in-person meetings, its real-time transcription and AI speaker identification can turn a conversation into a structured transcript without requiring someone to type continuously. MeetingMinutes also advertises up to 98% accuracy for standard Mandarin and support for more than 20 Chinese dialects.

A notable feature is offline audio recording. MeetingMinutes uses a local recording engine so recordings can continue in environments with weak or unavailable internet access. It also supports cloud and local storage, with synchronization across devices.

For multilingual teams, MeetingMinutes advertises transcription in 70+ languages, multilingual translation, and a multilingual app interface.

The workflow also extends beyond transcription. MeetingMinutes offers 50+ meeting-summary templates and can generate formats such as PPT, Excel files, and mind maps. Features including speaker filtering, chapter previews, keyword search, recording notes, and long-duration recording help users review lengthy meetings more efficiently.

It also supports importing existing audio and video files, making it useful for interviews, lectures, training recordings, and previously captured meetings.

Otter.ai Features

Otter.ai is an AI meeting assistant that provides recording, transcription, speaker identification, AI summaries, searchable meeting notes, and collaboration tools.

Otter supports both in-person recording and online meeting capture. Its Notetaker can automatically join meetings on platforms such as Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams, then record, transcribe, and summarize the conversation.

Speaker identification helps separate participants in transcripts, while Otter AI Chat allows users to ask questions about recorded conversations and meeting content.

Otter also provides collaboration features, folders, sharing, transcript editing, and integrations with workplace tools. Depending on the plan, integrations include services such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Zapier, Dropbox, and calendar platforms.

Otter currently lists six transcription languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, and Simplified Chinese. Its free Basic plan provides a way to test the service, while paid plans add higher limits and additional features.

MeetingMinutes vs. Otter.ai

Which Tool Fits Different Meeting Scenarios?

In-Person Meetings

MeetingMinutes may fit users who primarily record physical meetings and need offline recording, dialect recognition, local storage, or structured post-meeting documents.

Otter also supports in-person recording, while offering a broader ecosystem for users who move between physical and online meetings.

Online Meetings

Otter is particularly relevant for teams whose meetings happen mainly on Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams because its Notetaker can capture those meetings automatically.

Multilingual Meetings

MeetingMinutes offers broader advertised transcription and dialect coverage. Otter currently supports six transcription languages. Teams should compare these lists against the languages they actually use.

Interviews and Research

Both tools can record and transcribe interviews. MeetingMinutes adds features such as chapter navigation, speaker filtering, offline recording, and structured document generation. Otter provides searchable transcripts, summaries, AI Chat, and team collaboration.

Which One Should You Choose?

Choose MeetingMinutes if you need:

A meeting recorder focused on in-person use.

Offline and local recording options.

Broad multilingual and dialect support.

50+ summary templates and structured exports.

Tools for organizing long recordings and speaker-specific content.

Choose Otter.ai if you need:

Automated capture for Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams.

Strong collaboration and searchable meeting workflows.

Extensive workplace integrations.

A free plan for testing the service.

Transcription in its currently supported six languages.

Final Takeaway

MeetingMinutes and Otter.ai solve the same broad problem: turning conversations into searchable transcripts and useful meeting notes.

The main difference is workflow. MeetingMinutes emphasizes direct recording, offline use, multilingual support, and structured outputs, while Otter.ai emphasizes online meeting capture, collaboration, and integrations.

If your priority is capturing and organizing in-person conversations, MeetingMinutes offers features built around that workflow. If your meetings are heavily centered on online platforms and connected workplace software, Otter.ai provides a workflow designed around those needs.