YouTube video Transcription

Transcribe a YouTube video to text

Creators writing captions and descriptions, marketers repurposing video into articles, and researchers working with video source material.

MP3, M4A, WAV, FLAC, OGG, MP4 · up to 20 MB as a guest

Transcribing your audio…

What makes youtube video recordings hard

Video audio varies wildly. A studio talking-head transcribes almost perfectly; the same creator filming outdoors with a phone does not. Background music laid under narration is a particular problem, because the model has to separate speech from a signal deliberately mixed to sit alongside it.

A workflow that holds up

1

Upload the MP4 directly — the audio track is read without you extracting it.

2

Use the timestamped transcript as the basis for your caption file.

3

Turn the clean transcript into a blog post or description to make the video findable in text search.

4

Check any on-screen product names against the transcript before publishing.

Things worth knowing first

  • → If the video has a music bed, a version with music turned down transcribes measurably better.
  • → Auto-generated platform captions and a real transcript are not the same quality; do not assume you already have one.
  • → Only transcribe videos you have the rights to use.

What you get back

Every job returns both versions. Take whichever fits the job.

Clean transcript for reading and editing
Thanks everyone for joining. Let's start with last month's numbers. I'll share my screen so you can follow along. The headline is that renewals came in ahead of forecast for the third quarter running.
Timestamped for subtitles and citation
[00:00 → 00:04] Thanks everyone for joining.
[00:04 → 00:09] Let's start with last month's numbers.
[00:09 → 00:14] I'll share my screen so you can follow along.

An illustration of the two output formats. Not the result of any particular recording.

Questions about youtube video transcription

Yes. MP4 uploads directly and only the audio track is processed.
Yes, noticeably. Speech mixed under music is the most common cause of errors in video transcription.
The timestamped transcript gives you the timings and text you need to build a subtitle file.

Other things people transcribe

Interview Meeting Lecture Podcast Voice memo Webinar Phone call

Recording in a language other than English? See our language-by-language guides →

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