How to Convert YouTube Video into Text or Transcript.
Whether you’re uploading videos to YouTube for the first time or you already have a channel full of videos, you may want to consider converting those YouTube videos to text. Why? Well, there are several reasons why creators might want to do this.
For example, you can repurpose your YouTube video content and use it on your blog. If you’re creating a gaming video for your YouTube gaming channel, subtitles can help your viewers understand the meaning of comments that can sometimes be obscured by background noise.
Transcripts and captions also increase the accessibility of your video to people with disabilities and help users who experience audio playback issues on YouTube. In addition, subtitles can help viewers understand your video better, even if they don’t have a disability.
The good thing is that it is not very difficult to convert YouTube videos to text. There are four ways to convert a YouTube video to text or transcript.
1. Convert YouTube Video to Text Using the Built-In Transcription Tool
YouTube has a built-in tool to convert YouTube videos to text. It’s free and built right into the interface, so it makes sense that most of the time you’ll want to use it.
YouTube generates subtitles using its speech recognition technology and you can also extract the transcript after creating the subtitles. However, the accuracy may vary slightly, so you may need to make some changes to the text.
Sign in to your YouTube account and go to YouTube Studio. Select Subtitles from the left sidebar.
Select the video you want to convert to text. On the next screen, select a language and click Confirm.
You will see that YouTube will automatically generate a transcript for you, which you can edit on the next screen. To change the text, select DUPLICATE AND EDITING.
A dialog box will open in which you can edit the transcription. When finished editing, click the PUBLISH button.
Please note that there are no punctuation marks in the text. The words are also all in lower case. You will need to fix the punctuation and capitalization manually.
You can also view the transcript after it has been posted to the video page. Go to the video page and select the ellipsis at the bottom of the video. Select Open Transcript and you will see the transcript to the right of the video.
It’s always a good idea to quickly check the grammar of transcripts generated by YouTube because they almost always need to be corrected. If YouTube was unable to create subtitles for a particular video, it might be due to poor audio quality in your video or a language that is not supported by YouTube.
2. Convert YouTube Video to Text Using Third-Party Transcription Tools
Automatic transcription tools are one of the fastest and most efficient ways to convert YouTube videos to text. You can use them to transcribe just about anything, from videos to audio content like podcasts.
However, there is only one caveat. Most decent transcription tools cost money. They either charge a monthly or yearly subscription fee, or charge a per-minute or hourly rate.
If you want to try out one of these tools before committing to a subscription, you can use the ones that offer a trial. For example, you can try Themes. It allows you to transcribe audio for up to 45 minutes for free.
Go to the Temi website and click the “Select audio/video file” button.
Let Temi handle your file. This may take some time depending on the length of the file you uploaded.
Once processing is complete, Temi will ask for your email address. The transcript will be emailed to you.
The benefit of using a good video to text conversion tool is accuracy. They can transcribe videos with a clear voice and virtually no background noise, with an accuracy of around 90% (or better in some cases).
3. Convert YouTube Video to Text Using Video Editors
When you use a video editor to polish your YouTube video, it’s possible that the editor also has a transcription tool. Of course, not every video editor has the feature of converting video to text. But you can always use the editor just to convert a YouTube video to text or do something else if you want.
For example, VEED has a video-to-text tool that allows you to create transcriptions for your YouTube videos.
Go to the VEED video to text conversion page and click the “Select Video” button.
Enter the link to your YouTube video in the bottom field of the dialog box and select the page icon at the right end of the field.
Let the tool import the video. When it’s done, you’ll need to select automatic subtitles to continue.
Then select the language in which the sound is played and click the Start button.
On the next screen, you’ll see subtitles for your YouTube video and a few other video editing options in case you need to trim or split your video.
4. Convert YouTube Video to Text Using Google Docs
Did you know that Google Docs can also help you convert YouTube videos to text? It has a built-in voice dictation tool that can get the job done. However, this setting is only available in Chromium-based browsers such as Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge.
You can use the voice dialing tool in two ways.
First, you can turn on the voice input feature, play the video as usual, and let Google Docs do the rest.
However, there is a possibility that there is some interference in the background or that the sound is echoing. To fix this, you need to first adjust a few settings on your PC.
This is where the second method comes in. You can change the audio settings on your PC so that it listens to audio internally without using speakers.
Since the first method is a subset of the second method, we will illustrate the second method here. If you want to use the first method, start from step 3.
On Windows 11, press Ctrl+I to launch the Settings app, select System > Sound > All Sound Devices > Stereo Mix, and select Allow.
Then return to the main Settings screen and go to System > Sound > Volume Mixer. Select the input device as Stereo Mix from the drop-down list.
At this point, the sound of what you are playing on your computer will be directly transmitted to the instrument that uses your microphone – in this case, Google Docs.
Then open a new Google Doc and choose Tools > Voice Typing.
You will now see a microphone icon in the document. Select the microphone icon if you want Google Docs to start listening and transcribing. Then play the YouTube video you want to convert to text.
Remember that you cannot leave the Google Docs tab while using the tool or the transcription will stop.
If you are using the stereo mix method, you will only need to play the video. But if you’re using speakers, make sure you don’t place them too close or too far from the microphone.
If possible, do a test run by recording a few minutes of sound from the speakers ahead of time to make sure the voice isn’t too loud or too slow. If so, adjust the position of the speakers and microphone. The better the sound quality, the more accurate the transcription will be.
Ready to Read Your Videos?
I hope you intended to convert YouTube video to text using one of these methods. You can also hire someone to manually transcribe the video for you, but this can sometimes be expensive and time-consuming. If you regularly create videos for YouTube, besides how to convert YouTube videos to text, you should know some useful YouTube tricks.
How to Convert YouTube Video into Text or Transcript
How to Convert YouTube Video into Text or Transcript