How to get Audio transcription of Video Files using YouTube

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This tutorial is useful for anyone looking to get an Audio transcription of  Video files. How to transcribe video files and get the transcript in a plain text file? If you are not satisfied with the text generated from your video then I will also share a transcription company which offers really reasonable transcription services.

Well, I faced this issue or came across this situation a couple of days back when I was planning to start with video marketing for TechUntold. And it is no secret that adding a transcript to YouTube videos in description results in improved rankings.

The transcript contains the text of whatever is spoken in the video. Moreover, it would help me in publishing the audio transcript of the video on our blog quickly and conveniently.

Therefore, I thought of sharing the solution with our readers who can benefit from it too. Let’s get to it.

Audio and Video files Transcripts

Get Audio Transcription of Video Files

Method 1: Using YouTube to transcribe videos

With this method, you can get audio transcription for free.

In case you are not aware of YouTube CC then let me tell you that CC under YouTube video at bottom right stands for “Closed Captions”. YouTube uses speech recognition and generates subtitles or closed captions for a particular video automatically when you or anyone else upload it.

I will be explaining how to download those automatically generated transcripts in the form of the text file from YouTube.

1. Go to YouTube and open the desired video for which you want the transcripts. If the video isn’t there on YouTube then please upload it first.

2. If your video or the video for which you want transcripts contains CC button in YouTube player then transcripts can be downloaded for that particular video.

3. Now if CC button exists for the video then, press F12 or Right Click and select Inspect on Chrome Browser.

4. Select Console tab and paste the below code in Console and hit Enter.

if(yt.config_.TTS_URL.length) window.location.href=yt.config_.TTS_URL+”&kind=asr&fmt=srv1&lang=en”

Audio Transcription of a video file

5. A web page with the transcript of that video will open in the same tab. Right-click on the page and select Save As…

Transcribe Video

6. Save the file with .html extension by selecting Files of Type as All Files.

Video files Transcripts in a text file using YouTube

With this, you will have a HTML file with an audio transcript of the video file. You can print that out easily too.

Now, the drawback of this method is that the transcripts will not be accurate. Accuracy will depend on the accent which varies a lot around the globe and the audio clarity in the video.

With all these issues in the transcript, you have a lot of manual work to do in order to fix the text in the transcript. If you don’t want to do all this hard work go for method 2.

Method 2 :  Audio/Video Transcription services

After researching a lot of transcription companies, I came across a very reasonable priced audio transcription services company Scribie.

Their charges are only $ 0.75/minute which were really surprising to me at least as there are a lot of expensive services in the market.

You can make use of either free method using YouTube or audio/video paid transcription services from a company according to your requirement. Share these methods with your friends if you found them helpful.

About The Author

  • Hemant Mendiratta

    Hemant Mendiratta is a co-founder of TechUntold and a passionate tech blogger, avid gamer, and social media guru who keenly monitors useful apps and gadgets. He is the ideator of our Instagram tool StoryHoot which allows watching Instagram stories anonymously. You can connect with him on: Facebook, Twitter.

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Hemant Mendiratta

Hemant Mendiratta is a co-founder of TechUntold and a passionate tech blogger, avid gamer, and social media guru who keenly monitors useful apps and gadgets. He is the ideator of our Instagram tool StoryHoot which allows watching Instagram stories anonymously. You can connect with him on: Facebook, Twitter.

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