The Easiest Ways to Transcribe YouTube Videos
Sometimes you don’t have time to watch an entire tutorial on YouTube when you’re trying to learn something on the fly—sometimes it would be easier if you could just skim through the text to find the step you’re stuck on. Of course, most YouTube videos are not transcribed, and transcribing them manually is not the beginning. But you don’t have to: here are some of the best ways to transcribe YouTube videos.
Real-time transcription
If you want to watch the video in its entirety at least once, you might want to consider real-time transcription, which will generate text as the video plays. This only really works if you have the time to devote to playing it all, but can be useful if you really need to see something in the clip.
The first option is through Google Docs. In a blank document, click Tools in the top menu and click Voice Typing. Minimize the windows so that both the Google Doc and the YouTube video are visible, play the video, and click the Speak button in Google Docs. To test this, I used the Kennedy Institute lecture ” Introduction to Bioethics: Bioethics at the Bedside ” which starts at 10:58. Google Docs was able to capture what the speaker was saying, but it couldn’t punctuate it in a way that made sense, so be aware that you’ll end up with a ton of words in the document that you’ll then have to review. and edit into something legible. This can be inconvenient , or it can be useful for repetition and revision, so it depends on how you like to learn.
Another real-time transcription option is Otter.AI , which I’ve recommended a million times and will recommend a million more. It’s a real-time transcriber that also records everything you transcribe, so you can play it back whenever you want. It easily distinguishes between different speakers, and you can give them names, which the service then appends to all parts of their speech. Additionally, the punctuation is usually correct. I use it for job interviews and to record lectures, allowing it to run on my phone while I work on the computer. With the free version, you get 300 minutes of transcription per month, but you can only record up to 30 minutes at a time. For $10 a month you get 1,200 minutes a month, up to 90 minutes at a time, and for $20 a month you get 6,000 minutes a month, and each chunk can last up to four hours.
Services that transcribe YouTube videos
If you don’t have the time or energy to follow through, you still have options.
The first is Study Fetch , an artificial intelligence service that creates study “sets” from various materials, such as practice tests, handwritten notes and, you guessed it, audio and video imports. Prices range from $7.99 to $11.99 per month, but with this cheaper option you get five video/audio downloads per month.
However, the best option I’ve found is free and fast . The aptly named site youtubetranscript.com took less than five seconds to create a complete transcript of the bioethics lecture, even adding notes when “[Applause]” rang out. Another video, over an hour long, took about 10 seconds. If all you need is a transcript, nothing more and nothing less, then here it is.