YouTube to text: Get the transcript, or make one when there is none

Videos with no transcript

According to YouTube Help, automatic captions may not appear if the language is not supported, the video is too long, the sound is poor, it opens with a long silence, or several people talk over each other. On live streams they are currently English only, and the text is remade from the recording when the stream ends.

These are the main cases where you need to transcribe the video. Copying is also not enough when you want speakers told apart, names corrected or a document to keep.

Paste the link, share the tab’s audio

1. Under New transcript, paste the video’s link. It is recognised as YouTube by itself.
2. Choose the language and press Continue. The video appears at the top of the page.
3. Press Start transcription. The browser asks to share the tab; Also share tab audio has to be on.
4. As the video plays, the text flows below it.

This works in Chromium-based browsers such as Chrome and Edge on a computer. If you get stuck, see sharing tab audio. If the owner does not allow playback on other sites, open the video in its own tab and share that tab.

Why it takes as long as the video

LiveType does not download the video. It takes the sound from the tab while it plays, so a forty-minute video becomes text in forty minutes. There is no speeding up as with a file, and the tab has to stay open and playing.

Anything from that tab may end up in the text, including the words of an ad, which you can delete in the editor. If the recording is yours and on your computer, choosing the file is faster: MP3 to text shows that route.

Fixing it while you watch

The text is yours before the video ends. Correct a guest’s name the first time it appears, without waiting for the end. Click a paragraph’s time and the video jumps there, so you can listen to a doubtful sentence and fix it on the spot.

YouTube captions or Whisper: When to use which

Which writes more accurately varies by video, so we give no single number. Read the first few minutes of the YouTube transcript to decide: if it serves you, you do not need LiveType.

Download as Word, TXT or SRT

When the text is ready, the Export menu gives you Word (DOCX), ODT, Markdown, plain text or timed subtitles (SRT, VTT). For your own video, you can then upload the subtitles to YouTube Studio, as our subtitle generator page shows. LiveType does not burn them into the video.

Limits and rights

• It does not download or save the video; it only produces text.
• It does not translate or summarise.
• Phones cannot share tab audio, so this route is for computers.
• When you publish text from someone else’s video, quotation rules and the rights holder’s permission are yours to respect.

Other services exist; see how UniScribe differs on its comparison page. If the video is still live, read live stream transcription instead.

If you have the video as a file you need no link: Video to text converter.