Free Youtube Transcript Generator: 4 ways to transcribe audio

Youtube is the most popular video uploading & streaming platform with lots of features such as background color change, keyboard shortcuts, translation of video titles and descriptions, auto caption generation, and more. However, here we are only going to talk about one which is Youtube auto-transcribe service. As we know YouTube is not only limited to one country or vicinity, so if your videos’ language is English then it is really easy to automatically transcribe Youtube videos. Being a global language it is very easy for most of the world’s audiences to understand your created video content easily.

There are a couple of well-known speech recognition apps available online that can easily convert any audio into text format, however, most of them are paid. Thus, in such a situation, if you are a new YouTuber and can’t afford such pricy transcription software then here are three free Youtube Transcript Generators or shall I say ways to generate subtitles for YouTube videos.

Note: Right now, it is not possible to achieve 100% accuracy in the text while transcribing it from audio because of the voice quality, accent, pronunciation of words, and background noise. If the audio has good quality then the rate of accuracy will also be good.

Method 1: YouTube Auto Transcribe service

Yes, as you heard the title, we can automatically transcribe youtube videos using its feature known as Auto Transcribe. So, as you upload the video and publish it, YouTube automatically generates the subtitles by transcribing the audio of the video. However, all the words would not be accurate, thus we can edit the whole transcription generated by YouTube, to rectify machine errors and publish it again.

Let’s first see how we will get the transcription on YouTube.

Step 1: Open the YouTube video that the transcription you want to generate. And click on the three dots given right side below the video. A pop-up will appear from where the select option “Open Transcript”.

Step 2: Youtube using Google’s Speech Recognition technology will show all converted audio to text along with timestamps in an Open Transcript window. Use the mouse, click-drag and copy all text and then paste it on WordPad. In this way, we can get the transcription of our videos using YouTube.

Step 3: If you think that auto Youtube generated subtitles are not correct then go to YouTube Creator Studio-> Video Manager->Videos and select the video that subtitle you want to edit.  On the top among a couple of tabs click on Subtitle/cc.

Step 4: Click on the language in which subtitles or caption CC have published. By default YouTube automatically recognizes and sets it accordingly. In our case, the video’s language was in English, so it shows the Published transcript is in “English (Automatic)“. Click on that.

Step 5:  Click on the Edit button that will appear on the right top side.

Step 6: Finally, you will see the complete transcription of YouTube videos on the left side along with the time stamp. Just correct the words that are missing or not correct and click on Publish edits button.

So, in this way, we can use a free Youtube video-to-text transcription service.

Method 2: Veed io website

There is a free online website called Veed IO which is one of the best tools to transcribe Youtube videos by uploading them on its website.

How to use Veed.io to Transcribe or generate subtitles for a Youtube Video.

1. First, open the website page either by searching it on Google or use this visit this link.

2. There you will see a button with the label “Upload Your YouTube videos“, asking you to click and upload your video.

3. You will see the multiple options related to adding Subtitles such as using a file, adding manually, or letting the software generate automatically. Select the Auto Subtitle option.

4. Select the language in which you want Veed.io to transcribe your video. I mean the language in which the video has been recorded.

5. After selecting the language of the video, wait for a few minutes depending upon the length of your content. Soon the software will generate the subtitles.

7. Now select the Style tab to get the different styles of text in which you want to display your Subtitles.

8. If there is something wrong then use the Subtitle editor to manually correct the text. Even a translation option to other languages of the generated text is available.

9. Once you are satisfied, click the Export button to download the video with burned subtitles.

Method 3: Using Free Online Youtube Transcript Generator:

1. Visit https://youtubetranscript.com/
2. Enter the YouTube Video URL
3. Click on the Go button
4. And the tool will automatically generate the Transcript for the video.

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No longer available method:

Method 2: Diycaptions- YouTube video captions and subtitles 

Our second method is quite simple and easy to use. It is third-party software and doesn’t affiliate with YouTube, plus free to use. Follow the given steps to use this free Youtube video transcription generator software.

Step 1: Go to the DIY Captions website.

Step 2: Enter the YouTube video URL in the given box and to get the full text of the audio click on the Get Text button. And, for subtitles/CC with Timestamps select the Get.SRT one. The second button will generate a .srt file. 

Step 3: As soon as we click any of the two buttons a new tab will open along with a video and a link that show the subtitle language available for your Youtube video.  Click on that.

Step 4: Here are screenshots of two text files generated from the transcription of YouTube.  You can directly edit the text from here too before copying and saving it.

Download the youtube transcript in SRT format

Download the youtube transcript as text

Furthermore, the same tool can be used to edit the text while playing the video side by side. On the main website of DIY caption scroll down and instead of pasting the link in starting box, paste it into the Next box.

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Method 4: Google voice transcription

Finally, before uploading the YouTube video or already uploaded videos’ transcription if needed then one can use the free Google Docs. It has also integrated with Google Speech recognization technology that is available in the form of a Voice typing option.

Step 1: Download a software called Virtual Cable (VB-CABLE ) Website.

Step 2: Install the Virtual Cable under the administrative privileges on Windows 10/8/7.

Step 3: After installing this small in-size app restart your system

Step 4: Go to the Windows search box and type Sound.

Step 5: Under Sound settings click on the Recordings Tab.

Step 6: Select the Cable Out option, right-click on it, and enable the same.

Step 7: Now go to Google Docs here is the link.

Step 8: On Google Docs click on the Tools option and select Voice typing.

Step 9: Now, Go to your YouTube video or play any video or audio file locally on the system.

Step 10: So, to automatically transcribe video to text free of cost, again, on Google Docs, click on the Record/Audio button that will appear on the left side of the Docs. The Virtual Cable will directly send the audio signal to Google Docs which eliminates the headache of speaking by yourself. Also, its worth to be noted that Google Docs support typing in more than 40 languages.

In this way we can use multiple ways to create text from Youtube videos or our simple audio files residing on our computer.