How to Transcribe a YouTube Video

What if you only want to share a quote from a video, perform a quick text analysis on an entire speech, or provide a transcription that can help make a video more accessible for both video-impaired and audio-impaired individuals?

In this article, I’m going to walk you through the steps you’ll need to follow in order to transcribe a YouTube video – you’ll need to go through three steps:

1. Upload Your Video to the Kapwing Subtitler
2. Auto-Transcribe Your Video
3. Copy or Download Your Transcription

Step 1: Upload Your Video to the Kapwing Subtitler

Now you’re ready to import your video to Kapwing! With your URL copied, go to Kapwing.com. From the homepage, select Tools from the top of the window and find Subtitler. Now, just right-click in the URL field and select Paste. Kapwing will automatically upload your video to the subtitler tool!

Step 2: Auto-Transcribe Your Video

Your video is now ready for transcription. Click the green Auto-Generate button, select your output language, and begin the auto-transcription process! For longer videos, this could take a couple minutes, but the video’s text will be transcribed automatically using highly accurate Speech-to-Text transcription. In this screen, you can also select another language if you want Kapwing to translate your video automatically.

When the video has finished auto-subtitling, you can go through to fix its punctuation and any other errors that may have resulted from unclear speech. The suto-subtitler is still in Beta, but the transcriptions are almost fully accurate, and any transcription errors occur due to unclear speech or heavy background noise.

Step 3: Copy or Download Your Transcription

Once your text appears the way you want, copy the subtitles into your own document! Triple-clicking on a subtitle will automatically highlight the whole line, so copying and pasting your transcription is smooth and easy.

And if you’re a Kapwing Pro subscriber, there’s a shortcut! With a Pro subscription, you can download your subtitles’ SRT file, which contains the entire text transcription of the video’s audio. With your SRT file in hand, you can simply rename the file with a TXT ending (change ".srt" to ".txt"), and your subtitles will appear in a plaintext file!

Remember to tag us @KapwingApp whenever you share your content on social media– we love to see what our creators are passionate about! And if you're interested in more tips and tutorials on creating great digital content in 2021, check out the Kapwing YouTube channel, where we post multiple new videos every week.

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