How to Transcribe YouTube Videos
A workflow for creators: getting accurate transcripts of your own YouTube videos, and turning each one into captions, chapters and written content.
The Scriptorium team ·
If you publish on YouTube, a transcript of each video is worth more than the transcript itself. It is captions, chapters, a description, a blog post and a searchable archive, all from one pass. Here is the workflow.
Why YouTube's automatic captions are not enough
They are free and instant, and for many viewers they are fine. But they have no speaker labels, they are weakest exactly where your content is most specific (product names, guest names, technical terms), and you cannot correct them without replacing them entirely.
Since replacing them means producing your own subtitle file anyway, you may as well produce a good one and get the other uses for free.
The workflow
- Download the video. YouTube Studio, Content, three-dot menu next to the video, Download.
- Transcribe it. Upload the file to video to text.
- Label the speakers. If the video has a guest, rename the labels once and they apply throughout.
- Correct it. Play the audio and read along. Fix names, product terms and numbers first — they are where the errors are.
- Export what you need. SRT for captions, Markdown for the written version, timestamped text for chapters.
- Upload the captions back. In Studio, under Subtitles, upload your SRT to replace the automatic track.
Turning one transcript into five things
Captions
Upload the SRT in Studio. Viewers who watch muted — a large share on mobile and in feeds — get accurate text instead of approximations.
Chapters
Export timestamped text and use it to find the natural section boundaries. YouTube chapters need a timestamped list in the description starting at 00:00.
A better description
The first two lines of a description do the work. A transcript makes it easy to pull the actual promise of the video rather than writing a summary from memory.
A blog post
A transcript is a draft with bad structure. Reorganising one into an article is far faster than writing from nothing, and it gives the video a text version that search engines can read. Do rewrite it — published raw transcripts read badly.
Social clips
Timestamps let you find quotable moments without scrubbing through the video, and the transcript gives you the caption text for the clip.
Doing it for a back catalogue
If you have a hundred videos, do not start at the beginning. Start with the ones that already get traffic: captions and a text version have the most effect where there are already viewers. Check your analytics for the top ten and work down.
What this does not do
Scriptorium produces subtitle files; it does not burn captions into the video picture. It also cannot fetch a YouTube link — you download the file first. Both are real limitations rather than things hidden behind a setting.