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Scriptorium
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MOV to text

MOV to text

Upload a MOV file and get its speech as text. MOV is Apple's QuickTime container: iPhone camera video, Mac screen recordings and many camera and editing exports. Only the audio is transcribed, and the file uploads as it is.

Free preview: one file up to 15 minutes and 25 MB, 3 tries a day, no account needed.

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Where MOV files come from

  • iPhone and iPad camera video: depending on the setting it is saved as MOV, with H.264 or HEVC video and AAC audio.
  • Mac screen recordings made with QuickTime Player or the screenshot toolbar.
  • Exports from Final Cut, iMovie and some cameras.
  • Voice recordings made as video by accident, which is fine; the audio is all that is read.

How to transcribe a MOV

  1. Get the file off the phone: AirDrop to a Mac, or share to Files, or connect by cable. A video in your Photos library has to be exported as a file first.
  2. Choose it above.
  3. If the file is large, extract the audio with the video to audio tool and upload that, which keeps it under the size cap.
  4. Correct and export.

HEVC and high-resolution video

Newer iPhones record HEVC video by default, and 4K video is big: a minute of it can be hundreds of megabytes. The audio inside is small. With a 25 MB preview limit, extracting the audio is usually the practical route for anything long. The audio track itself is plain AAC, so nothing is lost for speech.

What does not work

  • A MOV with no audio track has nothing to transcribe.
  • Silent screen recordings obviously produce an empty transcript.
  • We do not burn captions back into the video; export SRT and add it in your editor.

How it works

  1. Add a recording

    Drop in a video or audio file, choose one from your device, or record from the microphone. Nothing to install.

  2. It transcribes

    Speech becomes timestamped text, with speaker labels when more than one person talks.

  3. Read, fix, export

    Click any line to correct it, then download TXT, subtitles, Markdown, JSON or CSV.

Questions

Can I upload a MOV straight from my iPhone?
From the phone's browser you can pick a video from your library; very large files are better extracted to audio first.
MOV or MP4: does it matter?
Not for transcription. Both are read the same way.
Will it transcribe what I said in the video?
Yes, if it was recorded in the audio track.
Is it free?
Yes — one file up to 15 minutes and 25 MB with no account, up to 3 tries a day. A free account keeps your transcripts in a library and lifts the guest limits; the current limits and paid plans are on the pricing page.
What can I export?
Plain text, timestamped text, SRT, VTT, Markdown, JSON with word timings and CSV, all from the same edited transcript.

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