Many of us may not know, that YouTube comes with many useful features like translation for titles and description, YouTube keyboard shortcuts, etc. Similarly, there are ways with which you can transcribe YouTube videos. As nowadays, the speech recognition software have improved, where one can get a reliable automatic transcription that can be easily edited to perfection with little or no efforts. It is quite easy to transcribe YouTube videos as YouTube automatically transcribes most of the videos as soon as they are uploaded.
How to transcribe YouTube videos?
There are two ways to do the same- (i) Copy/Paste YouTube transcript (ii) Transcribe with Google Docs.
[i] Copy/Paste YouTube transcript-
Most of the YouTube videos are automatically transcribed using Google’s speech recognition technology. There is also a chance that the owner of the video may have personally transcribed the video and made it available for the readers. Here are steps to do the same-
Step 1- Click on the More button below the video and select Transcript from the menu.
Figure 11.1 YouTube Transcript
Below you will be asked to select a language. Make your choice and you will see a “full transcript along with timestamps”.
Now “click and drag to highlight all the text” and press Ctrl + C to copy the text. You can paste this text anywhere and your transcript will be ready.
Figure 11.2 Transcript -2
YouTube automatically highlights words that it might have picked wrong which makes it easy to edit the transcript. Just click on the CC button in the YouTube player to enable subtitles and you will see the subtitles in white.
However, the subtitles with gray colour are the ones that might have some mistakes. You can see this to easily amend the transcription. Although do keep in mind that subtitles uploaded by the video owner will not have gray words.
[ii] Transcribe with Google Docs
If you want to transcribe a video without an available transcript, then you can use the GoogleDocs built-in voice typing feature to listen to the video audio and automatically type everything.In order to have a good quality transcript, it is recommended to make the PC directly listen to the audio coming out of its speakers. Here is how to do it-
Step 1- In Windows, right-click on the sound icon in the taskbar and select Recording devices.
Step 2- Now select "Stereo Mix" from the list and click "Set Default" to set it as default source of recording.
Figure 11.3 Recording setting
In case Stereo Mix option isnot supported by your PC’s sound card, then you can download and install the VB Virtual Audio Cable tool and get an alternative option in the same menu.After installing the drivers of the tool, you should see a "Cable Output" option in the same sound options. Select this option and then click " Set Default".
Figure 11.4 Recording setting-2
After this, your PC will listen to the audio coming out of the speakers for recording purposes. Now you just need to start Google Docs Voice typing and the required video simultaneously to start the transcription.
Step 3-Open Google Docs in Chrome or any other browser (Voice Typing isn’t supported in non-Chromium browsers).
Step 4-Now create a new document and select "Voice typing" from the Tools menu on top.
Figure 11.5 Voice Typing
Step 5- A tiny box will show up with a microphone icon in the middle. Click on it to start recording.
Step 6- Move to the YouTube video tab and play the video. Google Docs will automatically type when people will speak in the YouTube video.
Figure 11.6 Voice Typing-2
Of course, this process will take as much time as the duration of the video, but at the end you’ll have a good transcript of the video. Google Docs Voice typing also has support for over 40 languages, you can click on the Voice typing box menu to change the language.The resulted transcript should be as good as YouTube’s own automatic captioning service as both use the same Speech Recognition technology.