Have you ever wanted a transcript from a YouTube video? This video sharing platform actually has a built in transcription service. This service is entirely FREE.
First you need to browse the Youtube video that you want a transcript for. Under the video title and to the right of a “SHARE” link you will see three dots. Click those three … dots and then choose “Open transcript” from a menu.
Your transcript for that video will be displayed either below the video if you are watching it in full screen or theatre mode. If you are watching that video in default mode then that transcript will get displayed on the right hand side. Each line of this transcript includes a time stamp.
You can copy and paste parts or all of this transcript by holding down your left mouse button and scrolling down through this transcript window, until you get to end of transcript. I am not aware that Youtube has an ability for you to export this transcript into a downloaded file. When you are finished highlighting this text then you can either right click and choose “Copy” or hold Ctrl and c key.
Then you can paste this text into a file by either pressing Ctrl key and v or right clicking and choosing “Paste”. I just noticed that YouTube has a toggle timestamps feature that I don’t think they had before. While viewing a transcript, click on three verticle dots.
Then select by clicking on “Toggle timestamps”. This will remove all timestamps from this transcript. I have noticed that this service is not perfect. Some words are not transcribed correctly.
I have seen misspellings too. However, this is a free way to obtain a transcript from a Youtube video. Here is an example transcript from a video from my Anet Computers Youtube channel.
00:00 Ultra video pot of tea.i I want to make
00:03 this quick video showing you how to
00:05 download and obtain a transcript from a
00:09 YouTube video you may not know about it
00:12 you may know about it I’m going to pick
00:13 this video from my youtube channel and
00:18 it’s there and within a computer oops
00:21 sorry about that so all you need to do
00:23 is you need to pick a video that you
00:26 want the transcript from I don’t you
00:29 might have to login to your YouTube
00:31 account you might not have to so you
00:33 select a video then you scroll down and
00:37 look for the more you see where the more
00:39 with the 3 dots click on more and then
00:41 there’s four options as of the time of
00:44 this video creation there’s report
00:47 transcript statistics add translations
00:50 click on the second one transcript click
00:52 it and you’re not done yet for now
00:56 there’s only one option I’m not sure why
00:58 that is maybe in the future YouTube’s
00:59 going to add additional options for
01:00 transcripts I don’t know click on the
01:03 drop down arrow and then select English
01:05 automatic captions again and then now
01:08 now you’ve got your transcript if you
01:10 notice you scroll down a little bit
01:12 there’s your transcript it’s it has
01:15 timestamps so this is now this isn’t
01:19 perfect
01:20 caveat emptor this is not perfect it’s
01:23 voice recognition sometimes it’ll get
01:28 you know three or four sentences
01:30 perfectly and then it’ll fuck up and get
01:33 just start butchering you know like this
01:37 my name is not I’m not a female the last
01:40 time I checked I have male organs but
01:44 you know I’m saying the way you spell my
01:47 name is double aro in but you know it’s
01:49 all good so as you can see every
01:53 sentence is transcribed with a timestamp
01:57 and if you click another neat feature is
02:00 if you click on like this one at the
02:04 15-second mark you click on computer
02:06 problems keyboard locked how to click on
02:09 that and if you scroll up it actually
02:11 takes you to the 15th
02:13 second mark so what you could do is
02:15 let’s say I don’t know let’s say there
02:21 was instead of replaying the video and
02:24 then listening to it and then press
02:26 pause or trying to remember where it was
02:28 at in the video if there’s something
02:30 really important that you’re you’re
02:32 wanting to find in a video and instead
02:35 of downloading it and then using your
02:38 own transcription program what you can
02:41 do is you can use YouTube’s
02:43 transcription and then you can click on
02:46 whichever line you can even search it
02:49 another thing you can do is you can
02:50 right click or what you can well you
02:52 could highlight it all now you can’t
02:55 click control a because it will select
02:58 everything over here but what you could
03:00 do is quickly move your rapido is just
03:04 select left click select and keep
03:07 scrolling down and then scroll back up
03:12 and then everything is selected and then
03:15 right click and then click copy and then
03:17 you could copy it to a word document or
03:20 a notepad and then from there you could
03:23 search through it or whatever but but
03:26 here you can click that line and it’s
03:29 going to take you to the 9 minute 19
03:31 second part of the video so that’s how
03:35 you use YouTube’s transcription that’s
03:39 how you get a transcript of a youtube
03:40 video if you think my information is
03:44 productive you can tip me the super chat
03:46 on a live stream PayPal my contribution
03:49 format my website Annika Pierce calm and
03:51 or become a patron on my patreon page
03:53 and that includes if I helped solve one
03:57 of your most common computer problems uh
03:59 deals
04:04 you