How to get a Transcript from YouTube 2

This article is a 'how to' on how to get a transcript of an uploaded .mp4 file from YouTube. I put this article together as a "how to" for my undergraduate research students to create a transcript from an .mp4 recording.

(If we have an .mp3 recording, there is a post on the converting and uploading process here).

Once we have recorded our interview or focus group, we simply upload it to our YouTube account as either a "Private" or an "Unlisted" file (this is so no-one other than ourselves can see it, and YouTube won't index it). We must ensure we make a note of the link allocated by YouTube to our video, as locating an unlisted or private video is not straight-forward once we have uploaded and closed the YouTube page.

Then all we need to do is to wait for YouTube to create an auto transcript, which it does for all video a few hours after it has been uploaded. We access our transcript by going back to our uploaded video, clicking into the information area under our video (clicking on the date works), then selecting the transcript option in that expanded area.

The words of the transcript will show alongside the video, which we can then copy (using Ctrl & C), and paste the transcript into MS Word. We can toggle the time stamps on or off when copying (I tend to do one copy with time stamps on, and one off. I use the time stamps on copy as reference as I am compiling the time stamps off copy into paragraphs and speakers).

There are also some instructions tidying up our resulting transcript here.

An alternative to YouTube is if we undertake an interview in Zoom. Before we begin the recording, we need to turn on the transcript option for the session, and we need to record to the cloud. Instructions can be found here (University of Florida, 2022).

Sam

References:

University of Florida. (2022). How to generate a transcript in Zoom. https://coip.aa.ufl.edu/faculty-resources/how-to-generate-a-transcript-in-zoom/