How to turn a video into text
- Paste the link of the video in the box above, or switch to the file tab and choose a video from your device.
- Click Convert. The first time, create your free account: your link or file stays in place and the conversion continues on its own.
- Read the transcript on the page, then copy it or download it as a file.
Links from seven platforms
The link box accepts YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, Twitch and SoundCloud. Paste several links, one per line, and each video gets its own transcript; you can then download them all in one ZIP file.
Your own video files
For a recording that is not online, such as a screen capture, a webinar, a class or a client call, use the file tab. MP4, MOV, MKV, WEBM and AVI are accepted. A transcript made from a file carries a timestamp on each passage.
Give a video to ChatGPT or Claude
An AI assistant cannot watch a video from a link: it only sees the address. Paste the transcript instead and it can summarise the video, answer questions about it or turn it into notes. The text comes out as Markdown, a plain text format that ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini read without any cleanup.
What to know before you start
- You need a free account. It comes with free credits every month, and a transcript uses credits according to the length of the video.
- The largest file and the longest video you can convert depend on your plan.
- Private, members-only and age-restricted videos cannot be read from a link.
- A transcript made from a link has no timestamps.
- The transcript contains what is said, not what is shown: text that only appears on screen is not included.
For YouTube in particular, see the YouTube transcript generator. For sound files, see audio to text.