How to transcribe a short vertical video
A clip of sixty seconds, a reel, a story, a review. The file is small and the text is quick; the interesting part is what you do with it afterwards — the captions of the clip, the words people can search by, the notes of the editor.
A short video is the easy case: the file is small, the words are few and the clip is usually about one thing. The trap is another one — the text of somebody else's video is their speech. Use it with the permission of the author, and do not publish it as your own.
How to transcribe a short vertical video
Download the file, not the link
Every platform has a download in the menu of the clip. We take files, not links: the file is the same for everyone, the link changes, and the platform may block it. The page about YouTube goes through the download in detail.
Check the size
A clip of a minute is small — about 1 MB of audio at 128 kbps. The limits of one file are 64 MB and 120 minutes, so the size of a short video is rarely the problem; the size of a long one is.
Upload it and pick the language
The clip goes into the widget as it is. Pick the language of the speech — Russian, English or automatic detection — and tick split by speaker when there is a dialogue in the clip.
Take the captions or the notes
Export the transcript into SRT or VTT to put the subtitles on the clip, and into txt or Markdown to read it as a note. The segments keep the times, so the cues land on the words.
Why the file and not the link
A link to a video is not a video: it points at a page that can change, ask for a login or refuse to be read from outside. The file is stable and it is the same thing the platform stores. When you upload the file, the result is the text of that file and nothing else.
The size of a clip, counted
The numbers below are counted from the bitrate of the audio track of the video, at one megabyte as 1,000,000 bytes. This is a calculation: the real size of your file is in its properties.
| Length of the clip | 128 kbps | 256 kbps |
|---|---|---|
| 15 seconds | 0.24 MB | 0.48 MB |
| 30 seconds | 0.48 MB | 0.96 MB |
| 60 seconds | 0.96 MB | 1.92 MB |
| 3 minutes | 2.88 MB | 5.76 MB |
What to do with the text
The text of a clip is used more often than the clip itself: as the subtitles of the video, as the description of the post, as the words the platform can search by, as the note of an editor.
- the captions of the clip: export into SRT or VTT and load them onto the video;
- the description of the post: the text, edited into two or three sentences;
- the search by words: a transcript makes the words of the clip findable;
- the notes of the editor: the moments that matter, with the timecodes.
Upload the clip and read the text
A short video is small: the widget below takes the file and puts the text of the clip on the screen.
Drop an audio or video file
or — mp3, wav, m4a, mp4, up to 64 MB and two hours
Transcription runs without an account: sign in to keep the text, the history and the exports.
No account yet? The free plan needs no card. Create a free account or sign in.
Questions about short videos
Can you transcribe a video straight from a link?
No. We take files, not links. Download the clip and upload the file: it is the same engine and the same result, and it works with every platform that gives you the file.
How long does a short clip take?
On our own measurement, a short file was transcribed in 0.84 seconds, and the language was detected in 0.39 seconds. A clip of a minute is a short file.
Can I make the subtitles of the clip?
Yes. Export the transcript into SRT or VTT and load the file onto the video. Before you publish, check the reading speed with the subtitle checker on this site.
Whose words are they, and may I use them?
They are the words of the people in the clip. Use the text with the permission of the author and do not republish it as your own: the value of the transcript is that it is faithful.
How much does it cost?
The Free plan is $0 and gives three files a day of up to 30 minutes each, and that is already more than a month of short clips. Pro is $10 a month paid yearly, or $20 a month.
The pages that go with this guide
The download of the file and the size arithmetic.
The video container itself: what it is and what it weighs.
Make subtitles from a recording
The export into SRT and VTT and the reading speed.
Mark Burmistrov, Founder.
The sizes on this page are counted from the bitrate of the audio track of a video, and the limits are the ones of the contract. The author of the page and the publisher of the site are the same person.