Transcribe a lecture to text

1. 1Choose your a lecture recording.
2. 2Pick the language, or leave it on Detect automatically.
3. 3Press "Transcribe". Fix any word, then copy the text or save it as TXT, SRT or VTT.

Sit near the speaker or put the phone on the desk in front of them: distance and room echo cause more mistakes than accents do.

Pick the lecture's language instead of Detect when the first minutes are music, chatter or silence.

Search the saved TXT file for a term, then use the time next to the line to replay what was said around it. Technical words and names are the usual mistakes, so check them against the slides.

• The text, split where the speaker pauses. Fix any word right in the page.
• Times for every line. Click a time to hear that part again.
• Copy it, or save it as a text file (TXT) or as subtitles (SRT or VTT) for a video player or YouTube.
• Translate to English: speech in another language comes out as English text.

The first time, your browser downloads the speech model (145 MB). It is kept for next time, so later recordings start at once.

In our test, a 96-second lecture took about 5 seconds on a Mac laptop in a Chrome-based browser, using the graphics chip. Without one, the same laptop took about 32 seconds. Phones are slower. You see the text appear while it works.

Clear speech in English gives the fewest mistakes. Other languages work too, with more mistakes; names and rare words are the usual errors, so read it through before you share it.