MP4 and video to text
Drop a video file in and the audio track is pulled out and transcribed inside this page. Nothing is uploaded — which matters a great deal more for video than for audio, because video usually shows the room and the people in it.
Works with MP4, MOV, WebM, M4V and anything else your browser can play. Only the sound is used; the picture never leaves the file.
Language and translation need the Multilingual model.
Drop an audio or video file
or , paste with Ctrl + V, or
- MP3
- MP4
- WAV
- M4A
- MOV
- WEBM
- OGG
- FLAC
- AAC
The file is read by this page and never uploaded — no account, no size limit but your own RAM.
Preset: balanced English model. Switch the output to SRT if you want subtitles.
Download
Click a line to jump the audio there. Click the text to fix a word — your edits go into every download.
How it works
- Open this page — the tool is already set up for “MP4 & video to text”.
- Drop the file in, browse for it, or paste it with Ctrl+V.
- The model runs on your own device; the transcript appears as it goes.
- Correct anything misheard, then download text, subtitles or notes.
Why video files are the ones worth keeping local
An audio file leaks what was said. A video file leaks what was said, who said it, what the room looked like, what was on the whiteboard and what was on the screen behind them. Uploading a recorded consultation, a classroom, a client demo or a home security clip to a transcription service hands over all of that, usually to be stored indefinitely against an account.
Here the file is opened by the browser, the audio track is decoded, and the samples go to a speech model running in the same tab. There is no endpoint to upload to. The video data is never even read — the tool only ever asks the browser for the sound.
Getting subtitles rather than a transcript
Switch the download format to SRT or VTT and you get a subtitle file rather than prose. Cues are split at sentence boundaries and wrapped to two lines of about 42 characters, which is the conventional readable limit — long, unbroken cues are the reason so many auto-generated subtitle files look wrong in a player.
Load the .srt next to your video in VLC, drag it into Premiere or Resolve, or upload it alongside the video wherever it is being published. Because the timings come from the audio you gave it, they line up with the original file exactly — no offset to fix.
When a video will not decode
Browsers ship a limited set of decoders. MP4 with H.264/AAC, MOV from an iPhone, and WebM all work. A few files will not: some MKV containers, and anything using a codec your browser has no licence for. When that happens you get a clear message rather than a silent failure. Remuxing to MP4, or exporting just the audio to WAV with a free tool, solves it in one step.
A video with no audio track at all reports that specifically, so you are not left wondering why the transcript is empty.
Things that save a re-run
- Only the audio matters, so there is no benefit to compressing the video first — it will not run faster.
- For a long lecture recording, transcribe once and use the timestamps to find the section you need instead of scrubbing.
- Screen recordings with music beds transcribe better if you export a dialogue-only audio track first.
Read the transcript against the audio before you rely on it. Every speech model — this one and the paid cloud ones — mishears names, numbers and crosstalk, and it does so confidently. The player and editor here exist so that check takes minutes rather than an afternoon.
Frequently asked questions
Can I paste a YouTube or Vimeo link instead of a file?
No, and that is deliberate. Fetching a video from another site requires a server to do it, and this site has no server — that is the whole basis of the privacy claim. Download the video yourself with whatever tool you normally use, then drop the file in.
Does the video itself get read or uploaded?
Neither. The page asks the browser to decode the file’s audio track and works from those samples. The picture is never touched, and no part of the file is sent anywhere.
Which video formats work?
Anything your browser can play: MP4, MOV, WebM, M4V and usually AVI. The browser’s own decoders do the work, so the exact list depends on your browser and operating system. If a file fails, converting it to MP4 or extracting the audio as WAV always works.
Will the subtitles line up with my video?
Yes. Timings are measured from the start of the file you gave it, so the SRT or VTT matches that exact file. If you later trim the video, the subtitle timings will need shifting like any other subtitle file.