VideoText workflow guide
Generate accurate captions for YouTube. Upload your video file or paste a YouTube URL and get a broadcast-ready SRT file to upload to YouTube Studio. Our AI produces captions with 98.5%+ accuracy — significantly better than YouTube's built-in auto-captions, especially for accents, technical content, and non-English videos. Free tier.
Copy any public YouTube URL and paste it directly. VideoText streams the audio from YouTube without requiring a file download. Age-restricted videos require an optional cookie export from your logged-in browser session.
VideoText produces a full time-coded transcript with paragraph structure, speaker labels for interview-format content, auto-detected chapter markers, and a structured summary — not a flat auto-caption dump.
For interview-format videos, verify speaker label assignments and rename them from "Speaker 1" / "Speaker 2" to actual names. Chapter markers can be adjusted if the auto-detected boundaries don't match natural topic transitions.
Copy transcript as plain text for blog drafting. Export SRT to YouTube Studio to replace auto-captions. Paste chapter timestamps into the YouTube description. Share the summary with editors and writers as a content brief.
Full text with paragraph breaks, speaker labels for interview format, and clickable timestamps. Each paragraph links to its position in the video — searchable by topic, quote, or speaker moment. Suitable for blog conversion, show notes, and editorial search.
Chapter timestamps detected from topic transitions in the transcript. Format is paste-ready for YouTube video descriptions: "00:00 Introduction / 04:30 Main topic / 18:45 Q&A" — YouTube auto-links these to video navigation when pasted into the description.
Properly formatted SRT that replaces YouTube's auto-captions with the VideoText-processed version. Upload in YouTube Studio → Subtitles → Upload file. The improved captions go live without re-processing the video. For multi-language audiences, upload translated SRT files as separate language tracks.
Turn long-form episodes into show notes, blog drafts, newsletter summaries, and timestamped chapter lists. One transcript pass replaces manual note-taking, chapter timing, and caption correction for each episode.
Search YouTube interviews, lectures, and conference talks for exact quotes and speaker timestamps without replaying full videos. Structured transcripts are searchable by keyword — auto-captions are not.
Extract transcripts from recorded lectures to create searchable study materials, accurate subtitle files for international learners, and structured course outlines organized by video chapter.
60-minute interview auto-captions arrive as a continuous text block with no speaker attribution, no paragraph breaks, and accuracy problems at every speaker transition. Editing to a usable transcript requires reading along with the video — approximately 45–50 minutes for a skilled editor.
YouTube auto-captions merge host and guest dialogue into a continuous stream with no speaker differentiation. For a 90-minute interview podcast, that means manually identifying and labeling approximately 200–400 speaker turns from the audio.
Vertical 9:16 Shorts format has a narrower subtitle safe zone than landscape video. Auto-captions in Shorts often exceed the visible width on mobile, clipping at the edge. A custom SRT file with shorter line lengths solves this — but requires re-upload through YouTube Studio.
YouTube chapter auto-linking requires: timestamps starting at 00:00, at least 3 chapters, and no special characters in chapter titles. Auto-generated chapter markers from VideoText are formatted to meet these requirements without manual adjustment.
UTF-8 encoding (no BOM). Timestamp format: 00:00:00,000 → 00:00:00,000 (comma separator). Maximum 1,500 subtitle blocks per file — longer videos need split SRT files. YouTube auto-syncs uploaded captions to audio, correcting small timing offsets automatically.
Chapters activate automatically when a YouTube description contains timestamps in HH:MM:SS or MM:SS format. The first timestamp must be 00:00. Minimum 3 chapters required. Timestamps must be in ascending order. Chapter titles cannot contain special characters or emoji.
Public videos work with direct URL paste. Age-restricted videos require browser cookie export from a logged-in YouTube session. Unlisted videos are accessible if you have the URL. Private videos cannot be processed — VideoText requires public audio access.
Upload the English SRT to YouTube Studio first. Then upload translated SRT files as separate language tracks under Subtitles → Add language. YouTube displays the viewer's browser language preference by default. Each language is a separate upload — there is no single bilingual SRT track.
Step 1: Upload your video to VideoText and generate an SRT file. Step 2: In YouTube Studio, open your video → Subtitles → Add → Upload file. Select your SRT. YouTube maps the timestamps automatically and adds a CC track immediately — no waiting for YouTube auto-captions.
YouTube uses its own speech model which underperforms Whisper large-v3, particularly for accents, fast speech, technical terms, and non-English content. VideoText generates higher-accuracy captions before you upload.
Yes. Paste the YouTube URL into VideoText — VideoText streams the audio directly and generates an SRT file. No download needed.
Yes. VideoText free tier includes 3 uploads per day, no credit card required. Full SRT/VTT export included.
