Free tool
YouTube transcript with timestamps and speakers
Paste a link to a YouTube video and ClipsMagic transcribes its audio: every line with its time, split by speaker. Copy the text, or download it as an SRT subtitle file. It is free with a ClipsMagic account, up to 10 videos a day, and it works on public videos that have no captions.
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0:00
Speaker 1 Welcome back to Second Draft. I'm Maya, and across the table as always is Theo. Today we're talking about the first thirty seconds of a video, because that is where most of them die.
0:14
Speaker 2 It's brutal. I pulled the retention graph on our last long episode and there's this cliff. Forty percent of people gone before the thirty second mark.
0:26
Speaker 1 And what were the first thirty seconds?
How do I get the transcript of a YouTube video?
- Copy the link of the video from YouTube: the address bar, or Share, then Copy link.
- Paste it above and press Get the transcript. The first time, sign in with Google or an emailed code.
- Wait while the audio is transcribed. The transcript shows as soon as it is ready.
- Copy the text, or download it as SRT subtitles or a plain text file.
What is in the transcript?
Every word that is spoken, grouped into paragraphs by speaker. Each paragraph starts with its time, which links to that moment in the video. When more than one person talks, the paragraphs are labelled Speaker 1, Speaker 2 and so on. The transcript is in the language spoken in the video.
What is an SRT file?
SRT is the plain subtitle format that YouTube, Vimeo, most video editors and most players read. Each cue has a number, a start and end time, and a line of text. The download keeps cues to 42 characters and breaks them at the end of a sentence, at a pause and when the speaker changes. This is how the sample episode starts:
1 00:00:00,400 --> 00:00:02,290 Welcome back to Second Draft. 2 00:00:02,640 --> 00:00:05,690 I'm Maya, and across the table as always 3 00:00:05,730 --> 00:00:06,330 is Theo.
Why not copy YouTube's own transcript?
YouTube's transcript panel lists the captions a video already has. It does not say who is speaking, it has no download, and a video without captions has no transcript at all. This tool transcribes the audio itself, so it works on any public video with speech.
Is it free?
Yes. You need a ClipsMagic account, which is free, and you can transcribe 10 videos a day. Opening the same video again on the same day does not count twice. Private and members-only videos cannot be transcribed.
Want the shorts in that video, not only its words?
ClipsMagic finds the moments that make sense on their own and cuts each into a captioned 9:16 short.