Title: Creating a Video Transcript
Course: Web Accessibility MOOC for Educators > Section: Creating Accessible Audio and Video Content

Transcription is the first step toward the creation of a captioned video. The transcript itself is a text equivalent of an audio recording. In addition to its use in the captioning process, a transcript may be useful in its own right as a learning tool for students, who can read the text and search for key words. In fact, transcripts are a great addition to any instructional video or podcast because they give students another way to comprehend and interact with the material.

Although numerous automatic transcription tools are available to convert speech to text, none provide satisfactory results at this time. The transcripts produced by automatic transcription require extensive edits and corrections. (you will use YouTube's automatic transcription in this module's assignment).

The following guidelines are adapted from the Described and Captioned Media Program’s (DCMP) Captioning Key. The DCMP is funded by the U.S. Department of Education and administered by the National Association of the Deaf. We have found these guidelines to be comprehensive. For additional information, follow the link to the Captioning Key website.

A quality transcript should include speaker identification as well as description of sound effects, music, and other notations that promote comprehension when the audio cannot be heard.

Starting a Transcription Step-by-Step

Follow these steps to create a transcript:

1. Open a new Microsoft Word document.
2. Open the video file.
3. Play the video in small increments (20–30 seconds) while transcribing the audio and dialogue in Microsoft Word.
4. Identify speakers when they appear in the video.
  - If the scene contains multiple speakers, identify the person speaking in each caption.
  - If the camera focuses on one speaker at a time, speaker identification is not needed after the initial identification.

Your new transcript file can be used in several ways:

- The text can be copied from Word and pasted into a video editor such as Camtasia Studio, where it will be synchronized with the video to create captions Adding Captions in Camtasia Studio
- The Word document can be saved as a text file (.txt) and uploaded to YouTube for synchronization with the video.
- The document can be posted in Word or PDF format on the course website, where the text will become a searchable learning resource.