Did you know you can upload your videos to detail.co? It’s great for sharing work in progress content with collaborators and team members, without exporting to another app or platform and slowing down your workflow. 

You can upload videos directly from your Library, add a custom title, choose to make them private, public, or unlisted and share the link with anyone you want. You even get a little profile page where all your public videos appear. 

This week, we added a powerful new feature to the web — free, AI-powered video subtitles and transcriptions. Read on to find out how to generate your own video transcriptions as well as some suggestions for making the most of them.

Generating your video transcriptions and subtitles

If you haven’t uploaded a video with Detail before, here’s a quick rundown. First you’ll need to create a Detail account and sign in.

Once you have your video ready to go, hit export and choose your desired quality setting. Then head to the Library and, if your video is smaller than 1GB, you’ll see an upload button just below the video file name and thumbnail. Click the button to upload your video to the cloud. You can manage your uploaded videos in your Detail account.

When you upload a video, it will automatically generate (pretty) accurate closed captions and a beautifully formatted transcription that displays right alongside your video. It’s worth noting that this can take a couple of minutes for longer videos and, if there’s no audio, your video is too short, or the language can’t be detected, the transcription won’t be generated.

Clicking on any text in the transcription will take you to the relevant section of the video. Plus, Detail automatically detects the dominant language in your video and generates the transcription in that language — voila!

You can also download the video transcription as plain text as well as a VTT or SRT file. This is really powerful if you want to upload subtitles to Youtube, provide notes alongside your video, or repackage your content as a written article. You can grab the transcription straight from Detail (fix any typos) and upload directly to another service. 

Why do I need subtitles?

Make your content accessible

Subtitles are absolutely necessary in order to make your content accessible. Adding accurate, quality closed captions to your videos means deaf and hard of hearing viewers will be able to watch your content. This resource by AccessibiltyOz has lots more info about why captioning is important. 

Improve SEO and searchability

When you add quality transcriptions to your video content, it’s easier for Google bots to tell what your video is about. Plus it makes it much easier for potential viewers to find your video using text-based search. 

Increase your reach and engagement

On top of that, good subtitles also benefit viewers who simply want to watch your content without audio. In fact, a recent Verizon study found that 92% view videos with the sound off on mobile so adding subtitles to your video can increase engagement as an added bonus.

Speed up your workflow with free video transcriptions

Auto-generating video transcriptions can be incredibly helpful for speeding up your workflow. Here are a couple of ways you can make the most of this new feature. 

Get an SRT file to upload to Youtube, LinkedIn, or Facebook

Typing out your own subtitles can take a while, especially if you’re sharing long-form content. Save time and effort by simply recording your video in Detail, uploading directly to the web, and letting us generate the transcription for you. Then just grab the file format you need, upload it straight to social media alongside your video and you’re good to go. We’re also working on a one-click upload to Youtube to make this process even easier so keep your eyes peeled!

Easily create resources for online classes

If you’re running online coaching or teaching sessions, you can use the auto-subtitle feature to generate written resources from your video content. If you’re hosting a live Q&A session, you can stream live from Detail, record your content locally and then upload to the web to get a full transcription of your session.

Turn your video content into blog posts

Repurposing your videos into articles or blog posts will help drive traffic to your website and provide your audience with another way to get your content. A quality video transcription is a great starting point for writing a blog and saves you penning the first draft!

Use Detail as a free dictation tool

More of a talker than a writer? If so, getting your ideas on paper can be a pain. With the new transcriptions feature, you can hit record, say your piece and then grab your text from detail.co when you’re done. Plus you have a nicely recorded video version to go with it!

VTT vs SRT

Simply put, VTT and SRT are different types of subtitle file formats. And, although there are more than 20 different subtitle formats out there, VTT and SRT should cover most use cases. If you're wondering about the differences between these two formats, you're not alone.

SRT is essentially a universal file format so you can use it to upload video transcriptions and subtitles (or closed captions) on sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Vimeo and more.

VTT is much the same as SRT but with a couple of key differences — it includes your video metadata and allows you to style your subtitles including color, font, formatting and their position on the screen.

You can’t go wrong with SRT but if you’re self-hosting your videos and want more control over your subtitles, then VTT might be the better choice for you.

Give it a try

To try the new transcription feature in Detail Studio, just upload a video from your Library to your Detail Account. Depending on the length of your video, it might take a moment to generate the transcription, but once it does, you should see a “View transcription” button below your video — click it to download your subtitles in various formats. 

If you do try it out, we’d love to know about it. You can join our Discord community or follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok and Youtube.