How to get a text transcription of a video file – options for software, installing and using Whisper

You’ve got a video or audio file, and you want to turn its speech into an editable text document (like a transcript).

VideoPad itself cannot do speech-to-text. It’s only for editing and adding titles/captions. To convert spoken words in a file into an editable text file, you’ll need a transcription tool. Here are a few options:

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1. Free, Local (no internet needed)

• Whisper (by OpenAI) → very accurate, works offline.
  • You’d install it on your computer (command line, but user-friendly once set).
  • Exports straight to a .txt file.

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2. Easy Online Tools

• Otter.ai, Sonix, or Happy Scribe → upload the video/audio and get an editable transcript.
• They give you .txt or .docx downloads.

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3. Quick & Free Hack

• Play your file and use Microsoft Word (latest versions) → Dictate → Transcribe (built into Word Online).
• It will automatically create an editable transcript.

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🔧 If you want, I can show you how to set up Whisper locally so you can drop in any video/audio and get a text file out — completely free.

Would you like me to walk you through that setup?

Perfect 👍 — let’s set you up with Whisper so you can drop a video/audio file in and get a transcript as a plain text file.

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🖥 Step 1 – Install Python

Whisper runs in Python.

1. Download & install Python 3.10+.
2. When installing, tick the box “Add Python to PATH”.

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⚙️ Step 2 – Install Whisper

Once Python is installed:

1. Open a terminal / command prompt.
2. Run:

pip install openai-whisper

That will fetch Whisper and its dependencies.
👉 If you get errors about ffmpeg, install it too:

• Windows: Download ffmpeg and add it to PATH. I added the FFMPEG folder to path and this did not seem to work, so I copied all files (without sub-folder structure) from FFMPEG folder into C:\Windows\System 32\ folder and then Whisper was able to find my video file.
• Mac: brew install ffmpeg
• Linux: sudo apt install ffmpeg

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📂 Step 3 – Transcribe a File

Suppose your audio/video file is called myvideo.mp4 and is in your Downloads folder. Run:

whisper "C:\Users\YourName\Downloads\myvideo.mp4" --model small --output_format txt

e.g.

whisper "d:\1.mp4" --model small --output_format txt

This will:

• Use the small model (faster, decent accuracy).
• Create a text file with the transcript in the same folder.

Other useful models:

• tiny → very fast, less accurate.
• base → balance of speed/accuracy.
• medium or large → most accurate, but slow.

e.g.

whisper “d:\1.mp4” –model large –output_format txt

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📄 Step 4 – Get Your Text

You’ll now see a file like:

myvideo.txt

Open it in Notepad, Word, or any editor — it’s fully editable.

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