Transcribe Your Footage
How to turn the speech in your footage into a transcript. Once a file is transcribed, you can read it on the timeline and fix any words the app got wrong.
What you need
- Media with audio. Transcribe works on whole media files, not on individual clips.
- An AssemblyAI API key. Transcription runs through AssemblyAI, an online transcription service. Add your key in Edit → Preferences… under API Keys.
Run Transcribe
- Select the files in the media bin. Skip this step to transcribe the media on your timeline instead.
- Open the Process menu and click Transcribe…. You can also right-click media in the bin and choose Transcribe….
- Check the file list in the dialog.
- Set the options you want, described below.
- Click Run Transcribe.
Choose your options
Word Boost Terms helps with words the transcriber might miss, like names, brands, and technical terms. Type a term and press Enter. Each term becomes a tag you can remove with its × button.
Speaker diarization is off by default. Turn it on when more than one person talks in the recording. It helps the transcriber split sentences correctly when the speaker changes. Turning it on shows a Speakers expected field. Set it to the number of voices, from 1 to 10.
Under Advanced, Silence gap threshold (seconds) controls when a pause starts a new sentence. Any silence between words longer than this value forces a sentence break. The default is 3 seconds. Raise it for fewer, longer sentences. Lower it for more, shorter ones.
Watch it run
While it runs, the status bar at the bottom-left reads Transcribing. Progress, cancelling, and failures work the same for every tool. See Run an AI Tool.
When it finishes, a notification tells you how many clips were transcribed and how many words need review, for example Transcribe complete: 3 clips, 12 to review. If there are words to review, the panel on the right switches to the Review tab on its own. See Fix Transcript Mistakes.
Check which files have transcripts
In the media bin, files with a transcript show a small captions icon. Hover it to see the word count. To read the transcript itself, show it on the timeline. See The Transcript on the Timeline.
Where transcripts are saved
Transcripts are not stored inside the .sailer project file. They live in a folder next to it, named after your project and ending in .sailer.data. When you move or copy a project, move that folder along with the .sailer file, or your transcripts stay behind.
Two more things to know:
- Transcripts save to disk right away, as soon as the run finishes and every time you correct a word. They don't wait for Ctrl+S.
- Transcripts belong to one project. If you import the same footage into another project, you need to transcribe it again there.