How-to
Add subtitles to a recorded meeting
A recorded meeting is long, unstructured, and almost never watched twice. Subtitles and a written transcript turn it into something people can skim, search, and read in a language they are comfortable working in.
How to do it
Get the recording as a file
A local recording is already an MP4 and a cloud recording downloads as one. Uploads accept MP4, MOV, AVI, and MKV up to 500 MB.
Cut it down if it is long
Trim controls on Pro and Studio let you keep the section that matters, which costs fewer credits and produces something people will actually watch.
Pick a language
The spoken language for captions and a transcript, or one of the 30 target languages for a translated version.
Download
You get the video with subtitles burned in, an SRT with timings, and a plain TXT transcript, in both the original language and the one you chose.
The transcript is usually the point
For a meeting, the written file often matters more than the subtitled video. A TXT transcript can be pasted into notes, searched for the moment a decision was made, and read in five minutes where the recording takes an hour. The SRT does the same job with timings attached, so a quoted line can be traced back to the point in the recording it came from.
Long recordings are better handled in pieces
Uploads are capped at 500 MB per file and credits are consumed by length, so a full-day session is not the right unit of work. Neither is it the right unit for an audience: the useful artefact from a two-hour call is usually one ten-minute segment. Cut first, then subtitle.
What it does not do
- It does not label speakers. It writes down what was said, not who said it, so a multi-person transcript reads as continuous text.
- Passages where people talk over each other are the least reliable part of any recording, and a meeting has more of them than anything else.
- It does not summarise or extract actions. It gives you the words, accurately timed, and leaves the interpretation to you.
- Names of colleagues, clients, and internal projects are the most likely errors, because they are the least common words in the file.
Sharing it with people in other countries
A distributed team is the clearest case for translation. The people who missed the call are often the ones in another time zone, and reading a translated transcript is far less work than watching an hour of a second language. One recording produces a subtitled video and a readable transcript in each language you run it for. See all 30 languages.
Turn a recording into subtitles and a transcript with 50 free credits.
Continue with Google50 free credits. No credit card needed.Frequently asked questions
Does it work with recordings from other meeting tools?
Yes. It works on the video file, not the tool that produced it, so any MP4, MOV, AVI, or MKV export up to 500 MB is fine.
Will it tell me who was speaking?
No. It transcribes speech without identifying speakers. If you need labels, add them to the downloaded SRT or TXT, which are both plain text.
Can I subtitle a recording that is over 500 MB?
Not in one piece. Cut it down first, either in your own editor or with the trim controls on Pro and Studio, and subtitle the part that matters.
Is the transcript accurate enough to quote from?
Read it before you quote it. Ordinary conversation transcribes well, but names, figures, and crosstalk are the places to verify against the recording.