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MP4 to text without an editor

Screen recordings, meeting exports, raw footage. Upload the MP4 and the audio track comes back as text you can read, search and subtitle.

Convert an MP4 video file to text

Upload your audio or video

Drag a file here, or choose one from your device.

MP3, M4A, WAV, MP4, MOV and more — up to 500MB

Only submit video you own, can access publicly, or are authorized to process. EzScribe does not redistribute source media.

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Powered by Whisper

#1 in speech-to-text accuracy

Video formats you can upload

MP4 is the common case, but the MP4 to text converter reads every mainstream container. The audio track is separated before transcription either way.

MP4 & M4V

What phones, cameras, screen recorders and meeting exports produce by default. Resolution changes the upload time and nothing about the text.

MOV

Apple's container, straight out of QuickTime, Final Cut or an iPhone. MOV to text works exactly like MP4 — same audio track, same result.

MKV & WebM

Common for downloaded lectures and browser recordings. Both carry the same audio streams, so neither needs converting first.

AVI

Older footage and screen captures from Windows tooling. Large for the runtime, so this is where the 500MB ceiling bites first.

How to convert an MP4 video to text

No editor, no export preset, no separate audio file.

  1. 01

    Upload the MP4

    Drag the file in or pick it from your device, up to 500MB.

  2. 02

    The audio is extracted and transcribed

    The soundtrack is separated from the picture, then transcribed into timed segments.

  3. 03

    Read it or subtitle it

    Plain text for reading, or SRT and WebVTT if the words are going back onto the video.

What people use MP4 to text for

Footage that lives on a hard drive rather than on a platform.

Meeting and call recordings

Convert MP4 to text and the decision buried at minute 43 becomes a line you can search for and paste into the follow-up email.

Screen recordings and demos

A walkthrough you narrated once becomes written documentation, without watching your own video back to type it out.

Interview footage before the edit

Read the whole shoot on paper, mark the takes worth keeping, and go into the timeline knowing what you are looking for.

Subtitles for your own cut

Export SRT with the timings already lined up and import it into Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve or CapCut as a caption track.

An MP4 to text converter for real footage

Free credits on sign-up

Create an account and the first transcripts are on us. After that it is pay-as-you-go — no subscription, and a job that fails is never charged.

Results in seconds

Whisper large-v3-turbo speech recognition turns a minute of audio into text in a few seconds. Long files are transcribed in parts and stitched automatically.

100+ languages

English, Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi, Arabic, Japanese and dozens more — detected automatically, and translatable into any of the 100+ in the picker.

TXT, SRT & WebVTT export

Copy plain text for notes and articles, or download timestamped subtitle files for video work.

Saved to your account

Every transcript stays in My Transcripts — reopen it, export it again in another format, or delete it. Nothing depends on keeping the tab open.

Works without captions

We transcribe the actual audio track, so videos with no captions, or with captions burned into the picture, work fine.

Screen recordings, meetings, raw footage

The MP4s that need transcribing are rarely on YouTube: a call recording with the decision buried at minute 43, a screen demo you need to document, interview footage before the edit, a lecture downloaded from a course platform. MP4 to text turns an hour of footage into something you can search, quote and file away.

Editing the footage afterwards? Export SRT or WebVTT with sentence-level timestamps and drop the file straight into Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, CapCut or Final Cut — a caption track without typing a word yourself.

An MP4 file separating into a picture track and an audio track that becomes text

Only the audio track of your MP4 is read

Only the audio track is read. Slides full of text, on-screen titles and captions burned into the picture are never transcribed, so a silent screen recording produces nothing however long it runs.

Resolution changes nothing about the text and everything about the upload: a 4K file and a 480p file with the same soundtrack give identical transcripts, which is why the 500MB ceiling bites here far more often than on audio. Burning subtitles into the picture is a render and stays in your editor.

Links work too

If the video is already online, skip the upload: paste a YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, X or Facebook link in the link tab. Audio-only files convert through MP3 to text. And if the end goal is a subtitle file rather than something to read, the subtitle generator is the page built around that.

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Want more depth?

An hour of footage. A minute of reading.

The recording you never rewatched becomes something you can skim, search and quote.

Convert MP4 to text

Sign in to start. New accounts get free credits.

MP4 to text — FAQ

What people ask before uploading a video file.

Upload it here. The audio track is extracted automatically, transcribed, and returned as text you can copy or export as subtitles.

500MB per file, and up to 12 hours of runtime. Video is much larger than audio for the same speech, so this is the limit you are most likely to meet on a long recording.

Yes — MOV, WebM, MKV, AVI and M4V all work the same way. MP4 is simply the most common.

No. Only the audio track is read. Slides, captions burned into the picture and on-screen titles are not analysed.

Yes. Export SRT for an editor or YouTube, or WebVTT for an HTML5 player. Both carry the timings from the transcription.

No. The transcript comes from the soundtrack, so a 4K file and a 480p file with the same audio produce the same text. Resolution only changes how long the upload takes.

The file is uploaded so it can be transcribed, and the transcript is saved to your account. Delete a transcript from My Transcripts whenever you want it gone.

Only the container. An MP4 carries a video track that has to be set aside before the audio can be transcribed, and it is far larger for the same speech. If your file is audio-only, the MP3 page is the more direct route.