8 Best AI Video-to-Text Tools

TL;DR:

• AI-powered tools can transcribe videos into text in minutes, saving time and effort.
• Letterdrop, VEED.io, Descript, Maestra.ai, Sonix, and Speak.ai are some of the best AI video-to-text tools available.
• These tools offer features like customizable outputs, multilingual transcription, and subtitle generation.
• Transcribing videos into text improves SEO, allows for content repurposing, and increases accessibility.
• Free tools may have limitations and generate error-ridden outputs, so investing in a paid tool is recommended for better quality and productivity.

Using AI to transcribe your videos into text is a no-brainer. Instead of you spending roughly one hour trying to transcribe 20 minutes of video, AI is able to get it done for you in minutes.

There are also other benefits to getting AI to turn your videos into text, including for SEO — but more on that later.

There are plenty of AI-powered tools that can help you transcribe your videos, with some boasting a wider scope of transcription than others. We've handpicked a list of some of the best AI-powered, video-to-text tools on the market to help you narrow down your search.

(Just a note: most of them have a very limited free plan and are much more worth it with paid plans.)

1. Letterdrop: Customizable Video-To-Text Outputs

Among the various AI-powered workflows offered by Letterdrop is a customizable video-to-text feature. This is what makes it stand out from the other tools on the list.

• You can upload videos directly to the Letterdrop editor from URLs (such as from YouTube or Loom) and various media files including MP3 and MP4
• You create or upload an existing template along with your video instructing the AI on your desired output format (social posts, a blog post, a Q&A session, a breakdown with timestamps, a summary, etc)
• This feature plugs into the rest of the Letterdrop workflow (direct publishing to your CMS of choice, project management, a smart SEO assistant, and more)

Letterdrop lets you generate the transcript you want, in the format you want, within minutes — all without having to jump between tools to do it. You can publish the output directly to any social media platform or CMS, including HubSpot, Webflow, WordPress, and more.

Who is This Video-To-Text Feature Best Suited For?

Letterdrop is primarily geared toward dedicated in-house marketing teams, given it supports an end-to-end content ops platform. The video-to-text feature in particular is best suited to content teams and SEOs hoping to scale their content creation and repurposing efforts.

2. VEED.io

VEED offers a full video editing suite for creators, including a video-to-text transcription feature that boasts a "near-perfect" 95% accuracy score.

VEED lets you:

• Add subtitles to your video
• Transcribe videos in over 100 languages

Who is This Video-To-Text Tool Best Suited For?

VEED is first and foremost geared toward video creators, given its robust suite of editing tools. It can support meetings and sales call transcriptions, too.

3. Descript

‎Descript is a popular video editing choice, and is particularly known for its video-to-text transcription feature.

Much like VEED, you can add subtitles to your videos and transcribe them in multiple languages (although not as many as VEED.)

Here are some standout features:

• Descript can pull existing transcripts from other files and documents, keeping your data in sync
• Descript syncs to the cloud so that your projects are always safe

Who is This Video-To-Text Tool Best Suited For?

Descript is used primarily for podcasts and other episodic video and audio content.

4. Maestra.ai

Maestra is capable of transcribing text quickly and accurately in over 125 languages, making it one of the best multilingual video-to-text tools out there.

Much like other tools on the list, you can generate subtitles and upload most file types. Maestra takes it a step further by allowing you to upload directly from Instagram among its directories.

Its standout features include:

• A voiceover mode and editor
• A specified team mode where your whole team can view and edit level permissions
• Proofreading and editing for video transcripts, with diverse AI speakers available for dubbing

Who is This Video-To-Text Tool Best Suited For?

This is an excellent tool for video-focused content creators that run podcasts and webinars, given the ability to incorporate voiceovers into your transcriptions.

5. Sonix

Sonix works similarly to both VEED and Descript, offering multilingual video-to-text features and subtitle generation.

It has some robust and standout features:

• It offers an in-browser editor so that you can review, organize, and search for your transcripts
• It integrates with several major recording and meeting apps, including Zoom and Microsoft Teams, as well as with directories like Google Drive and Dropbox

Who is This Video-To-Text Tool Best Suited For?

The transcript management features that Sonix offers makes it a great fit for dedicated content teams, especially those working on podcasts and similar content. It could also serve as a great directory for sales calls.

6. Speak.ai

Speak.ai's video to text converter software supports more audio and video file types than the other options on this list, including OGG, WEBM, WAV, and more.

Users can upload their files for transcription through the Speak app or by using publicly available URLs, such as YouTube videos.

Much like VEED and Descript, you're able to transcribe in multiple languages and generate subtitles.

Here's where Speak stands out:

• It offers integrations with Zoom, Zapier, and Vimeo
• The software automatically calculates total cost as you transcribe
• It offers features like named entity recognition, sentiment analysis, and language detection

Who is This Video-To-Text Tool Best Suited For?

We would recommend using Speak to keep track of and transcribe meetings, useful to both sales and marketing teams.

7. Media.io

Media.io offers a video-to-text conversion tool that supports various formats, including MP4, MOV, AVI, MKV, and even YouTube videos. (It offers auto-generated subtitles, too.)

It also supports over 89 languages and boasts "95% accuracy."

Who is This Video-To-Text Feature Best Suited For?

Media.io is ideal for small teams of content creators and educators.

8. Rask AI

Rask AI has a robust API that not only offers video-to-text transcription, but also automated translation of hours of audio and video.

It automates subtitles and also supports various languages.

Its standout video-to-text features include:

• Localization Options: Tailor your content to different markets with specific localization features, expanding your global footprint.
• Integration with YouTube: Directly add subtitles to your YouTube videos, broadening your channel’s reach and improving SEO.

Who is This Video-To-Text Feature Best Suited For?

Rask AI's transcription tool is especially beneficial for content creators and small businesses aiming to expand their online presence into international markets.

9.

Why You Should Transcribe Video to Text

The benefits of video to text transcription are as follows:

• You become more discoverable for SEO. Search engines can't read videos yet, so turning them into text makes you more visible in search, and therefore more discoverable by your ICP
• Repurposing your content to other formats (like text and social copy) gives it a wider reach. You can get infinite value from a single video, especially if it's a high-value webinar or podcast
• You make it more accessible to your audience. Using subtitles increases engagement on social platforms and is more inclusive of hearing-impaired viewers.

Why You Should Transcribe Video to Text Using AI

Before we get into why AI-powered video-to-text tools are worth investing in, let's explore how else you can turn your videos into text.

1. Manual transcription. If you don't have the budget to invest in a video-to-text tool, you can transcribe videos manually. But as we've already mentioned, you can lose up to an hour at a time for 20-minute snippets of video, which is why leveraging tools is the better choice. You can also outsource a hire to do this for you, but this will cost you both time and money.
2. Using text-to-speech features or tools. You can use the text-to-speech functionality built in to most phones or laptops to turn your video into text. There are also dedicated text-to-speech tools out there.

There are obvious downsides to manual transcriptions. AI-powered tools can do the job in half the time, and they often come with additional features, like automatic subtitles or the ability to repurpose the video into multiple content formats.

Part of living in the AI age and keeping up with the competition is to use it as intelligently and practically as possible when it comes to content generation — and this use case is certainly worth it.

Are There Free Tools to Turn Video into Text?

Yes — there are free-to-use video-to-text tools out there that can transcribe your video and audio files for you. Even Google Docs and ChatGPT can transcribe video and audio now.

Free tools are great for personal use cases — such as generating a quick video summary for yourself — but you get the quality that you pay for. Free video-to-text software often generate outputs riddled with errors, which require you to go back and fix. This takes away from the time you were trying to save in the first place.

Free tools are also not suited to longer videos or bulk inputs, which once again can limit the amount of productivity you get from these tools and create an additional time suck for you.

Which Video-To-Text Tool is Best for Me?

To get the most "bang for your buck" as a marketer, I would always recommend a tool that incorporates the video-to-text feature into a larger content operations hub best suited to your content focus. If you run a podcast, something like Sonix is a great choice. If you're focused on multi-media content output, Letterdrop is the better choice.

Let us bring everything to you, from video-to-text transcription to publishing to SEO. Reach out to us today.