Free tool
MOV to text converter
Drop a MOV file here to turn MOV to text: your browser takes the sound out of an iPhone video, a QuickTime movie or a Mac screen recording, and the converter writes it down with a time on each paragraph.
- Free
- iPhone and Mac videos
- Nothing is stored
Drop your MOV video here, or Choose your MOV video
MP4, MOV, M4V, MKV or WebM video. Up to 30 minutes of each file, 3 free files a day. The language is detected automatically.
Recording on an iPhone or a Mac every week? NoteOwl transcribes MP4 videos and audio files on your Mac with unlimited transcription, and labels who said what.
How it works
How do you transcribe a MOV file?
Pick the MOV, or drag it onto the converter. Your browser opens the QuickTime file on your device, decodes its sound track and cuts it at pauses; each short piece is then transcribed. The words appear as they arrive, ready to copy or download.
- 1
Choose the MOV
An iPhone video copied to your computer, or picked on the phone itself; a QuickTime Player recording; a screen recording from your Mac’s desktop.
- 2
See the words arrive
Each paragraph is stamped with its time in the video. Every MOV is transcribed up to 30 minutes in.
- 3
Take the transcript
Copy it in one click, or save .txt, .srt, .vtt or .docx, named after the MOV.
What is inside a MOV file?
A MOV is a QuickTime movie, Apple’s own format and the model MP4 was built on. It wraps a picture track, a sound track and metadata such as the recording date. Here the sound track is decoded and transcribed; the picture, whether HEVC, H.264 or ProRes, never is.
- Picture
- Common formatsHEVC, H.264 or Apple ProRes
- Read here?No: left on your device
- Sound
- Common formatsAAC, or uncompressed PCM
- Read here?Yes: this is what gets transcribed
- Metadata
- Common formatsThe recording date and similar details
- Read here?No
| Part | Common formats | Read here? |
|---|---|---|
| Picture | HEVC, H.264 or Apple ProRes | No: left on your device |
| Sound | AAC, or uncompressed PCM | Yes: this is what gets transcribed |
| Metadata | The recording date and similar details | No |
How do you get an iPhone video onto a computer?
AirDrop it to a Mac, plug the iPhone in and import with Photos, or on Windows use the Apple Devices app. Or skip the copy: open this page on the iPhone and choose the video there. Both High Efficiency and Most Compatible videos work.
- 1
AirDrop to a Mac
Share the video from Photos and choose your Mac. Some items go straight to Downloads; for others, the Mac asks where to put them.
- 2
Import with a cable
Photos on a Mac imports from a connected iPhone. On a Windows PC, install Apple Devices from the Microsoft Store first.
- 3
Keep the original
Importing may turn an HEVC video into H.264. Either reads fine here; for the untouched file, set Settings → Apps → Photos to Keep Originals.
How do you transcribe a Mac screen recording?
Drop it straight from the desktop: the Mac saves screen recordings as .mov files named “Screen Recording” with the date and time. Your voice is in it only if a microphone was chosen under Options in the Screenshot toolbar before recording began.
A recording made with Microphone set to None holds no voice to transcribe, and a MOV without any sound track gets “This file has no sound”. QuickTime Player works the same way: File → New Movie Recording takes its sound from the microphone picked in its options menu.
Does a ProRes MOV take longer to transcribe?
No. Apple says ProRes files run up to 30 times larger than HEVC ones, but the picture is skipped. In our test, a 35 MB ProRes MOV and a 2.6 MB H.264 MOV holding the same minute of speech each became three pieces with 0.36 MB of sound.
Taking the sound out and cutting it took under a second for every file, in Chrome and in Safari’s engine alike.
- H.264 + AAC
- File size2.6 MB
- Result in bothSound read: 3 pieces, 0.36 MB
- HEVC + AAC
- File size2.1 MB
- Result in bothSound read: 3 pieces, 0.36 MB
- ProRes 422 + 24-bit PCM
- File size34.6 MB
- Result in bothSound read: 3 pieces, 0.36 MB
- H.264 + Dolby Digital (AC-3)
- File size3.1 MB
- Result in bothSound can’t be decoded
- H.264, no sound track
- File size1.6 MB
- Result in both“This file has no sound”
| Picture and sound | File size | Result in both |
|---|---|---|
| H.264 + AAC | 2.6 MB | Sound read: 3 pieces, 0.36 MB |
| HEVC + AAC | 2.1 MB | Sound read: 3 pieces, 0.36 MB |
| ProRes 422 + 24-bit PCM | 34.6 MB | Sound read: 3 pieces, 0.36 MB |
| H.264 + Dolby Digital (AC-3) | 3.1 MB | Sound can’t be decoded |
| H.264, no sound track | 1.6 MB | “This file has no sound” |
Want unlimited transcription of iPhone and Mac recordings?
NoteOwl transcribes MP4 videos and audio files on your Mac, unlimited, with on-device AI models, and labels each speaker. For a MOV, save its sound with the free MOV to MP3 converter first, then import the MP3. Nothing is uploaded.
FAQ
Questions about converting MOV to text
Is the MOV to text converter free?
Yes, with no account. Each day you can transcribe 3 MOV files, up to 30 minutes from each, and the copy button and the text, SRT, VTT and Word downloads come with every one.
Does my MOV get uploaded?
No. The MOV stays on your device. Your browser takes its sound out and sends only short pieces of it, over a secure connection, to a cloud AI transcription service that transcribes and discards each one. The picture never leaves, and NoteOwl keeps nothing.
Can I convert a MOV to text on my iPhone?
Yes. Open this page in Safari, tap Choose file and pick the video from your photo library or the Files app. Stay on the page until the transcript is finished, because iPhone can pause a page you switch away from.
Do High Efficiency (HEVC) iPhone videos work?
Yes. The picture’s format makes no difference, because it is never decoded. In our test, HEVC and H.264 MOVs of the same speech produced identical pieces of sound in Chrome and in Safari’s engine.
Why does my MOV’s sound fail to decode?
Its sound track uses a format browsers can’t decode, such as Dolby Digital (AC-3), which failed in both browsers we tested. Save the sound as MP3 or WAV with a video app, then transcribe that file instead.
What happens with a MOV longer than 30 minutes?
The first 30 minutes are transcribed, and a note above the transcript says the rest was left out. Trim the MOV into parts and transcribe each, or save its sound as an MP3 and import that into NoteOwl on a Mac, which has no length limit.
Can I make subtitles for an iPhone video?
Yes. Download the SRT or VTT file once the transcript is ready. Every subtitle keeps its start and end time from the MOV, so it lines up when you add it to the video in an editor or a player.
Keep exploring
More video to text tools
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- M4V to textTurn an M4V video into text free in your browser: HandBrake and other Mac video exports; only the sound is sent, nothing is stored
- MKV to textTurn an MKV video into text free in your browser: OBS recordings and other Matroska files with AAC or Opus sound; only the sound is sent, nothing is stored
- 3GP to textTurn a 3GP phone video into text free in your browser, when its sound is AAC; only the sound is sent, nothing is stored
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The same in other tools
Related
- Audio to textTranscription software for your Mac: drop in an audio or video file and get a speaker-labelled transcript with timestamps, unlimited, with nothing uploaded
- MOV to MP3 converterTurn a MOV video’s sound into an MP3 in your browser: iPhone videos, QuickTime and Mac screen recordings; nothing is uploaded
iPhone and Mac recordings into notes, on your Mac
Free to download. Runs entirely on your Mac.
macOS 26 or later · Apple Silicon (M1 or newer) · 16 GB memory minimum, 24 GB recommended
About NoteOwl
NoteOwl is private AI meeting notes and memory for the Mac. It captures meetings without a bot joining the call, labels every speaker, writes summaries and action items, and builds a memory of every conversation that you can chat with — fully offline, because the speech recognition and the AI run on the Mac itself. Dictation into any app is free; Pro is a one-time purchase.
NoteOwl pricing: what’s free and what Pro adds
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