Free tool

MP4 to text converter

Drop an MP4 video here to turn MP4 to text: the converter reads the video’s sound in your browser and writes a transcript with a time on every paragraph, while the video itself stays on your device.

  • Free
  • Only the sound is sent
  • Nothing is stored

Choose your MP4 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.

Have a stack of MP4 recordings? NoteOwl imports MP4 videos on your Mac and transcribes them there with unlimited transcription, with every speaker labelled.

Download free for MacSend to my Mac

How it works

How do you convert an MP4 to text?

Choose the MP4 or drop it on the converter. Your browser finds its sound track, decodes it and cuts it at pauses into short pieces, and each piece is transcribed while you watch. Then copy the text or download it.

  1. 1

    Pick the MP4

    A phone video, a Zoom or Webex recording, a screen recording or an export from a video editor.

  2. 2

    Its sound is transcribed

    The text appears paragraph by paragraph with its time in the video. The first 30 minutes of each MP4 are transcribed.

  3. 3

    Keep the transcript

    Copy it, or download a .txt, .srt, .vtt or .docx file with the MP4’s name.

Which part of an MP4 becomes text?

Only its sound track. An MP4 is a box holding a picture track, a sound track and sometimes chapters. The converter opens the box, reads the sound, which is AAC in almost every MP4, and never decodes the picture.

Picture
UsuallyH.264 or HEVC video
Used?No: never decoded or sent
Sound
UsuallyAAC, stereo or mono
Used?Yes: decoded and transcribed
Chapters and titles
UsuallyNames and times from an editor
Used?No
Built-in captions
UsuallyRare, from some editors
Used?No: new text comes from the speech

Does a large MP4 take longer to transcribe?

Barely: the length of the speech counts, not the size of the file. In our test, a 6-minute 44-second talk took 6.3 seconds as a 1 GB full-HD MP4 and 5.8 seconds as a 62 MB one, and 2.4 MB of sound was sent each time.

A high-resolution screen recording is large because of its picture, which the converter skips. Whatever the size, the first 30 minutes of the MP4 are transcribed, and the page says so when a video runs longer.

Where do MP4 files come from?

Most cameras and apps outside Apple’s save MP4: Android phones, Zoom and Webex recordings, video editors’ exports and YouTube Studio downloads of your own videos. iPhones and QuickTime save MOV instead, which works here too.

Android camera
Where to find the fileDCIM → Camera, or the Videos album in Photos or Gallery
Zoom, recorded on your computer
Where to find the fileDocuments → Zoom: the meeting’s folder holds video[number].mp4
Webex
Where to find the fileA recording on your computer, or one downloaded from User Hub → Recordings
Video editors
Where to find the fileWherever you saved the export
YouTube Studio
Where to find the fileYour own upload, downloaded from its options menu

How do you turn an MP4 into subtitles?

Download the result as SRT or VTT. Each subtitle carries its start and end time from the MP4 and one or two short lines, so it plays in step with the video in YouTube, a video editor or a player such as VLC.

To check every subtitle and its times before you save them, use the SRT generator, which works on the same MP4.

Why won’t an MP4 transcribe?

Three things stop it: an MP4 with no sound track, a sound track in Dolby Digital (AC-3), which most browsers can’t decode, or a file that is damaged or only partly downloaded. The converter says which it is.

  • No sound

    Some screen recordings are saved without sound. The page says “This file has no sound”.

  • Dolby Digital sound

    Common in camcorder and TV recordings. Save the sound as MP3 or WAV with a video app, then transcribe that.

  • Unfinished download

    An MP4 that stopped downloading early may not open at all. Download it again.

Want unlimited MP4 transcription on your Mac?

NoteOwl imports MP4 videos of any length on your Mac and transcribes their sound there, unlimited, with on-device AI models. It labels each speaker and keeps an audio copy to play back. Nothing is uploaded.

FAQ

Questions about converting MP4 to text

Is the MP4 to text converter free?

Yes. Transcribe 3 MP4 videos a day, up to 30 minutes of each, with no account. Copying the text and the TXT, SRT, VTT and Word downloads are all included.

Is my MP4 uploaded?

No. Your browser opens the MP4 on your device and takes out its sound. Short pieces of that sound go over a secure connection to a cloud AI transcription service, which transcribes each one and discards it. The picture is never sent, and NoteOwl stores nothing.

Does it work with HEVC (H.265) MP4s?

Yes. The picture’s format doesn’t matter, because the converter never decodes it. An MP4 with HEVC or H.264 video and AAC sound transcribes the same way.

How long does an MP4 take to transcribe?

Seconds for most videos. In our test, it took under 6 seconds to transcribe MP4 video of a 6-minute 44-second talk, from choosing the file to the finished transcript, and the text starts appearing before the end.

What happens if the MP4 is longer than 30 minutes?

The converter transcribes its first 30 minutes and says so above the transcript. For the rest, trim the MP4 into parts first, or import it into NoteOwl on a Mac, which transcribes videos of any length.

Can I convert an MP4 to text on my phone?

Yes. Open this page in Chrome or Safari, tap Choose file and pick the MP4 from your photos or files. Keep the page on screen until the transcript is ready, because a phone can pause a page in the background.

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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.

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