It did work - finally. Not sure how long it actually took to synchronize the transcript in YouTube. One place said 5 minutes; Youtube screen said it might take several hours. I know it wasn't ready in 30 minutes. I checked back in a couple of hours and screen said "processing" BUT when I refreshed the screen, it was done. So less than 2 hours.
Recap: we want to use the transcripts from G2W so that each host/presenter can do as much of the cleanup, editing as possible for captions before turning over to the one person who can load to YouTube. We've been experimenting with the option where you load a transcript without timings into YouTube and its autosync feature matches the text with the recording to create the timings.
I don't know that this is the most efficient way but here's what I did. Feel free to add on if you have other experiences. This sounds like a lot of steps, but it really didn't take long.
GENERATE/DOWNLOAD THE TRANSCRIPT
From Video Library link in G2W, chose the 3 dots on my session that show more options.
- Edit Transcript
- Generate Transcript (It takes a while.)
- Once available, COPY (no export option)
CLEAN UP THE TRANSCRIPT
Because I tried earlier and YouTube would not accept the file with timings, I then needed to remove those.
(I suggest you try it yourself. If you don't have to delete timings, one less step.)
Delete Timings
- PASTE Transcript into Excel.
- Insert Column to left so I have A to work with as blank column
- Use Column A as a "Sequence #" to document the row order. Autofill starting with 1 and dragging all the way down. (For me, 977 rows).
- Sort by Column B (Transcript Text). That groups all the numbers (timings) together
- Delete the block of rows with timings
- Re-sort the by Column A (Sequence #) to put the rows back in the original order.
- Delete Column A (Sequence)
So now you have all the transcript lines, in correct order with timing numbers removed.
Edit transcript text
I wanted to be able to search/replace and spell check, so chose to work in Word.
- Paste as unformatted text into Word.
- Edit/Correct text errors to the degree you want.
We don't try to edit EVERYTHING but there are some common mistakes like acronym use that almost always get wrong. Could have a presenter skim for anything glaring. For this one, we had very few transitions on speakers, so I added the speaker name each time voice changed.
(If you don't plan to edit much, could have kept working in Excel.)
I thought I read (could be wrong) that I needed a blank line break between each line of text. So I used Find/Replace to locate each paragraph marker and replace with TWO paragraph markers. (Under "Special" in the Replace box.)
- Save as a TXT file. (No formatting at all.)
LOAD FILE INTO YOUTUBE (focusing on transcript, not the entire process)
Configure the entry in YouTube. Follow directions to Add Video/Create.
Upload the recording file and fill out the various fields.
Choose MORE OPTIONS
Look for Language, Subtitles, and Closed Caption (CC) section
click Upload subtitles
- You have a choice of with timing or without timing. Choose WITHOUT.
Load your file. Finish any other parts of the configuration.
As I mentioned above, the screen kept saying YouTube was processing the autosync, but at some point it was complete and screen message wrong. When I refreshed the screen I was it was done. Ours took somewhere between 20 minutes and 2 hours. Note sure as I left it to work on other projects.
