Getting an Afrikaans video into the editor
Drop in the video file without converting it: MP4, MOV, MKV, WEBM, AVI, 3GP or a screen recording from your phone. The sound is pulled out on our server, and every timestamp points to the same moment in the original video. If the video is online, use Import from link: public YouTube, TikTok and Vimeo videos, Dropbox and Google Drive share links and direct file links all work. Only the audio is fetched, one video per link, and several links can wait in the queue.
The finished transcript sits beside a player. Click a line to hear it again, type the correction and move on; changes save on their own.
Afrikaans with English mixed in
Few Afrikaans videos stay in one language. A braai vlog, a rugby interview or a church announcement will drop in English words and whole English sentences. Keep Afrikaans selected when most of the talking is Afrikaans; English stretches usually come out in English, but read them, because a short English phrase can be bent into Afrikaans spelling.
The spelling marks are kept: ê, ë, ô, û and the article 'n. Kaaps from the Cape Flats, and the Afrikaans spoken in Namibia, are written in standard spelling, so slang and local words are the lines most likely to need a fix. Afrikaans is close to Dutch, and the model occasionally reaches for a Dutch spelling; the player makes those easy to spot.
What people film in Afrikaans
Typical uploads:
- YouTube vlogs, farm and outdoor channels, and TikToks, for subtitles and captions.
- Sermons and Bible studies from NG, Gereformeerde and charismatic churches.
- Interviews and news clips, for quotes in an article or report.
- Family videos and interviews with grandparents, for a written family history.
- Recorded lessons and university lectures given in Afrikaans.
Afrikaans subtitles and documents
Export SRT or VTT to add Afrikaans subtitles in YouTube Studio, CapCut, Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve. The files are UTF-8, so ê and ë show as they should. Each subtitle line comes from the corrected transcript, so fix the text first.
DOCX and PDF suit a sermon handout or a thesis appendix; CSV gives one row per line with its start time. Timestamps and speaker names switch on or off per export, and speaker labels are available on paid plans and with a Minute Pack.
How good the draft is
Afrikaans has less training data than Dutch or English. Clear speech from one person close to the microphone gives a usable draft that still needs a careful read; outdoor wind, crowd noise and several people talking at once mean more corrections. Names of towns and people are the usual errors.
The transcript is written in Afrikaans as it was spoken; nothing is translated. To read it in English, open the Google Translate link on the transcript, or use the AI prompt export to hand the text to ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. For recordings without video, see the Afrikaans audio to text page.