Bringing an Amharic video in
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.
Many Amharic videos are long: sermons, interviews and panel shows often run an hour or more. Long files are split into parts and processed in parallel, so you do not wait for the full running time.
Be ready to correct: Amharic is low-resource
The model saw very little Amharic during training compared with English or Arabic. Expect a rough draft with many corrections: wrong syllable characters, words split or joined, and names guessed. It works best on slow, clear speech from one speaker with no music. Even so, fixing a timed draft against the player is usually quicker than typing a long video from nothing.
Text comes out in Ge'ez script. Amharic syllables that sound alike, such as the several h-like and s-like series, are often confused, so a careful reader will spend time there. English words, common in diaspora videos from Washington DC, Toronto or London and in tech or business talk, may come out in Latin letters or in fidel.
What Amharic videos get transcribed
Typical uploads:
- Church sermons and teachings, and Islamic talks given in Amharic.
- YouTube interviews, news commentary and talk shows.
- Family videos and interviews with elders recorded in the diaspora.
- Recorded lessons and training sessions.
- TikToks from creators who want Amharic captions.
Amharic subtitles and fonts
Export SRT or VTT for Amharic subtitles. The files are UTF-8, and YouTube shows Ge'ez script correctly. If a desktop editor shows empty boxes, set its subtitle font to one that covers Ethiopic, such as Noto Sans Ethiopic. The Ethiopic full stop ። may be missing in places; add punctuation while you review.
DOCX and PDF keep the script for printing and sharing. Speaker labels are available on paid plans and with a Minute Pack.
Reading it in English
Fix the Amharic first: a translation can only be as good as the text it starts from. Then use one of the options below.
The transcript is written in Amharic 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 Amharic audio to text page.