Finnish video into text
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.
Long seminar recordings and meetings are split into parts and processed in parallel, then shown beside a player for checking.
Puhekieli versus kirjakieli
Most Finnish videos are in puhekieli, the spoken language: mä and sä for minä and sinä, mennään for me menemme, dropped endings everywhere. The draft sometimes writes the spoken form and sometimes the written one, and can switch within a sentence. Spoken forms usually read naturally in subtitles; for a report or thesis appendix, people normalise to kirjakieli while reviewing.
Finnish words are long, with compounds and stacked case endings, so double letters (tuli, tuuli, tulli) are a classic spot to check. Videos from bilingual areas switch into Swedish, and tech and gaming into English; those parts come out in their own spelling. Clear speech gives a good draft that needs a moderate read; dialects from Savo or Ostrobothnia need more.
Finnish videos people transcribe
Common uploads:
- Lectures and recorded seminars, for notes.
- Research interviews filmed for a gradu or thesis.
- YouTube and TikTok videos, for Finnish subtitles (tekstitys).
- Recorded Teams meetings, for a pöytäkirja.
- Webinars and training videos for staff.
Finnish subtitles and exports
Export SRT or VTT to add Finnish subtitles in YouTube Studio, Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve or VLC; ä, ö and å are kept in UTF-8. Correct the transcript first.
DOCX and PDF suit minutes and appendices; CSV lists each line with its start time for coding interviews. Speaker labels are available on paid plans and with a Minute Pack.
Translation and audio-only recordings
Normalising spoken forms to kirjakieli before translating usually gives a cleaner English version.
The transcript is written in Finnish 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 Finnish audio to text page.