Getting a Hebrew video in
Drop in the video file unchanged: MP4, MOV, MKV, WEBM, AVI, M4V, 3GP or a phone screen recording. The sound track is pulled out on the server, so there is no convert-to-MP3 step, and every timestamp still matches the picture. If the video is online, paste its public link under Import from link: YouTube, Shorts, TikTok, public Vimeo, Dropbox or Google Drive share links, or a direct link to a video file. Only the audio is downloaded. Playlists and channels are refused, so queue videos one link at a time, and sign-in-only posts such as Instagram need to be downloaded and uploaded.
The finished transcript sits beside the player. Click a line to hear it again, type the correction where the error is, and the change is saved without a save button.
Hebrew script, niqqud and mixed speech
The text comes out in standard unpointed Hebrew, the way newspapers and websites write it, without niqqud vowel points. That suits subtitles and notes; if you need vocalised text for teaching or liturgy, add the points yourself afterwards.
Israeli speech borrows freely from English, especially in tech, business and army slang, and some speakers switch to Russian, Arabic or French mid-conversation. English words are sometimes written in Hebrew letters and sometimes in Latin letters, so expect to standardise them. In Haredi videos, Yiddish phrases may be rendered with Hebrew spelling; a video that is mostly Yiddish belongs on the Yiddish page.
Hebrew videos people send
Common uploads:
- Israeli TV news clips and long YouTube interviews, for quotes in the original wording.
- Recorded shiurim and Torah classes, to turn a lesson into study notes.
- University lectures and Zoom seminars from Israeli institutions.
- Family videos and bar or bat mitzvah speeches, for a written keepsake.
- Your own YouTube or TikTok videos, for Hebrew subtitles.
Right-to-left subtitles
SRT and VTT exports are UTF-8 with the Hebrew stored as right-to-left text. YouTube Studio displays the lines correctly. Some desktop subtitle editors and older players push a full stop or question mark to the wrong end of a line; the text is still right, and it usually displays properly once uploaded to the platform.
For a document, DOCX and PDF keep the right-to-left direction. TXT pastes into email or WhatsApp, and CSV lists one row per line with its start time.
How accurate, and reading it in English
Clear studio or classroom speech gives a good draft that still needs a careful read: homographs, surnames and acronyms such as army or ministry abbreviations are the usual fixes. Panels with crosstalk take longer. Speaker labels are available on paid plans and with a Minute Pack.
The transcript stays in Hebrew. For an English reading, open the Google Translate link on the transcript, or use the AI prompt export to hand the text to ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. For audio-only recordings, see the Hebrew audio to text page.