Bringing in the video
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 transcript then follows the video line by line. Click a line to hear it, fix what is wrong, and the edit is stored straight away.
Latvian letters, Russian and Latgalian
Latvian uses macrons for long vowels (ā, ē, ī, ū), the háček on č, š and ž, and the cedilla-style comma on ģ, ķ, ļ and ņ. They are all kept, and exports are UTF-8. A missing macron changes a word, so they are worth a glance during review.
The model knows Latvian less well than the major European languages; expect a usable draft that needs a careful read, with case endings and names as the main fixes. Many Latvian videos include Russian, either a Russian-speaking guest or a switch mid-sentence, and English terms appear in business and tech talk. Russian passages are written less accurately with Latvian selected. Latgalian, spoken in eastern Latvia, differs in spelling and vocabulary and comes out closer to standard Latvian.
Latvian videos people transcribe
Common uploads:
- Public TV news and current-affairs clips, for quotes.
- University lectures and recorded seminars.
- Interviews for a bakalaura or maģistra darbs.
- Family videos from Latvians in the UK, Ireland and Germany.
- Your own YouTube and TikTok videos, for Latvian subtitles.
Latvian subtitles and exports
Export SRT or VTT for subtitles in YouTube Studio, Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve or VLC; the diacritics survive in UTF-8. DOCX and PDF suit a thesis appendix or a report, TXT is plain text, and CSV gives a row per line with its start time.
Accuracy and English
A clear voice and a close microphone matter most. Overlapping speakers and music under speech lower the quality. Speaker labels are available on paid plans and with a Minute Pack.
The transcript stays in Latvian. 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 Latvian audio to text page.