How the video gets 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 draft runs alongside the video. Click a line to hear it, correct the words, and it saves automatically.
Macrons, place names and English
Te reo Māori is written with the Latin alphabet, the digraphs wh and ng, and macrons (tohutō) on long vowels: ā, ē, ī, ō, ū. The model has limited Māori training data, so expect a draft that needs real editing. Macrons are often missing and are the most common correction, since vowel length changes meaning. Slow, clear speech gives the best result.
New Zealand English speech is full of Māori words and place names, and Māori speech often includes English. For a mainly English video with Māori greetings and names, select English and fix the Māori words by hand. Regional and iwi differences in vocabulary and pronunciation may also need correcting.
Māori videos people transcribe
Common uploads:
- Whaikōrero and speeches on the marae, to keep them in writing.
- Te reo lessons and kura or wānanga recordings, for learners to read along.
- Interviews with kaumātua, for whānau and iwi archives.
- News and current-affairs clips in te reo Māori.
Subtitles in te reo
After correcting, export SRT or VTT to add Māori subtitles on YouTube or in a video editor; macrons display correctly from the UTF-8 file. DOCX and PDF suit archives and teaching material. Kapa haka and waiata are harder than speech, because singing and group voices blur words.
Tips and English
Record close to the speaker, keep wind and crowd noise down, and switch on audio repair for outdoor footage. Speaker labels are available on paid plans and with a Minute Pack. Recordings of elders may be culturally sensitive; you can delete a transcript and its file at any time, and files are never used to train AI models.
The transcript stays in Māori. 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 Māori audio to text page.