Getting a Shona video in
Drop in the video file without converting it: MP4, MOV, MKV, WEBM, AVI, 3GP or a screen recording from your phone. The audio is pulled out on our server, so every timestamp still points to the right moment in the video. If the video is online, choose Import from link and paste a public link from YouTube, TikTok, Vimeo, Dropbox or Google Drive, or a direct link to the file; only the sound is downloaded.
WhatsApp videos can be saved to the phone and uploaded as files. The draft then opens beside a player; click a line to hear it again.
What to expect from a Shona draft
Shona has very little training data in the speech model, so be prepared for a rough draft with many corrections, especially in long words built from several prefixes and suffixes. The best results come from slow, clear speech by one person close to the microphone. Even so, correcting a timed draft is usually faster than typing a video from scratch.
Shona is written in Latin script with sh, ch, zh, sv and zv. Videos from Harare often mix in English words and whole English sentences; these usually come out in English and need fewer fixes. Ndebele, the other big language of Zimbabwe, is not a separate setting, so it will not transcribe well here.
Shona videos people transcribe
Common uploads:
- Church services and sermons posted on YouTube or Facebook.
- Comedy skits and drama clips, for subtitles.
- Interviews and news segments, for quotes.
- Family videos and messages shared by Zimbabweans in the UK, South Africa or Australia.
Subtitles and documents
Export SRT or VTT to subtitle a Shona video on YouTube or in your editor, after correcting the draft. DOCX and PDF keep a written record, and TXT is easy to paste into a message. Timestamps can be turned on or off per export. Speaker labels for interviews and panels are available on paid plans and with a Minute Pack.
English and the audio page
The transcript stays in Shona; there is no built-in translation. 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. If you film your own Shona content, a clip-on microphone and a quiet room will improve the draft more than any setting. Machine translation of Shona is also less reliable than for major languages, so ask a Shona speaker to check anything important. For audio-only recordings, see the Shona audio to text page.