How to Transcribe a Podcast Episode to Text

Why transcribe your podcast?

A transcript is the highest-leverage thing you can do with a finished episode. It gives you show notes in minutes, makes the episode accessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing listeners, and hands search engines a wall of relevant text they can actually index — so people find the episode by searching what you said, not just the title.

Option 1: From a link

If your episode is public on a platform, just paste the link:

• Hosted on SoundCloud? Use the SoundCloud transcript generator.
• On YouTube as a video episode? Use the YouTube transcript generator.

Paste, click Get transcript, done — no account needed.

Option 2: From an audio file

Have the raw MP3, M4A, or WAV? Upload it on the audio-to-text page. This is usually the best-quality route because you're transcribing the original file, not a re-encoded stream.

Turn the transcript into show notes

Once you have the text:

1. Copy the plain text for a full transcript block on your episode page.
2. Export SRT or VTT if you also publish a video version and want captions.
3. Skim the timestamps to pull chapter markers and quotable moments for social posts.

Need just the words without the timecodes? Run it through the remove-timestamps tool.

Tips

• Multiple speakers transcribe fine, but speaker labels aren't auto-added — drop names in afterward where it matters.
• Long episodes take longer to process; that's expected.
• Transcription auto-detects the language, so non-English shows work too.

Start with your latest episode: paste a link or upload the audio on Scriptery and export in whatever format your workflow needs.