Transcription is essential to creatives who work with video. Whether they call themselves videographers, video creators, video producers or simply YouTubers, video brings the bread home for millions of content creators around the world. As the third most visited site on the Internet, only behind the giants Google and Facebook, YouTube is big business. 

As creators fight it out for viewing figures on the site, a key way to get good results is by making sure videos are accessible to all audiences. But how does YouTube's subtitle transcription software measure up against Trint? Creators who choose to leave their audio and video captions in the virtual hands of YouTube could be missing out.

Accessibility: Why transcription is so important to videographers

There are millions of people out there who count YouTube as their primary income source. Outside of the platform, there are countless videographers creating content for marketing teams around the world - video production is a really, really big industry. With such a saturated market, and competition for attention from a passive audience at fever pitch, videographers need to do everything in their power to make their videos accessible. 

Transcribing videos for subtitles and captions is the best way to ensure your video has maximum reach. Not every viewer will be able to watch your video content with sound for several reasons: they could be hard of hearing, or they could be on public transport and don't want to disturb their fellow passengers. Regardless, the ability to enjoy video content without audio is important to your audience, so don't alienate your viewers by not providing captions and subtitles.

Transcription software: How does YouTube transcribe video content?

Creators who upload their video content to YouTube have the option of transcribing their video with YouTube's built-in  transcription software. For a lot of video producers this is a great option: it's quick, easy and ready made. YouTube's transcription software can cause problems for creators, though, and it's poor business practice to put your subtitles in the digital hands of YouTube without knowing the risks.

If you're serious about creating accessible content, don't leave it up to YouTube.

The transcription service provided by YouTube has one glaring issue: you can't edit the transcript after it's been processed. Think about the last video you watched. Did the machine transcription get all the words in the YouTube captions right? Doubtful. Machine learning and automation have a long way to go before they're one hundred percent accurate in voice recognition, and if you trust YouTube's auto-transcription you won't be able to correct any of the mistakes in the audio to text process. Having inaccurate subtitles is worse than having no subtitles at all. 

What are your options for transcription outside of YouTube?

You could manually convert the audio to text and create the subtitles yourself, typing every single word from the audio, if you have a whole lot of extra time on your hands. Any video producer will tell you that creators rarely have any extra time, so manual transcription is, frankly, a waste of time. 

You could hire a transcription service, but it will probably take up a lot of your budget. The name of the content creation game is maximum output with minimum expense - make those dollars go further in other ways.

Transcription software from Trint: What's the difference?

Powered by artificial intelligence and automation, Trint's transcription software is always learning. Its audio to text software creates transcripts in no time at all - and thanks to its Vocab Builder, you can teach it to recognize more obscure words and phrases. As with all automated transcription software, Trint can't produce 100% accurate transcripts on the first try. However, unlike YouTube, you'll be able to make edits and reviews of your transcripts before they're added as captions to your video. You can even search through the text to find focus points and help you streamline your video editing process. Being able to verify your content before it's approved to go live is valuable to your video production workflow - don't settle for less than Trint.

Most video production houses work in teams - there's not many lone wolf videographers out there. For these teams, being able to collaborate on transcription projects and review final edits is essential. Trint's collaboration tools let your team edit, review and approve your transcripts, so nothing but the perfect subtitles make it to publication.

Learn about the other ways Trint's content platform makes it easy to produce video:

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