How to transcribe video to text with timestamp in Windows 10?

vosk-transcriber is a best choice for offline transcription with timestamps. It processes video files directly and outputs SRT or VTT subtitle formats with time codes. vosk-transcriber is a CLI tool bundled with the Vosk speech recognition package. It supports audio and video input, automatically extracting audio via FF mpeg . The output can be plain text, SRT, or VTT, all with accurate timestamps .

How to transcribe a video to text on Windows 10:

Step 1: Install Prerequisites, You need Python 3.6+ and FF mpeg. Install Vosk via pip:

pip install vosk

For FF mpeg, download the static build from ff mpeg.org, extract it, and add the bin folder to your system PATH .

Step 2: Run the Command, to transcribe video to text with timestamps, use the -t srt flag:

vosk-transcriber -i input_video.mp4 -t srt -o subtitles.srt

For English, specify the language model:

vosk-transcriber -l en-us -i input_video.mp4 -t srt -o subtitles.srt

The first run downloads the language model automatically (50MB–1GB depending on the model) .

Step 3: Output Options

• -t srt produces SubRip subtitles with sentence-level timestamps
• -t vtt produces WebVTT format
• -t json produces JSON with word-level timing when combined with --show-words 

Important Notes

• Offline processing: Vosk runs entirely on your local machine, no internet required after the model is downloaded .
• FF mpeg dependency: The tool relies on FF mpeg to decode video and extract audio, so it must be in your PATH .
• Model size vs. accuracy: Smaller models are faster but less accurate. For transcribe video to text tasks where accuracy matters, use a larger model .
• Word-level timestamps: Add --show-words to include per-word timing data in the output .