Google is introducing a new feature to Google Drive that will make it easier for users to navigate videos. Dubbed video transcripts are an improvement on the company’s automatic captioning offering from last year. The Mountain View-based tech giant announced users may now read and search transcripts in videos.
This will make it easy to find specific parts of a video because tapping on a sentence will guide the video to that point in time. Notably, this capability is currently being rolled out to all Google Drive users.
The latest feature was announced in a Workspace blog post by the tech giant. This enhances the automated captioning feature, which was released in July 2024. This feature automatically generates captions for videos when they are uploaded.
When the feature was first offered, Google stated that it employs speech recognition technology to transcribe the audio, provided that spoken words are utilized and the language is English. While the business has announced ambitions to spread the feature to additional languages, this has not yet taken place.
While the automatic captioning function allowed users to see the captions as the video played, they could not examine the transcripts individually. This has now been incorporated with the latest release. When a video plays on Google Drive, viewers can access transcripts in a side panel on the right side.
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To use the feature, users must first play a video in Google Drive. Users should make sure that the video they choose includes automatic captioning. To check this, search for a CC button in the video player’s bottom right corner. Once completed, tapping the Settings icon in the bottom right corner will reveal a new ‘Transcript’ option. Tapping here will open the side panel.