YouTube Transcript vs. Captions: What's the Difference?
Understand the technical differences between closed captions, open captions, and full video transcripts.
Defining the Terms
While often used interchangeably, transcripts and captions serve different purposes. Captions are text fragments synchronized with the video audio, designed to be read along with the visual action. A transcript is the plain text document containing the entire dialogue of the video, usually without strict timing rules.
Closed vs. Open Captions
Closed captions (CC) can be turned on or off by the viewer, and this is the data that tools like Transcriptafy extract. Open captions are 'burned' directly into the video file itself and cannot be turned off or extracted using standard web tools.
Why You Need the Raw Transcript
If you want to read a video like an article, the raw transcript is what you need. Captions are formatted for the screen (short lines, constant line breaks), while a good transcript is formatted into readable paragraphs.
The Transcriptafy Advantage
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