MP4 to text

1. Check whether your platform offers an audio-only version of the recording. If it does, take that instead of the video.
2. Drag the file onto the field above. No account needed.
3. Leave language detection on automatic, or pick Polish or English.
4. Read the preview; unlock the full transcript with a one-off payment or subscription hours.

MP4 is a container, not an audio format or a video format. The same .mp4 file may carry a video track alongside the sound, or the sound alone and nothing else. An .m4a file is that identical container with a single audio track — which is where half the confusion around this format comes from.

For transcription it makes no difference whatsoever: we skip the picture and read the audio track either way. It makes a large difference to how long the upload takes.

• Size tells you what is inside faster than any tool: 30–60 MB per hour is sound alone, several hundred megabytes or more is a file with a picture.
• If the file is audio only, there is nothing to extract — converting it to MP3 degrades it without meaningfully shrinking it.
• If it does carry video, you still need do nothing. Extracting saves upload time and nothing else.

Meetings are the most common source of the MP4s we see, and the material that benefits most from being uploaded differently. The picture in such a recording is usually a shared screen or a few near-static cameras — almost no content and a great many bytes.

The figures below are estimates and all computed the same way: 1 Mbps is about 450 MB per hour. The “fits in 5 GB” column divides the upload limit by them — the same limit for everyone, with or without an account.

Scroll the table sideways to see the remaining columns.

The same hour of a meeting therefore weighs fifteen to forty times less if you take the audio version. Zoom can record a separate audio-only file — it has to be switched on in the recording settings. On other platforms, look for that option where you download the recording; not all of them offer one, and then you simply upload the video.

Upload the recording and see the preview

If the meeting was recorded by a platform you have access to, its own transcript is sometimes enough — especially when all you need is a quick reminder of what was said. Uploading the same file here gives you something that transcript, by its nature, does not.

• A transcript that stays with you even after the recording disappears from the platform along with its retention window.
• Correcting individual passages and naming speakers with real names instead of “Participant 3”.
• TXT and SRT export on paid plans — for subtitles or for further processing.
• It also works for a file somebody simply sent you. You need no access to their meeting, or to their platform at all.

A meeting recording is usually other people's words, so it is worth remembering the participants' consent to being recorded, and who you share the finished transcript with. Recordings are stored privately, and your account settings can delete the audio file automatically after 1, 7 or 30 days — the transcript itself stays.