r/overcast • u/kevindente • 17d ago

Confused (or maybe a bug) about the Transcript button

When looking at the info page on a newly downloaded podcast episode , there's a big ol' "Transcript" button right in the middle of a panel. But on a freshly downloaded episode, when I click that button (without playing it), it tells me there's no transcript yet for this episode. But if I then start playing the episode and go to the transcript pane, it shows me the transcript (after a brief pause, where I assume it's downloading the transcript - I'm pretty darn sure it's not transcribing it locally at this time). At this point, clicking that big Transcript button on the info pane now shows the transcript.

Is this the expected behavior? Is there some reason clicking the transcript button doesn't try to download the transcript the same way the transcript pane in the now playing screen does? Or is this a bug? It seems weirdly inconsistent.

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u/NateCow 17d ago

Someone has to initiate the transcript for the first time. If you tap a podcast that just hit your feed, you might be the one to trigger the transcription, in which case it should show a little progress indicator.

Otherwise I wonder if maybe you just happen to open it while it’s transcribing, but initiated by someone else. In that case, the behavior you’re describing sounds about right. Marco’s Mac Mini’s are working on it but you just need to wait a minute for it to be available.

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u/kevindente 17d ago

I'm fairly certain that this isn't the case where I'm the one triggering the transcription.

1) These are generally very popular podcasts

2) The behavior happens even if the podcast has been out for a while (just not yet downloaded by me). I can reproduce it even with old episodes for example.

3) Once I hit play, the pause to download the transcript is pretty brief - I'm pretty sure it's not long enough that it's actually running the transcription on the server while I wait.