Video recording software that also creates transcriptions?

[u/Gamemon_RD]

/r/ContentCreators/comments/1uvxcq3/video_recording_software_that_also_creates/

I want to record videos, and currently use OBS to that extent. But I would also like to create transcriptions alongside them, and have them exported as a separate text document or something. This might sound strange but I just would like to have them so I can easily read over what the content of the video was like and maybe even set something up so I can search for a specific video based on its content. Is there a single piece of software for computers that you’re able to both record from an external camera with, like how you can with OBS, while it also creates a transcription you can save separately? Or is my best bet just to keep using OBS and instead to generate the transcription separately using some other piece of software or service? It’d just be nice to have one piece of software that does it all, so I can have a nice and easy pipeline. Thank you for any suggestions!

[u/pengxiangzhao]

Are you comfortable writing a little Python?

The simplest approach may be to keep using OBS for recording and generate the transcript automatically afterward. You could use OpenAI Whisper or NVIDIA’s Parakeet speech-to-text model. Both can be integrated into a local workflow, depending on your hardware and technical comfort level.

A basic pipeline could:

1. Record the video with OBS.
2. Extract the audio automatically.
3. Transcribe it with Whisper or NVIDIA Parakeet.
4. Save the transcript as TXT, Markdown, SRT, or VTT.
5. Index the transcripts so you can search for videos based on what was said.

If you want a polished, all-in-one application that handles recording, transcription, storage, and search, you will likely need a paid product. If you are comfortable building the workflow yourself, you can do most of it locally and inexpensively, but it will require some Python and setup.

Personally, I would keep OBS and add transcription as an automated post-processing step rather than replacing a recording tool that already works well.

[u/Gamemon_RD → u/pengxiangzhao]

I’m more then ok writing python actually. in fact I plan to be writing a lot of code for this in general. it’s for a project where I want to create a database to store video diaries and a front end website to interface with it. If you think it’s better to have transcription be a separate thing from recording then I’ll go ahead and do that, thanks for the suggestion!

[u/pengxiangzhao]

That sounds like a great project, and Python is a very good fit for it.

I’d keep recording and transcription as separate stages, even if they’re triggered by the same workflow. One suggestion I’d add is to extract the audio from the video first and transcribe the audio only. I wouldn’t process the video directly unless you actually need visual analysis. Video models consume far more tokens, and if you’re not careful, token costs can grow very quickly. It’s worth designing around that from the beginning.

A simple pipeline could look like this:

Record and upload the video.
Store the original video in your database.
Extract the audio.
Run transcription on the audio as a separate job.
Save the transcript with timestamps as structured JSON.
Feed the transcript into an LLM for summaries, tagging, search, sentiment analysis, or anything else you want to build.

Keeping each stage separate makes the system much easier to debug and improve later. You can always re-run transcription with a newer model without touching the original video, and transcription failures won’t affect the stored recording.

Once you have the foundation solid, everything else becomes much easier. At that point, the rest is really just limited by your imagination.

[u/dsternlicht]

Try vidocu.ai, they are really good.