Transcription
Transcribe turns spoken audio into a downloadable file in your library. Upload an audio or video file, or paste a YouTube URL, and Scholarly keeps working in the background after you close the creator or leave the app.
Transcribe or AI Meeting Notes?
Both turn speech into text, and they are different tools with different costs. Pick by what you want to walk away with.
| Transcribe | AI Meeting Notes | |
|---|---|---|
| What it's for | A file or link you already have | Capturing a meeting or talk live, or uploading its audio |
| Input | One source, up to 60 minutes | Live browser recording up to 3 hours, or an uploaded audio file |
| What it costs | 1 AI Creation Credit for the whole source | One file-upload slot — no AI Creation Credits |
| What you get | A .txt or .vtt file in your library | A recording page with a timestamped transcript, summary, action items, and chat |
In short: Transcribe is a creation tool that hands you a transcript file. AI Meeting Notes is capture, and hands you a working page you can study and search. If you want the text itself — to edit, to hand to someone, to load into another tool — use Transcribe.
Where to Start
Pick Transcribe from the tool row on Home. Then choose one source:
- Upload an audio or video file.
- Paste a YouTube URL for a video with an available transcript.
Each source can be up to 60 minutes long.
Choose the Output
The customization step offers two formats:
- Plain text (
.txt) -- clean transcript text for reading, search, notes, and AI tools. - Timestamped captions (
.vtt) -- standard WebVTT cues for video players and caption editors.
You can also set an optional file name. Scholarly adds “transcript” and the selected extension for you.
Cost and Background Processing
One transcription uses 1 AI Creation Credit for the whole source, whether it is a short clip or the full 60 minutes. The credit is reserved when the task is queued and committed after the transcript file is created. If the task fails without producing a file, the credit is returned automatically.
The task appears in the background tasks strip on Home. You can close the creator, navigate elsewhere, or leave the app; processing continues on Scholarly's servers. When it finishes, the task opens the new transcript file, where you can preview, edit, download, chat with, or reuse it.
When a YouTube Link Doesn't Work
A YouTube video needs an available transcript. When one can't be fetched, Scholarly names the specific reason rather than failing generically, and offers Retry only where retrying can actually help:
- Still being transcribed -- the video is added to your library right away and its transcript finishes on the video's own page. Ask again shortly.
- Deleted, private, or blocked in your region -- the video can't be read at all. Use a different link.
- Still live streaming -- wait until the stream has ended, then try the link again.
- No captions or transcript at all -- download the audio or video file and upload it directly instead.
- A temporary problem on the transcript service -- try again in a moment.
Tips and Limits
- Very quiet or silent media may fail because there are no spoken words to write.
- For a transcript you want to read or edit, choose
.txt. For timed captions, choose.vtt. - Retry is available for failed tasks. A retry reserves one credit again and returns it if that attempt fails.
Related
- AI Meeting Notes -- live or uploaded capture, with a summary, action items, and chat instead of a plain file.
- Background Tasks and Notifications -- follow progress while you keep working.
- Library Files -- preview, edit, download, and chat with finished transcript files.
- YouTube Sources -- other ways to work from a YouTube video.
- Plans and Limits -- how AI Creation Credits work.