With the introduction of searchable transcripts, Google is today making significant strides in enhancing video accessibility and usability within Google Drive.
Last year the tech giant announced that users can automatically generate captions for any video uploaded to Google Drive.
The aim was to save users the effort of manually creating captions by building on this feature and making information discovery, referencing and productivity with video content more efficient.
Google noted that Drive users can now view and search transcripts for their videos.
“The transcript appears in a sidebar next to the video player and highlights the currently spoken text,” Google said.
“This update makes it easy to find specific moments, follow along with the content or jump directly to the part of the video one needs.”
Google further said that end users will be impacted adding that video transcripts can improve the accessibility of media stored in Drive and enables a user to easily search and navigate to key moments within a video.
Worth noting is that there is no admin control for this feature and to access it, users’ videos must have captions.
A video with captions will have the CC button in the bottom right corner of the video player set to active (not grayed out).
One can add captions to a video by;
- Right-clicking the video in Drive
- Selecting Manage caption tracks
- Generate automatic captions.
One can also generate captions when the video is playing by going to the three dot menu on the top right, manage captions tracks and then generate automatic captions.
To access video transcripts, one has to open a video with captions in Google Drive, click the gear icon on the bottom right corner of the video to open the video settings and then select ‘Transcript’.
Goggle noted that for rapid release domains, the gradual rollout for up to 15 days for feature visibility will start from February 24, 2025 and for scheduled release domains, extended rollout potentially longer than 15 days for feature visibility will begin from February 26, 2025 with expected completion by March 26, 2025.
This feature is available to all Google Workspace customers, Google Workspace Individual subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts.
Users with personal Google accounts can upload or request automatic captions after uploading a video to Drive.
Follow us on WhatsApp, Telegram, Twitter, and Facebook, or subscribe to our weekly newsletter to ensure you don’t miss out on any future updates. Send tips to editorial@techtrendsmedia.co.ke
