Overview
We know that transcripts are an important tool to help you achieve more with video – whether searching across Microsoft 365 to find a video, scanning a video to find a specific spot, turning on captions while you watch in a noisy environment, or using subtitles to follow along in another language. As we continue to build Stream (on SharePoint), we’re excited to share the next set of transcript capabilities that will help make video in Microsoft 365 more accessible and productive.
Finding and Viewing Teams Meeting Recordings
Throughout the past year, we’ve been able to stay in touch and collaborate with colleagues in Teams meetings. During this time, we’ve found that recording these meetings has been super helpful in letting us catch up and recall details later. We also find the recordings are easy to share with colleagues who couldn’t attend in real time or work in different time zones. To support these scenarios further, Stream will soon begin displaying transcripts alongside the Teams meeting recordings when Teams Live Transcript is also enabled. This feature is currently rolling out (Roadmap ID 82057), and will show the transcript in the language it was recorded in.
Transcripts in meeting recordings can be quickly scanned to jump to any point in the video, helping viewers find content most relevant to them. Meetings are transcribed in higher quality by leveraging text in the meeting invitation, participant names, and attachments to better recognize and transcribe what was said.
We’re also making it easier to find this content anywhere from Microsoft search. For any meeting recording you have access to, you can find that meeting recording based on what was spoken in the transcripts. This feature is currently rolling out (Roadmap ID 82003).
Generating New Captions
Video captions make videos more accessible and easier to follow along, so we’re working to enable you to easily add captions to your video with the click of a button. This is an important feature for video viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing, have different language proficiencies, or are just listening in from a noisy environment.
Initially we’ll caption content when the spoken language is English, which will be followed by support for many additional languages. We’re also following up with the ability to view spoken words in the transcript pane as well; an approach we know many viewers prefer to use to catch up more quickly!
Manually Uploading and Editing Transcripts & Captions
Sometimes you need to have more control over the transcript and captions that accompany your videos. This might mean editing the transcript file to correct mistakes, or uploading a custom transcript file your team has created for a special video. We’ll empower you to add your own Video Text Tracks (VTT) file in any language. You can also download an existing transcript file, edit it outside of Stream with a text editor or VTT editor, and then upload the corrected version to ensure the highest level of transcript accuracy.
This feature will begin rolling out in early 2022 and followed by the ability to store multiple transcripts with a video. At which point, viewers will be able to select the language they want in either the video player captions or the transcript pane!
More Features Coming Soon
While we’re delivering these features to lay a solid foundation for Stream (on SharePoint), we remain committed to making video capabilities more accessible and productive in even more scenarios. We’re continuing to work on the next set of transcript features, including the ability to quickly search transcripts, edit and make corrections on the fly, additional transcript controls for video owners and admins, and automatically generating transcripts and captions more broadly to empower you to achieve more with video. Feel free to comment below and let us know what transcript features are most important to you!