Transcribing a RuTube video: how to get the text

Potok transcribes Russian speech; this site has been translated into English for convenience.

The Potok Telegram bot @potok_now_bot turns a RuTube video into text: send it a direct link to the video. A short recording comes back as text and a long one as a file, with 60 minutes per month free. The alternative is the built-in retelling of Russian-language videos in Yandex Browser. For typing your own text by voice there is the Potok app.

A RuTube video needs to be turned into text: you can copy the link and send it to the bot, or first try the built-in retelling right in the browser. We go through both ways and what you get back.

Where to get the link to a RuTube video

1. Open the video you need on RuTube, in the browser on a computer or in the mobile app.
2. Copy the link to it: the “Share” button under the player shows the address at once, or you can take it from the browser address bar after opening the video page.
3. Check that the link leads to the right video and opens without signing in to an account, so it is easier to paste into the conversation with the bot or into a form on the site.
4. You do not have to download the file to the computer: both the bot and the web version below accept the link itself, with no separate upload.

How to send a RuTube link to the bot and get the text

1. Find the bot @potok_now_bot in Telegram, go to a private chat with it and start it with the /start command.
2. Paste the copied RuTube video link there. You will not need to download and upload the file separately.
3. After a while the result arrives: if the recording is short, the text appears right in the chat; if it is long, it comes as a file, TXT or DOCX as chosen in the bot settings.
4. Next to the finished text there are the buttons “Summary”, “Tasks and deadlines”, “Ask” and “Other format”.
5. Speaker labels (“Speaker 1”, “Speaker 2”) and timecodes are shown only to those who turned them on beforehand in the bot's /settings.
6. A longer than usual video is easier to drop into the bot's mini app: it accepts both a link and a file up to 2 GB. A similar case with another platform is in the article why meeting transcription is harder than ordinary dictation.

Your own video retelling in Yandex Browser

Yandex Browser has a built-in retelling of Russian-language videos: the browser itself shows a short summary of the video right on the page, with no third-party services or extensions. According to the site, a specific list of supported video platforms is not given, so for a RuTube video it is worth simply opening it in Yandex Browser and seeing whether a retelling appears. If there is no retelling, or you need the exact text rather than a short summary, then the bot or one of the transcription services from the table below will do. A general overview of the categories is in the material audio to text transcription: comparison of services.

When the bot will not fit for RuTube transcription

A video that is not in Russian will be left without a transcript: the bot's model is set up only for Russian speech and does not translate. Do not expect real names of participants either: only “Speaker 1”, “Speaker 2” in order of lines. The bot will not cope with a live broadcast: it needs a finished, complete recording, not a real-time stream. And the key condition: the Potok bot is a cloud service, recognition happens on servers in Russia, so it does not work without an internet connection.

Frequently asked questions

Primary sources: yandex.ru · vc.ru · speech2text.ru · audio-2-text.ru