How To Punctuate YouTube Transcripts Quickly

In this video, I would like to show you how to punctuate YouTube transcripts quickly. I made a video about a year ago, which has received quite a few views. However, I believe there is probably an easier and better way to punctuate YouTube transcripts, which I will show you in this video. If you are creating videos on YouTube, you may be interested in seeing my previous blog post, which is about using Camtasia and how to import files.

I have a video here that I created the other day; it’s a relatively short video. So, I am going to go to the transcript on YouTube. Transcripts have recently moved on YouTube; you now have to go to the description area to find the transcript.

If we click the transcript button, we can see our transcript from the video. You can see that the transcript is not punctuated and it also has timestamps on every line. If you click on the three dots, you will see toggle timestamps, which will then remove the time stamps from the transcript.

We now need to go to ChatGPT, where we need to add our prompt. I’m using ChatGPT 4. However, the free version 3.5 works absolutely fine. I’m going to put my prompt into ChatGPT, which you can see below.

I will then copy and paste the YouTube transcripts below. The transcript is not very long, so it shouldn’t take long for ChatGPT to edit the transcript.

Full Transcript

In this video, I want to show you how to punctuate YouTube transcripts quickly. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever downloaded a YouTube transcript. As you can see here, this was a year ago. I made this video, “How to Edit YouTube Transcripts in Microsoft Word with Line Breaks,” and it does work. But there’s probably a better way now. I have a few comments up there. However, we can actually use ChatGPT to do this. So, let’s have a look at a video I have here. This is a relatively short video that I made the other day. So, let’s get this transcript up. Transcripts used to be here, but now they’ve moved for some reason. So, we come down here to “Transcript,” “Show Transcript,” and there it is. Then we need to go to “Timestamps,” and in a minute, I’m going to highlight this and paste it into ChatGPT.

Now, I am using ChatGPT 4. I’ve only just started using version 4 of ChatGPT; I was using the free version before, which works fine. Apparently, ChatGPT 4 does have a few better capabilities, although I was getting on fine, to be fair, with ChatGPT 3.5, which is free. So, you can use either; I’m going to use ChatGPT 4 as I have full access to it.

Paste The Transcript Into ChatGPT

In the document which I’m going to copy, I have a Word document here. In fact, let me drag it across. It says, “I have another YouTube transcript. Can you check out the punctuation, please, and remove any or similar unwanted words? I will put the transcript below.” So, let’s copy that to ChatGPT. Let’s slide that out of the way. I’ve got another monitor here, but you can only see one monitor. So, let’s paste that in and put the new text below.

So, let’s copy this. Highlight that from the top. It doesn’t matter if there’s stuff in there. This one’s quite short. Copy that and put it into ChatGPT. Let’s watch it do the work. For some reason, ChatGPT seems to be slower than 3.5. Now, whether it’s because it’s doing things more thoroughly, I don’t know, or it’s being used a lot. This video is not particularly long, so it won’t take too many seconds.

The great thing is that ChatGPT will remove all those unwanted words that you were not aware of!

Talk To ChatGPT Like It’s Human!

So, it’s finished. Just going back to what I put in, in case you’re not used to ChatGPT, you can create a free account. As I said, I was using a free account for quite a few months, to be fair, and I didn’t worry about upgrading. But because it’s quite useful for a few things, I thought I’d try the paid version. But you need to talk to it almost like you’re telling a person what to do. So, I have another YouTube transcript: “Can you check out the punctuation, please, and remove any ‘ums’ or similar unwanted words? I’ll put the transcript below.” So, you’re literally telling someone to do a job. You can see, probably here; I’ve probably got some stutters. We don’t realize we have these stutters until we see it in a transcript, but it’s just the way we talk. We’re all different.

So anyway, it’s spelled my name wrong, I will correct that. “Hi there, it’s Roy Bretton here. I hope you’re doing well. In this video, I would like to show you how to temporarily remove the bookmarks bar from Google Chrome. Now, you can see I’ve got a bookmarks bar here that’s got various things on it. So perhaps when I’m making a video, which I quite often do, I don’t want to show the bookmarks bar. So, it’s much more here; you just got one long passage with no abbreviations or anything.

To Conclude

So, ChatGPT has punctuated the transcription; there may be times when you might want to convert a transcription into a blog post or something. I would not use ChatGPT or similar AI products to write a blog post; you do need to make it unique. You can’t just copy words and let AI do it for you. ChatGPT has a very unique way of writing, but it is not always too clever. So, you do have to be very careful with AI. But just for transcribing YouTube videos, it seems to work fine.

I see far too many people writing blog posts with AI, personally, I don’t think it’s clever! To me, AI has a very unique way of writing, and it’s not very personal, and it is also very obvious that it has AI content. I believe that people using AI to write blog posts will suffer later as Google can easily tell that it’s not unique content.

When we write, I believe it has to come from the heart and be our own content; otherwise, what’s the point? Please don’t get me wrong, AI can certainly help brainstorm ideas, etc, but the main content has to come from our own unique style.

So, if you have any questions on this, please feel free to leave a comment. I’m here to help. Thanks very much for watching.”