Adding Episode Transcripts

Episode transcripts in AiO Podcast Studio let you publish a full written version of your audio alongside the player. Transcripts improve accessibility for listeners who are deaf or hard of hearing, help search engines index your episode content, and let fans read along while the episode plays. Each episode can have one transcript per language, and every transcript is also published in your RSS feed, so podcast apps such as Apple Podcasts can show it too. This tutorial explains how to add transcripts, how they are displayed on your website, and how they reach podcast apps.

Contents

• Add a Transcript to an Episode
• Choose a Transcript Format
• Transcripts in More Than One Language
• How Transcripts Are Displayed
• Clickable Timestamps
• Transcripts in Podcast Apps
• Importing Transcripts from an RSS Feed
• Upgrading from an Earlier Version

Add a Transcript to an Episode

Open the episode you want to edit by going to Podcasts → All Episodes and clicking the episode title. In the Episode Info panel below the content editor, make sure the Episode Details tab is selected. Click the Transcription accordion to expand it.

1. Check the Enable Transcription? box. The transcript list appears below it.
2. Click Add New Transcript to add a row.
3. Choose the transcript’s Language. Leave it on — Podcast language — for a transcript in the language the episode is recorded in. The podcast’s language is the Podcast Language field on the podcast’s Distribution tab.
4. Choose the Source:
   • File — enter the address of a transcript file, or click Upload File to upload one or choose one from the Media Library.
   • Text — paste the transcript into the text area.
5. Click Update to save.

After saving, a short status line under each transcript shows what the plugin found in it, for example VTT · Timed · 2 speakers or Plain text · Untimed. If something is wrong, the status line says so instead:

• Could not be read — the file could not be reached, is larger than 5 MB, is not a transcript format, or contains no transcript. The message tells you which. Check the address, and make sure the file can be opened publicly in a browser.
• Duplicate language — ignored — two transcripts have the same language. Only the first one in the list is used. Change the language of the other one, or remove it.

To reorder transcripts, drag a row by its handle on the left. To remove a transcript, click the trash icon on its row and click Update.

To hide every transcript without deleting them, uncheck the Enable Transcription? box and click Update. Your transcripts are kept, but they no longer appear on the episode page or in your RSS feed until the box is checked again.

Choose a Transcript Format

AiO Podcast Studio reads five transcript formats: VTT, SRT, JSON (the Podcasting 2.0 transcript format), HTML and plain text. What you can do with a transcript depends on whether it is timed — whether it records when each line is spoken.

• Timed transcripts (VTT, SRT, JSON) — shown on the episode page by speaker, with clickable lines and highlighting as the episode plays. Published to podcast apps in every format: VTT, SRT, JSON and HTML. This is the only kind Apple Podcasts accepts.
• Untimed transcripts (HTML, plain text) — shown on the episode page as text. Published to podcast apps as HTML and plain text. Timings are never made up for text that has none.

A VTT file with speaker names is the best choice. Most editors export one. In Descript and similar editors, that is the subtitles or captions export, not the transcript export: the transcript export (TXT, DOCX or Markdown) has no timings.

Speaker names are picked up from VTT speaker tags, or from a name followed by a colon at the start of a line, such as Kevin: Welcome to the show. If your file has no speaker names, the status line shows No speaker names and the transcript is still shown, just without names.

Some notes on the two sources:

• Pasted text — VTT, SRT and JSON are recognised automatically, so speakers and timings are kept. VTT must keep its first line, WEBVTT. Anything else is treated as plain text, and any HTML in it is shown as typed rather than formatted. To publish an HTML transcript, add it as a file.
• Files — a file must be 5 MB or smaller and publicly reachable. The WordPress Media Library accepts VTT, SRT and plain-text uploads. JSON files are not accepted by WordPress, and HTML uploads are allowed only for administrators. Host those files elsewhere and enter their address instead.

Transcripts in More Than One Language

To offer an episode’s transcript in other languages, add one row per language and set each row’s Language. Transcripts in other languages are translations of the same audio, so a translated transcript can share the original’s timings, much like subtitles.

Each language can have only one transcript. A row left on — Podcast language — counts as the podcast’s language, so it clashes with a row that names that language explicitly.

How Transcripts Are Displayed

The way the transcript appears on the episode page depends on whether the episode also has a written description in the main content editor.

• Episode has both a description and a transcript — The episode page displays a tabbed interface. The first tab, labelled Episode Details, shows the episode description. The second tab, labelled Transcript, shows the full transcript. Visitors can switch between the two tabs without leaving the page.
• Episode has a transcript only — The transcript is displayed directly on the page without a tab interface.
• Episode has a description only — The description is displayed as normal and no transcript section appears.

A timed transcript is set out in passages, one for each turn a speaker takes, with the speaker’s name and the time the passage starts.

• Click a time or any line to play the episode from that point. The page stays where it is, so visitors keep their place in the transcript.
• The line being spoken is highlighted as the episode plays, and the highlight follows when a visitor skips around in the player.

An untimed transcript is shown as text. Any timestamps in it can be clickable — see Clickable Timestamps below.

When an episode has transcripts in more than one language, buttons above the transcript let visitors switch between them. The transcript in the podcast’s own language is labelled (original), for example English (original). The page opens on the transcript in your site’s language. If there isn’t one, it opens on the one in the podcast’s language, and otherwise on the first transcript in the list.

Clickable Timestamps

In a timed transcript, every passage’s start time and every line is always clickable — no setting is needed.

In an untimed transcript, AiO Podcast Studio automatically detects timestamps in your transcript text and turns them into clickable links. When a visitor clicks a timestamp, the audio player on the same page seeks to that point in the episode and begins playing from there.

Timestamps are recognised in both MM:SS and HH:MM:SS formats — for example, 4:32 or 1:04:32. No special formatting is required; simply include the timestamps as plain text in your transcript and the plugin will handle the rest.

Clickable timestamps in an untimed transcript require the Chapters control to be enabled in the player settings. Go to Podcasts → Settings → Display, open the Player tab, and make sure Chapters is ticked under Player Controls. If it is not enabled, timestamps in an untimed transcript will remain as plain text.

Transcripts in Podcast Apps

Every transcript you add is also published in your podcast’s RSS feed with the Podcasting 2.0 podcast:transcript tag, which Apple Podcasts and other Podcasting 2.0 apps read. There is nothing extra to set up: once Enable Transcription? is checked and the episode is saved, its transcripts are in the feed.

• Every format the transcript allows — a timed transcript is offered as VTT, SRT, JSON and HTML, and an untimed one as HTML and plain text, so each app can pick the format it supports.
• Every language — each transcript is listed with its language, and apps choose which to show their listeners.
• Files that cannot be read are left out — a transcript whose status line shows Could not be read is not listed, so apps never receive a broken link.

Apple Podcasts accepts timed transcripts only (VTT or SRT), in a limited set of languages, and checks each one against its own quality standards. By default it shows its own automatic transcript. To show yours instead, open the episode in Apple Podcasts Connect and set it to Display transcripts I provide.

Transcripts of restricted episodes are protected in the same way as their audio. Anyone without access gets a “403 Forbidden” response, and members’ own podcast feeds carry their sign-in so their podcast apps can open the transcript.

Feeds are cached, so a new or changed transcript may not appear in your feed straight away. Saving the episode refreshes its podcast’s feed.

Importing Transcripts from an RSS Feed

When you import a podcast from an RSS feed, AiO Podcast Studio also brings in its episodes’ transcripts, if the feed publishes them with the Podcasting 2.0 podcast:transcript tag. Many hosts do, including Buzzsprout and Transistor.

• One transcript is kept per language, in the best format the feed offers, with VTT first.
• Transcripts are linked, not copied, so the files stay with your host.
• Enable Transcription? is checked automatically for every episode that receives a transcript.

Whenever episodes are updated from the feed, what happens to transcripts depends on the Update Existing Content? option on the podcast’s Import Options tab:

• Off — episodes that have no transcript get the feed’s. Episodes that already have transcripts are left alone, including any you added yourself.
• On — an episode’s transcripts are replaced by the feed’s, but only when the feed has transcripts for that episode. A feed without them never clears yours.

If you imported a podcast before transcripts were supported, update its episodes from the feed again to bring their transcripts in.

Upgrading from an Earlier Version

Before version 1.0.5, each episode had a single Transcription Text field. Transcripts you entered there are kept automatically. Nothing needs re-entering:

• Your transcript appears as the first row in the transcript list, with the source set to Text and the language set to — Podcast language —.
• It keeps showing on the episode page and is added to your RSS feed, even before you next edit the episode.
• If you pasted a VTT transcript before 1.0.5, saving removed its speaker tags. Paste it again to bring the speaker names back.