Youtube: Transcript feature

YouTube allows for interactive transcripts. That is, multilingual human-edited subtitles files (as opposed to Google's automatic but perfectible speech recognition technology). These transcript can even lead straight to the right par of the text. Awesome, but time-consuming to create.

Consider the unforgettable Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005.

On the image above, I squared the transcript icon. When you click on it, you get a drop-down menu with the text (you may even have several version of the text). It is interactive, because if you click on it, you can go straight to the right part. You can even search the text: this is how I found the no one wants to die part (hence the orange highlighting for my browser search — the bold line is the line currently playing). You click on the text and voilà! you have it And you can even permalink the exact location. In our case, this would be http://youtu.be/D1R-jKKp3NA?t=11m40s. To get the right link, just use the share button (partager on this screenshot), then click on the option link link that will appear and check the start at checkbox.

Try it out!