Hello, everyone. Welcome back to my channel, Jennifer Marie, where I teach you different
freelancing tips and how to make money online. Some of my most popular videos are related to
how to convert audio or video files to text how to transcribe or even work as a transcriptionist. So
today, I'm going to show you a method of how you can transcribe unlimited audio and video files
from your computer, a Windows or a Mac computer completely for free. All you need is to download
a free Virtual Audio Cable, and I'll show you step by step how to do it. And then open up
either Microsoft Word Online, the free version, or Google Docs, and use the dictate feature to
essentially transcribe any audio or video file. Now don't worry about having to be really great
on the computer, I'm going to teach you how to do absolutely everything for complete beginners.
So the first thing we need to do is download the VB audio software cable. So I've linked you to
this website in the description below this video. So what is a VB cable, essentially,
it's a virtual audio device that is working as a Virtual Audio Cable. So all audio coming in the
cable input is simply forwarded to the cable output. So you know how there are many free
speech to text software's where you can talk and it will transcribe what you say, this is
going to work like that, except your computer will think that the audio file is you speaking so we
can use and take advantage of these free speech to text tools to transcribe our audio or video.
So click on download either Windows or Mac, and then go to the folder where this zip file has
been downloaded. Then you will right click and click Extract All and extract. So you're going
to go into the file folder and you'll see a bunch of different files. So we're going to focus on the
ones that say VB cable setup and VB cable setup 64. So if you don't know what kind of computer you
have, go to the search bar on your Windows taskbar and type in about, you should see something that
says about your PC or your settings click on that. And under System about you'll see here
that I have a 64 bit operating system. So that is the one I'm going to download. If you don't
have a 64 bit operating system, download the other one. This might seem complicated for you,
but don't worry, it's really, really easy. Now, you're going to right click on the version you
need to download. This is important and click Run as Administrator. If that doesn't work,
for whatever reason, make sure that your user on your computer has administration privileges.
So before you click Install driver, make sure to watch this entire video. Because once you install
the audio driver, you will not be able to hear any sound coming out of your speakers. So I don't want
you to freak out. This is because it's going to change your output speaker to the Virtual Cable.
So you can follow along with this video if you like first and then try this later. Or you can
just turn on the subtitles and follow along with me so you can read what I'm telling you to do.
I'm also going to tell you how to change it back so you can hear the sound from your speakers.
Again, it is very easy to switch this it's just a matter of selecting a different speaker.
So let's go ahead and click Install driver and install. You may have to reboot your system for
this to work. In my case, I didn't have to reboot it, it worked automatically. But you might want to
do this just in case. Now click OK. So now what we have to do is on your taskbar, you're going
to right click on the little sound icon and click sound settings. I'm using Windows 11. So if this
looks different for you just have to find your system sound settings. I'm going to link you in
the description below to the tutorial I did about this but using Windows 10 If that helps you out.
So basically, wherever you are on your sound settings, you need to change the output
and the input are going to change the output from your speakers or your headphones to the
VB audio Virtual Cable which says cable input. Okay, so make sure to click that little circle
to exchange that. And now under input make sure to change the microphone to cable output audio
Virtual Cable. Okay, so this is what it should look like once you've made those adjustments.
Now To change this again, all you would have to do is select your speakers or your
preferred microphone. And that's how you would change it back to your original sound settings.
Okay, so now the fun part, we're going to do this in Microsoft Word Online. Now mine's in Spanish,
but it doesn't matter. This works in whatever version of Microsoft Word Online, you have,
you do not have to have any premium version, you can just sign up using a free account. But
you need to use Microsoft Online and not the Microsoft software that you might have on your
computer. Because Microsoft Online is what has this dictate button. So it should say dictate,
there's a little microphone there. And you're going to click on that. And the first thing
we're going to do is click on this little gear icon to adjust our settings. So we're going to
tell it what language you are speaking. So locate your language, I'm speaking English in this audio,
so choose that. And then for your microphone, make sure to select the cable output the VB
audio Virtual Cable. So over here, there should say something like, adjust your punctuation
automatically. So I'm going to enable that so it corrects my punctuation and adds periods
where they should be or question marks. And then you can disable where it says to filter phrases,
and then click Save. Again, this should be an English for you, or whatever your language is.
So now open up whatever file you want to transcribe. So you can open it up in VLC player
or Windows Media Player or whatever. Have it ready, started from the beginning, and press play.
And then very quickly, you're going to click on the microphone icon in Microsoft Word. So now it
is listening. And you can see is just going ahead and transcribing everything I'm saying. And it's
making adjustments, it's adding commas and proper punctuation and splitting it into sentences. And
it honestly does such a great job, especially if your speaker is clear. If it's one speaker, it
really does an amazing job. So in my last tutorial about this, a lot of people were having problems
that their recording was stopping after around two to four minutes. But that Microsoft Word,
this wasn't an issue. So I decided to play the video I walked away from the computer went and
did the dishes. And by the time it came back, it transcribed the entire file, it did not stop. So
if you have a file that's over three minutes, or over four or five minutes, I recommend you use
Microsoft Word for this instead of Google Docs, it's just better because it keeps listening and
keeps transcribing the file for you. So my file was a 10 minute, almost 11 minute file. And when I
came back, it was completely done. And if you look through it, it's pretty good. There's a few things
that would change a couple of errors, things they didn't hear correctly. But the added punctuation,
they split the sentences correctly, they really did an amazing job. So from here,
you could press Ctrl plus C to copy and then Ctrl plus V to paste it in whatever document
you want to use. Maybe you want to use Google Docs or something else. So let's try out this
same file and show you how you would do this in Google Docs. We're gonna go over to Google Docs.
So we're going to go to Doc's dot google.com. And it's very important to note that you have
to be using the Chrome browser, this will not work on Firefox or another browser,
then you're going to click on Tools, then voice typing. And this microphone icon will pop up
and make sure you have your file ready that you want to transcribe.
So you're going to open up your file, start from the beginning, press play,
and then quickly click to speak. And when the microphone is on, it will be read. And you can see
that it has begun to transcribe the file. So in my last video, people were saying that with Google
Docs, it was stopping after around two to four minutes. So I left this same file running the same
one I use with Microsoft Word. And it's true that it did stop after around three to four minutes.
So you can see that it was recording and then boom, it just stopped. So in order to get this to
continue recording, I would have to press record again. So if you have a short file that's under
three minutes or so you can do this or if you're just sitting by your computer and monitoring it,
but if you have a file that's over three to four minutes, I definitely recommend you use
Microsoft Word Online. It's free. And also what I've noticed is Microsoft Word includes
punctuation and all that. Whereas Google Docs, it doesn't. It capitalizes things correctly,
but it's not adding in commas and periods for us the way it does with Microsoft Word.
So now to revert to your original sound settings just go down to the bottom, right click on the
sound icon, click sound settings. And then here you're going to change your output back to your
headphones or your speakers or whatever you want. And then your input for your microphone.
You'll change that to your normal microphone or headset or whatever. Okay, and now you'll be able
to hear out of your speakers or your headphones like normal. And if you want to go through this
process again, you would just change the input to cable output and the output to cable input.
So thank you guys so much for watching. I hope this video helped you out if you
have any questions, feel free to ask me in the comment section below. And make sure to
subscribe to my channel for more videos like this one. I'll see you in my next tutorial.