4 Best Ways to Transcribe M4A to Text Automatically (Free & Paid)

Home >
Learn >
Video Editing Tips >
4 Best Ways to Transcribe M4A to Text Automatically (Free & Paid)

Last Updated: 2023. 05. 22

Transcribing M4A to text makes your audio files more shareable, readable, and searchable for target viewers.

So, if you have recorded your podcasts, interviews, lectures, or video project voiceovers in M4A audio format and want to easily transcribe M4A to text for video subtitles, blog posts, newsletters, or other repurposings, we’ve got you covered!

In this tutorial, we will walk you through the 4 best ways to automatically transcribe M4A to text. So, you can use the transcript for your needs.

Here’s What You Will Learn:

Transcribe M4A to Text by OpenAI Playground

Transcribe M4A to Text by FlexClip Online

Transcribe M4A to Text by Otter.AI

Transcribe M4A to Text by Microsoft 365 Online

Also, read the 4 best podcast intro makers.

Transcribe M4A to Text by OpenAI Playground

Well, if you are a ChatGPT user and your M4A file is no more than 25MB, then a quick and easy way to transcribe M4A to text is using the latest and free speech-to-text feature, provided by OpenAI Playground.

Transcribe M4A to text for free by OpenAI Playground’s speech-to-text feature.

Best Features:

Essentially, OpenAI Playground is an open-source language model that uses ChatGPT-3 to help you transcribe any audio to text for free.

You may also use OpenAI Playground to translate and transcribe audio to text.

You can upload M4A, MP3, MP4, MPEG, MPGA, WAV, and WebM for auto transcription. While the maximum file size is 25MB.

How to Transcribe M4A to Text by OpenAI Playground:

Step 1

Log into your OpenAI’s free account > access OpenAI Playground > click the Speech to Text icon, which is a small microphone.

Access OpenAI Playground and click speech to text tool.

Step 2

Drag and drop your M4A audio file into the pop-up window > ChatGPT-3 will automatically transcribe the audio file for you.

Upload your M4A file to OpenAI Playground.

Step 3

You can copy and paste the AI-generated transcript to TXT or Word file for your blog posts, YouTube transcript, etc.

Copy and paste the transcript of M4A file to TXT or DOCX file.

Downside:

The only downside with OpenAI Playground is that for free users, you only have 256 tokens to use the free M4A to text transcription and the maximum M4A upload is 25MB.

Transcribe M4A to Text by FlexClip Online

If you want to transcribe M4A to text and directly add the transcript as the subtitles for your video projects for YouTube, TokTok, Instagram Reels, etc. then one of the easiest solutions would be using the user-friendly and feature-rich FlexClip online video maker.

Easily transcribe M4A to text for your video projects by FlexClip online.

Transcribe Now

Best Features:

With FlexClip’s AI auto subtitle generator, you can transcribe M4A to text with the click of a button, and the transcript can hit up to 95% accuracy and there are 140+ languages and accents for you to choose from.

Automatically transcribe M4A to text by FlexClip AI auto subtitle generator online.

Create Now

You can easily customize the style of your M4A transcript in videos, such as text font, text size, text color, text background fill, opacity, alignment, etc. to match the theme of your video.

Easily customize the style of auto-generated subtitles.

Another icing on the cake is that you may also find thousands of designer-made and fully-customizable video templates, covering podcasts, slideshows, YouTube videos, webinars, newscasts, corporate promos, travel, wedding, birthdays, sports & fitness, movie trailers, memorials, etc. By easy drag and drop, you can create a stop-scrolling video in minutes, with no design experience needed.

Preview

Youtube Music Podcast Intro Outro

Use This Template

Preview

Pop Live Podcast Wave Youtube Intro Outro

Use This Template

Preview

Family Moment Collage Slideshow

Use This Template

Preview

Technology Universal Simple Company Webinar

Use This Template

Apart from 74,000+ royalty-free music and sound effects and 4M+ stock photos and videos, as a flexible AI video editor, FlexClip also offers you powerful AI tools, such as a free text-to-speech generator, image background remover, and video to audio converter, etc, which will boost your productivity and save you tons of precious time.

Add realistic AI voices to your videos with FlexCip’s free text-to-speech generator.

Use Free TTS

How to Transcribe M4A to Text by FlexClip:

Step 1

Access FlexClip and upload your M4A audio files from your PC, phone, Google Drive, One Drive, Dropbox, or Google Photos.

Upload your M4A audio files to FlexClip.

Step 2

Set the audio duration that matches the M4A audio length > click the plus sign to add the M4A audio file to the audio track. Now, you can trim or split the audio, adjust the audio’s volume, etc.

Set the video duration and add the M4A audio file to the audio track.

Step 3

Automatically transcribe M4A to text.

Click the Subtitle tab > Auto AI Subtitle > identify the language in the M4A audio file > hit Next > set the style of transcribed text. It doesn’t have to be perfect because you can modify it later > hit the Generate Subtitles button.

Automatically transcribe M4A to text in the video.

Create Now

Later, you can proofread the auto-generated subtitles and fine-tune the text font, text color, background fill, text size, alignment, etc. to your heart’s content.

Customize the styles of auto-generated subtitles.

If one subtitle seems too long, you can press “Enter” to split it or merge two short subtitles with ease. Pretty handy!

Easily split or merge subtitles.

Step 4

Add videos, images, or text animations to make the video more engaging. Click the add as a layer to layer videos or images over the black video background. You can trim the duration of images or videos as well.

Add images or videos to the video background.

Next, click the text tab > select from hundreds of ready-made and editable text animations for your video projects, such as lower thirds, news titles, social profile titles, minimal titles, quotes, call-out titles, speech bubbles, etc.

Add readymade and editable text animations to the video.

Create Now

You can trim the duration of text animations, and click the Style and Motion tools to customize the text styles and animate text with dozens of trending animations, such as typewriter, glitter, burst, bounce, neon, etc.

Set text styles and easily animate text.

Step 5

Add royalty-free music and sound effect to create the vibes.

Click the Audio tab and select from 74,000+ royalty-free music tracks and sound effects. You can layer multiple audio tracks to create a real-world auditory experience for the viewers and easily trim, split the audio tracks, and adjust audio volume or apply fade in/out effects for seamless audio transition.

Add royalty-free music and sound effects to the video.

Step 6

Preview and share.

Done with the editing. You can save the 1080P MP4 video to your PC or directly share it to your YouTube channel, One Drive, Google Drive, Dropbox, or even TikTok; a clickable link is also available for your blog posts, newsletters or other repurposings.

Easily share and repurpose your video.

Downside:

The only downside with FlexClip is that currently, you can’t directly save the transcript of the M4A audio file as TXT or DOCX file to your PC.

Transcribe M4A to Text by Otter.AI

If your M4A audio file can last up to 40 mins or even hours and you need to transcribe M4A to text for blog posts, documentation of lectures, interviews, webinars, news releases, etc. and then another great workaround to convert M4A to text is using Otter. AI. It’s a professional voice meeting notes and real-time transcription tool that aims to transcribe any audio to text and ease your workload.

Transcribe M4A to text by Otter.

Best Features:

The moment you upload your M4A to Otter.AI, it can help you auto-transcribe M4A to text and auto-generate keywords, timestamps, and summary of your conversation, which is extremely user-friendly for SEO and creating text-based content on the web.

You can customize the name of each speaker in the M4A audio file and highlight parts of the transcript, adding notes and comments as well.

Connect Otter to Zoom Meeting, Google Meet, or Microsoft Team for real-time transcription.

Save the transcript to TXT, DOCX, PDF, or SRT file.

Adjust the playback speed of M4A audio for checking.

It works both on web browsers and mobile apps (IOS & Android).

How to Transcribe M4A to Text by Otter.AI:

Step 1

Sign up to Otter.AI for free > log into your account > click the Import button to the top right corner > upload your M4A file > Otter will instantly transcribe M4A to text for you.

Step 2

Proofread the transcript > Customize the name of the speakers > browse through the auto-generated keywords and summary to see if any changes need to be made, etc.

Step 3

Click the Three Dots in the top right corner > Export > select the text format (TXT, DOCX, PDF, or SRT) to download the transcript.

Downside:

Currently, Otter.AI only supports English for transcription.

Transcribe M4A to Text by Microsoft 365 Online

Well, if you are a subscribed Microsoft 365 user, luckily you can use its web version Word to auto-transcribe M4A to text online.

Use Microsoft 365 to transcribe M4A to text online.

Best Features:

Upload M4A, WAV, MP4 and MP3 for auto-transcription to text.

It supports 80+ languages for audio to text.

Auo-generate exact timestamps, speakers, and text from your audio files and you can customize the details.

Auto-sync the transcript to One Drive.

Adjust the playback speed of M4A audio.

How to Transcribe M4A to Text by Microsoft 365 Online:

Step 1

Visit Microsoft 365 web portal > log into your account > select and create a new Word document > hover to Transcribe option to the right ribbon > click on it.

Step 2

Select the language in your M4A audio file > hit Upload Audio to import your M4A audio file > the auto transcription shall begin.

Step 3

Proofread the auto-generated transcript > customize the name of the speaker > click Add to Document > download the transcript in DOCX format to your PC.

Downside:

The audio-to-text transcription feature is only available to subscribed users.

If your uploaded audio file is longer than 13 mins, Word will tell you that the file is too big to transcribe.

Now, It's Your Move

Converting M4A to text allows you to easily repurpose your audio file for blog posts, newsletters, video projects or news releases, academic documentation, etc. Please feel free to experiment with all the M4A to text converters mentioned above and share this post on your Facebook or Twitter and tell us which one works best for you. Cheers!

Transcribe M4A to Text Now

Frank /

Passionate about photography, video-making and travel, Frank is a seasoned copywriter and a beloved father of 2-year-old daughter at FlexClip. He is always keen to share his latest discovery about video marketing and tricks to relive your memories through videos and images.