How to convert videos into written documentation

Use ChatGPT to turn video transcripts into various forms of written documentation.

beginner pro

Tool: ChatGPT Topic: ContentTopic: Video

2024-11-13

Video documentation is a powerful and efficient way to communicate information, from providing technical documentation to clients to onboarding employees to new procedures. And with tools like Loom, it’s never been easier to spin up a quick video and send it to a colleague or client in place of an email or Slack message.

But sometimes a video is not enough. Especially when you need to share information with different audiences or distribute it through various channels like a social post or company memo.

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how you can use ChatGPT to take your video assets and transform them into various forms of written documentation.

You’ll need:

ChatGPT
Loom (optional)

Steps we’ll follow in this tutorial:

Generate a video transcript
Create targeted titles and summaries for your videos
Convert a video transcript into an SOP document
Transform your video transcript into social posts
Turn a video transcript into emails

Generate a video transcript

The first step in converting videos into written documentation is generating a video transcript. The transcript will become the primary artifact we provide ChatGPT to transform into other written documentation.

If you’re using a tool like Loom, video transcripts will be autogenerated for your videos. If you’re using another video recording tool that does not auto-generate transcriptions, we recommend uploading your video to Descript, which can create a transcript for your videos automatically.

💡 Tip: If you need instructions on how to upload and transcribe videos using Descript, check out this step-by-step walkthrough from the Descript team.

We’ll be using Loom for this tutorial, so we’ll walk through how to get transcripts from this service.

To start, record a video with Loom then you’ll be automatically taken to the video playback screen. Under the “Transcript” tab in the right window pane, click “Copy” or “Download” to either copy or download the video transcript.

💡 Tip: Currently, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude are not able to transcribe a video file into a written transcript within their chatbot experience. This is why we recommend using a tool like Loom or Descript to generate the transcript first.

Create targeted titles and summaries for your videos

Now we can head over to ChatGPT to start transforming our transcript into other documentation. We’ll start by asking ChatGPT for a title and summary.

Sample prompt:

Generate a title and summary for the attached video transcript. [Upload transcript as an attached file]

This is a great initial title and summary, but we can take it a step further by asking ChatGPT to customize the title and summary based on a specific audience or goal:

Update the title and summary to be for [describe audience]. My goal with the video is to [describe goals].

Turn a video transcript into an SOP document

Now that we have a targeted title and summary for our video, we can create an SOP document with ChatGPT from the video transcript:

I'm sending this video to [insert audience] to perform this process. Can you convert the video transcript into an SOP document for this audience?

We can even ask ChatGPT to provide feedback on our video so we can make updates to not only our SOP document but also update the video to be more comprehensive. To do this, all we need to do is ask ChatGPT for recommendations:

Are there any steps you think are missing from the process in the video? Or that you recommend we include in the video?

Transform your video transcript into social posts

X (formerly Twitter)

Maybe your video isn’t for colleagues but is a demo video for your product or services. You can have ChatGPT generate social posts from your video transcripts too:

Create a Twitter thread using the video transcript content as the primary content and then marketing [insert marketing goals] in the last tweet. Do not use emojis. Match the writing style of my previous Tweets: [insert X/Twitter profile URL].

💡 Tip: ChatGPT can search the web, so it’s great to use that feature to have it match your writing style. In this example, I provided ChatGPT a link to my Twitter profile page so it could emulate my writing style.

Now, let’s have ChatGPT write a LinkedIn post for our video as well. We’ll structure it similarly to our X/Twitter thread request, but link out to our LinkedIn profile for reference:

Create a LinkedIn post using the video transcript content as the primary content and then marketing [insert marketing goals] in the last sentence. Do not use emojis. Match the writing style of my previous posts: [insert LinkedIn posts URL].

💡 Tip: For ChatGPT to emulate your writing style, link your LinkedIn Activity page, not Profile page.

Turn a video transcript into emails

Finally, we can also turn our video transcript into emails. We’ll have ChatGPT write two different emails for us: an internal memo and a marketing email:

Using the video transcript content, write an internal memo email to [insert audience] at my company briefly explaining the process and why it's important. Link out to both the video and the SOP document in the email.

Now, we can have ChatGPT write a marketing-style email promoting our services using the video transcript as the primary content:

Using the video transcript content, write a marketing email to [insert audience] about the process, the benefits of using it, and that they can connect with me for [insert marketing goals].

‍

This tutorial was created by Garrett.