Video Subtitles & Transcripts Now Available on Real Python

Hey there,

I’ve got a big update to share today:

Real Python video courses now have full subtitles and transcripts!

I think this is going to do a lot for accessibility and making your favorite Python learning resources easier to review & more searchable.

Let’s do a quick demo. Video lessons now come with full subtitles that you can turn on and off at your convenience:

Below each video you’ll also find an interactive transcript that animates along with the video to show you what section of the video is currently playing:

A lot of effort goes into editing and polishing the subtitles in order to make them accurate.

For example, we apply custom formatting to code examples and variable identifiers when they appear in subtitle cue text and on transcripts:

YouTube and many other online platforms provide auto-generated subtitles for their video content.

But for highly technical material like our programming courses that’s just not good enough. Sloppy, inaccurate subtitles and transcripts are confusing.

They waste your time and slow down your learning progress.

Instead, we treat video subtitles and transcripts as first class citizens of our content library: On Real Python, you’ll get high-quality, hand-edited subtitles you can trust to be accurate.

Plus, the realpython.com learning platform offers you several convenience features when accessing subtitles and transcripts.

For example, each sentence in the transcript is clickable so you can quickly jump to a specific portion of the video just by clicking on a word in the transcript:

This makes it super easy to review specific parts of a course or to find content you previously watched…

You can even share links to specific time codes in the video by right-clicking on a sentence or word in the transcript and selecting Copy Link Address.

This is great for pointing out parts of a video to colleagues and friends.

Or you can run a full-text search across all video subtitles with our site-wide search feature to instantly find the learning materials that can help you the most right now.

The subtitles will also help you if you’re watching the videos at 1.5x or 2x speed, or if you’re looking to train your pronunciation of various tech and coding acronyms (like API, RESTful, PyPy, PyPI, and so on.)

We’ve been beta-testing the subtitles feature with members of the RP Community Chat and now it’s finally available on all realpython.com accounts:

All new courses will have subtitles and transcripts available from day one.

And we’re also going back through our course catalog to bring subtitles and transcripts to all of them over time.

I’m super proud of this new feature and the team effort behind it.

To bring you the highest-quality transcripts I’ve expanded the Real Python Team and hired a subtitling expert (shoutout to Sadie) and the whole RP editorial team is constantly refining our editing and formatting standards.

And by the way:

This is a completely free upgrade for current Real Python Members. If you’re a member today you’ll get access to all subtitles and lesson transcripts, completely free.

Check out how the new subtitles and transcripts feature works “in action”: 

• Watch our (free) welcome course with full transcripts for each lesson or
• Learn more about the subtitles/transcripts feature →

Happy Pythoning!

— Dan Bader, Editor-in-chief at Real Python