How to get the transcript of an Echo360 lecture

Checked against Echo360's help pages on 11 October 2026

Echo360 (renamed EchoVideo at some universities) makes a transcript of most lecture recordings automatically. You can read it next to the video, search it, click a line to jump to that moment, and usually download it. Here's where each of those is, and what to do when the transcript is missing.

See the transcript while you watch

  1. Open the recording from your course page or Echo360.
  2. Click the Transcript button on the playback bar. A panel opens beside the video with the text and the time of each line.
  3. Click any line to jump the video to that point, or type in the search box to find a word.

If the recording is embedded in a Canvas or Moodle page, opening the transcript can move it to its own tab, which Echo360 calls the full tab player.

Download it

The transcript panel has a download icon (in the phone app it sits next to the search box). The file is usually a .vtt: plain text with a timestamp before each line, which opens in any text editor.

No download icon? Your university or lecturer has turned downloads off for that recording. Recordings with polls also hold back the transcript until you've answered every poll.

When there's no transcript

  • The lecture was only just uploaded. Transcripts are made after the upload finishes, so a lecture from this morning may not have one yet. Check back later in the day.
  • Captions are off for that course. Lecturers can turn them off. Ask them, or your university's accessibility service, which can often arrange captions.
  • The audio is poor. Automatic transcripts struggle with a quiet microphone or a noisy room, and get technical terms wrong. Check anything important against the recording.

Ask questions about the transcript

Sidekick Tutor, a Chrome extension I wrote, does this. With an Echo360 recording open, press Alt+Shift+A and ask something like "what did she mean by elasticity at the start?" It reads the whole transcript and answers with timestamps you can click. If it can't get the transcript on your university's setup, turn on CC and it records the captions as the lecture plays.

Coming soon to Chrome Free for 10 questions a week, no account needed.

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