Getting the file off the share page
A Loom video lives at a share link rather than on your machine, and transcription needs the file itself. The download option sits in the menu on the video page, and the owner of the recording can disable it, so a video someone else made may not offer you one.
If downloading is blocked and you genuinely need the transcript, asking the owner to send you the file is the straightforward route. What you get is an ordinary MP4 that uploads here like any other video.
Turning a walkthrough into something searchable
Most Loom videos are explanations: a product walkthrough, a handover, a bug reproduction, a piece of feedback. All of that is knowledge trapped in a format nobody can search, and finding the thirty seconds that mattered means scrubbing through the whole thing again.
A transcript turns the same recording into text you can search, quote in a ticket, paste into documentation or hand to someone who would rather read than watch. The timestamps mean anyone who wants the original moment can jump straight back to it.
Frequently asked questions
The download button is missing. What now?
The person who recorded it has disabled downloading, which is a setting only they control. Ask them to download and send you the file, or to enable it for that video.
What if my video is not in a language Loom transcribes?
That is the common reason to do this separately. Download the video and transcribe it here, which covers a much wider range of languages and hands you exportable files rather than text on a page.
Can I get captions for the Loom video too?
Yes. The same transcription exports as SRT and VTT alongside plain text, so you can add a caption file to the video wherever you republish or embed it.