QuickTime Player OCR: text from frames and recordings

On current macOS, QuickTime Player can usually read the text in a paused frame with Live Text: pause, and the words become selectable the way they are in a photo. What you copy is only as good as the frame you stop on. So most of this page is about finding a clean frame, and about what to do when Live Text doesn’t respond, in QuickTime Player or in any other player.

Live Text on a paused frame

Apple added Live Text for paused video frames in macOS Ventura in 2022 and describes it as working across the system. Apple’s developer documentation adds that its standard video player view for Mac apps looks for text whenever playback is paused, unless the app turns that off. In QuickTime Player:

1. Open the movie in QuickTime Player and press Space to pause on the frame with the text.
2. Move the pointer over the words. When it changes to a text cursor, the frame has been read.
3. Drag across the text you want and press ⌘C.
4. For more options, Control-click the selection: you can translate it, look it up or search the web for it.

If the pointer never becomes a text cursor, check that Live Text is switched on in System Settings → General → Language & Region. If it still doesn’t respond, try another Apple viewer before giving up. Select the file in Finder and press Space for Quick Look, or import the movie into Photos, pause it there and click the Live Text button on the frame.

Step to a sharp frame

Compressed video often smears small text for a moment after a cut, a scroll or a slide transition. A frame or two later, the same text can be crisp. QuickTime Player’s keyboard shortcuts make finding that frame quick:

• Left or Right Arrow steps one frame back or forward, and stops playback if the movie is running.
• Option-Left Arrow and Option-Right Arrow jump to the beginning or end.
• ⌘1 shows the movie at its actual size, ⌘3 fits it to the screen, and ⌘+ makes the window bigger. Larger letters are easier for any recognizer.
• ⌘F enters full screen. Press it again, or Esc, to leave.

Two more checks help. Subtitles or captions drawn over a slide hide the letters underneath; switch them off in the View menu (Subtitles, or closed captioning) before you copy. And if the text is hopelessly soft even at full size, open Window → Show Movie Inspector (⌘I) and look at the size. A movie recorded at a low resolution doesn’t contain sharp text to begin with, whatever you do on playback.

Your own screen recordings

Screen recordings made with ⇧⌘5 or QuickTime’s File → New Screen Recording are ordinary movie files that open in QuickTime Player, so Live Text works on them too. That’s useful for a demo you recorded, an error that flashed past during a test, or a meeting you recorded with permission. Our guide to recording your screen covers making one.

A recording only holds what was on screen, at your display’s resolution. Record the window large, and avoid scrolling quickly past text you’ll want later, since a pause on the right moment is all you need afterwards.

Other players

VLC, IINA, most browser players outside Safari and many course platforms draw video their own way, so Live Text usually isn’t available there. The free workaround is a screenshot: pause, press ⌃⇧⌘4, drag over the text, then in Preview choose File → New from Clipboard and select the words with Live Text. Many players also have a snapshot command that saves the current frame as an image you can open in Preview.

In Unpixel

Unpixel works the same way in every player, QuickTime Player included. Pause, press ⇧⌘2, drag over the text and let go: the words are on your clipboard, with a small “Copied” confirmation to check them. It doesn’t need the player to support anything, and the frame is read on your Mac, never saved as a file.

Some extras come in handy with video. Code in a tutorial keeps its lines when Keep line breaks is on in Settings → Recognition. A QR code shown on screen comes back as the link it contains. Hold ⌥ as you let go to copy a translation of a slide in another language. Every capture also goes into Unpixel’s history, so the line you copied from minute three is still there at minute forty.

Protected movies show black

Some video is protected against copying, such as many films bought or rented from online stores. macOS keeps those frames out of screenshots and screen recordings, so a capture shows a black rectangle, and Live Text has nothing to read. That’s deliberate, and Unpixel can’t read those frames either.

For protected video, turn on the subtitles and read them, or look for a transcript or the original document. Our explainer on why screenshots of videos are black has more, and the general guide to copying text from a video compares every method side by side.