The transcript is the most useful thing the recording produces

Text can be searched and skimmed, and video can do neither.

Everything that makes a recording awkward comes from the fact that it unfolds at a fixed speed and hides its contents until you reach them. A transcript removes both problems at once. It can be searched, so a viewer looking for a particular term finds every place it was discussed. It can be skimmed, so someone can establish in thirty seconds whether the session covers what they need. It can be read on a train, in a quiet room, without headphones, without bandwidth, at whatever speed the reader prefers.

That combination makes the transcript the highest value artefact the whole process produces, and it is routinely treated as a by product. It is generated, tucked behind a toggle, never corrected, and never surfaced as a document in its own right. Meanwhile students who would use it happily do not know it exists. Automatic text is imperfect, particularly with subject specific vocabulary and names, and a short pass to fix the terms that matter turns an approximate record into a dependable one.

There is a further benefit that tends to go unremarked. A transcript makes the session legible to the person who taught it. Reading back what was actually said, rather than what was intended, is a bracing and genuinely useful experience: the digressions become visible, the sentence that confused everyone stands out, the point that was made three times becomes obvious. As a source of quiet self review it costs nothing and is available immediately.