youtubegptTranscript generator › Timestamps
YouTube transcript with timestamps
Every line keeps its timecode, and every timecode is a link straight to that second of the video. Extract once, then jump anywhere.
What the timestamps are
Each caption line carries a start time and, usually, a duration. Both come from the video's own caption data in milliseconds, so they are exactly the timings the player uses — nothing is estimated or recalculated here.
Displayed timecodes drop the milliseconds and the hour when it is zero, so a line at 82,500 ms shows as 1:22 and one at 3,725,000 ms as 1:02:05. The underlying precision is preserved in the API, where start and dur are raw millisecond integers.
One quirk worth knowing if you are processing the data: dur is occasionally null on the last segment of a track. That is how the upstream caption data arrives. Treat it as "until the next segment" or give it a default of a couple of seconds.
Jumping to a moment
Every timecode in the Timestamps view is a link with the time appended to the video URL:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID&t=82sThe t parameter takes whole seconds and works on the desktop site, mobile web and, on most devices, deep-links into the app. You can hand-build one for any moment — it is the same format YouTube's own "copy link at current time" produces.
What they are good for
Quoting something you can check
A quote from a video with no reference is hard for a reader to verify and easy to get subtly wrong. With a timecode, anyone can click and hear it. This is also the cheapest defence against AI summaries that drift — ask a model for timestamps alongside its claims and spot-check two of them. See summarising a video.
Writing chapters
Chapter markers in a description need a timecode and a label per section. Working from a timestamped transcript, you read for topic changes and take the timecode from the line where each one starts, instead of scrubbing the player back and forth.
Show notes and clips
Podcast show notes are mostly "topic plus timecode". For clipping, the transcript tells you the exact in-point rather than making you hunt for where a segment begins.
Navigating long videos
On a 4.4-hour course — 2,935 caption lines in our testing — searching the transcript for a term and clicking its timecode is dramatically faster than dragging the scrubber and waiting for previews to load.
When you do not want timestamps
They are noise if the text is going into prose. Reading, quoting at length, translating and pasting into a document all read better without a timecode every few words — and a timestamped transcript pasted into a language model wastes context on numbers.
Use the Readable tab for those, or For AI, which keeps a single anchor at the start of each paragraph — enough to locate a passage without cluttering every line. The copy guide covers getting text out of YouTube's own panel without timecodes attached.
Timestamps in subtitle files
SRT and VTT carry start and end times for every caption. The two formats differ in exactly two ways, and both differences break things silently when you get them wrong:
| SRT | VTT | |
|---|---|---|
| Header | None | WEBVTT on the first line |
| Milliseconds separator | Comma — 00:01:22,500 | Full stop — 00:01:22.500 |
| Cue numbering | Numbered | Optional |
| Typical use | Video editors, desktop players | HTML5 <track> on the web |
Feeding an SRT to a web player expecting VTT usually produces no error and no captions — that missing header line is normally the cause. Both are available from the format tabs; see downloading.
Frequently asked
Are the timestamps accurate?
They are the video's own caption timings, taken as-is in milliseconds. Nothing is estimated.
How do I remove the timestamps?
Use the Readable or Plain text tab — neither contains timecodes.
Can I get timestamps in hours:minutes:seconds?
The hour is shown once a video passes an hour. For fixed-width HH:MM:SS,mmm, download the SRT or VTT format.
Why does the last line have no duration?
Some caption tracks omit the duration on the final segment. It arrives that way from upstream; treat it as running to the end.
Do the timestamps work on mobile?
Yes. The &t= parameter works on mobile web and generally deep-links into the YouTube app.
More guides
Independent tool. youtubegpt.ai is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by YouTube or Google. It works with publicly available caption data from YouTube and does not host, mirror or re-upload any video. Transcript text belongs to the original video creators. "YouTube" is a trademark of Google LLC.