YouTube Transcript and Chapter Timestamps Generator
Free YouTube transcript generator: paste a link to get the video's captions with clickable times, search them, and copy or download them as text, paragraphs, SRT or VTT. Make chapter timestamps for your description. 3Speak, Odysee and your own files get a transcript from speech recognition in your browser.
YouTube: its own captions, in seconds. 3Speak, Odysee and .mp3 / .mp4 links: speech recognition right here in your browser.
How do I copy YouTube's transcript?
On the video's YouTube page press …more under the title, then Show transcript. Click in the transcript panel, select it all (drag from the first line to the last) and copy. Paste it here: the times come along.
Make the transcript with speech recognition
Uses OpenAI's Whisper model (MIT licence), downloaded once and run on your own computer: the sound never leaves it. A fast graphics card (WebGPU in Chrome, Edge, Brave) makes it many times quicker.
Breaks come from where the words change topic and titles from the words used most there: a draft. Click a time to jump there, edit any title, or ask an AI below for better titles.
More for your videos
Get the transcript of a YouTube video
Paste a YouTube link and press Get transcript. The page reads the video's own captions (the ones you see with the CC button: written by the creator, or YouTube's automatic ones) and shows every line with its time. Click a line and the video jumps there. Search for a word, switch between lines and paragraphs, and copy or download the text as plain text, paragraphs, SRT or WebVTT subtitles, Markdown or JSON.
Chapter timestamps for your description
The Chapter timestamps tab finds where the talk changes topic and writes a first draft like 0:00 Intro, 3:53 Live footage. Edit the titles, add or delete chapters, and copy the list into your video description. The page checks YouTube's rules: the first chapter at 0:00, at least three chapters, each at least 10 seconds long.
For polished titles, Copy the request gives an AI chatbot the transcript in a compact form with YouTube's rules; paste its answer back and the chapters are checked and ready.
3Speak, Odysee and your own files
Sites that have no captions get a transcript from speech recognition: OpenAI's Whisper model runs inside your browser, so the sound is never uploaded. 3Speak and Odysee links work straight away; for Rumble, BitChute or X, download the video and drop the file here. The first run downloads the model (about 40 to 250 MB depending on the quality you pick); after that it starts in seconds.
Questions
- Why does a YouTube video say "no captions"?
- Some videos have captions turned off, are too new for YouTube's automatic captions, or are music without speech. If you own the video, download it in YouTube Studio and drop the file here to make a transcript with speech recognition.
- Are automatic captions accurate?
- Mostly, but names and technical words are often wrong, and older automatic captions have no punctuation. The paragraph view puts in breaks at pauses to make them easier to read.
- Is anything stored?
- No account and nothing kept on a server. For YouTube links mes.fm asks YouTube for the caption file on your behalf (a browser page can't), and passes it straight back to you.