Remove timestamps from a transcript
Paste a transcript that has a time on every line and get the words back without them. It handles times at the start of a line, on a line of their own, in brackets, or after a speaker's name, and it leaves a time inside a sentence alone.
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The layouts it understands
Transcripts from different tools put the time in different places. Instead of asking you to pick a format, the tool looks at each line and removes a timestamp in any of these positions.
0:00 a time on its own line (copied from a transcript panel)
welcome back to the channel
[00:01:02] Next point a time in brackets, anywhere on the line
(01:02) Next point
00:00:19 - Let's get started a time at the start of a line
12:01 Closing words
Speaker 2 0:09 a name followed by a time; the speech is on the next line
Thanks for having me.
[00:00.000 --> 00:04.500] a Whisper-style range in brackets
hello and welcomeTimes can be minutes and seconds (1:05), hours, minutes and seconds
(01:02:03), and can carry a fraction (00:01:02.500 or
00:01:02,500). A range such as 0:05 --> 0:09 counts as one timestamp.
Minutes and seconds above 59 are not read as times, so a score or a ratio like
10:75 is left alone.
What it deliberately does not touch
A time in the middle of a sentence is kept unless it is in brackets. “The call is at
10:30 tomorrow” is something a speaker said, and deleting it would change the meaning, so
the tool only treats a time as a timestamp where a timestamp normally sits. The price of that
caution is that a transcript which prints bare times mid-line will keep them. It also does not
recognise times written as plain seconds (123.4s) or as frame counts, because those
cannot be told apart from ordinary numbers.
Lines or paragraphs
A transcript with a time on every line is also broken into short lines, often in the middle of a sentence, because each line is one caption's worth of speech. After the times are gone, “Join lines into paragraphs” runs those lines together into continuous text. A blank line in your original starts a new paragraph, and so does a speaker's name, so a conversation stays readable as turns rather than one long block.
If the file is subtitles
An SRT or VTT file is a different animal: each cue has a number, a timing line with an arrow and one or two lines of text. The tool recognises that shape and returns the text of every cue. transcript file formats explained explains what each part of those files is. For more control over what counts as speech in a subtitle file, use the SRT to text tool.
Why people remove them
Timestamps are useful while you check a transcript against the recording and a nuisance the moment you want to read it, quote it, paste it into an article or count its words. The usual next steps are the filler-word remover, to tidy how the speech reads, and the word counter, to see how long the result is. If you started from a recording, Scriptorium can export a plain text transcript without timestamps in the first place, as well as the timestamped, SRT, VTT and JSON versions.
Questions
Will it remove a time like 10:30 inside a sentence?
No, on purpose. A time written in the middle of a line is far more likely to be something somebody said (“the meeting is at 10:30”) than a timestamp, so it is only removed when it is at the start of a line, on a line of its own, in brackets, or sitting after a speaker's name. If your transcript puts bare times in the middle of lines, they will stay and you will need to delete them by hand.
What happens to the speaker names?
Some tools write the name and the time on one line and the speech on the next (Speaker 1 0:05). By default the time goes and the name stays as Speaker 1: so you can still tell who said what. Choose “Remove the name too” if you want the speech alone.
Can I paste an SRT or VTT file?
Yes. A file with --> timing lines is recognised, and the cue numbers, timing lines and formatting tags are dropped, leaving the words. The SRT to text tool does the same job with more options for paragraphs, repeated lines and sound descriptions.
Is my transcript uploaded?
No. The text is processed by JavaScript running in this tab, and neither the text nor a file you choose is sent anywhere. The only thing the page reports is that the tool was used, with no text and no file name.
Related tools
Have the recording instead of the text?
Scriptorium listens to an audio or video file and writes the transcript, with timestamps and an editor, then exports TXT, SRT, VTT or JSON. You can try it free.