What you get without timestamps
Turning timestamps off leaves only the spoken text, one caption segment per line, with no [MM:SS] markers. It is the same caption content, just without the timing information.
Sample text without timestamps (original example text, not from a real video)
First, write down the question you want the video to answer. Next, search the transcript for a distinctive phrase. Finally, check the matching moment in the source video.
Turning caption lines into readable paragraphs
Captions are split into short lines for display on screen, so even without timestamps the text reads as many short fragments. To get flowing paragraphs:
- Paste the text into the Transcript Cleaner, which merges lines that don’t end a sentence and can strip sound cues such as [Music].
- Or paste it into an AI assistant and ask it to add punctuation and paragraph breaks without changing the wording.
- Auto-generated captions often have little punctuation, so a quick read-through is worth it before publishing.
Keep a timestamped copy too
Clean text is best for reading, editing, and AI prompts, but you lose the ability to check where a line came from. If you might need to verify a quote later, download a second copy with timestamps and keep it alongside.