I have a podcast I run with one of my brothers and a friend. We record the podcast via Zoom, which generates a transcript in VTT format with timestamps. Occasionally, we have an issue with the recording where we have some banter at the beginning of the podcast or something goes funky in the middle and I end up having to delete some of what we recorded before generating the audio and video. We upload the episodes to YouTube where we can include a transcript for subtitles. The problem is that the subtitles are not synchronized with the content of the video because editing the transcript would take forever to adjust by hand when I just want to delete a couple of lines from the transcript.
Enter “vibe coding” and ChatGPT. I explained this problem to ChatGPT, and it generated a nifty HTML file with Javascript that allows you to upload a VTT file, it parses it, then lets you select which parts you want to delete. When you hit delete, it removes all of the parts you selected and adjusts all of the remaining timestamps accordingly. What you get is a time-adjusted VTT file. As a perk, everything happens in your browser on your computer. Nothing is stored on my server. Ergo, perfect privacy for you and no server clutter for me. So, enjoy this nifty little tool that solves one simple problem – removing content from a VTT transcript and adjusts the other timestamps accordingly. I call it Ryan’s VTT Exciser and Timestamp Adjuster.
Much less frequently do I have the opposite problem, having to add time to a VTT because we edited something in post-production on a podcast. But, I figured it would make sense to have ChatGPT create the opposite tool, one that can add content to a VTT file and adjust all the remaining timestamps accordingly. It did. It works great. This is a very simple interface, but it does the job. I call this one Ryan’s VTT Inserter and Timestamp Adjuster.
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