VTT to TXT Converter

A Go tool that converts WebVTT (.vtt) subtitle files to simplified text format, combining consecutive speaker entries and removing metadata.

Features

• Removes WEBVTT header and UUID metadata
• Extracts speaker names from voice tags
• Simplifies timestamps (HH:MM:SS format, no milliseconds)
• Combines consecutive entries from the same speaker
• Sorts cues by timestamp (handles overlapping times)
• Decodes HTML entities
• Support for stdin/stdout piping

Quick Start

# Download and install
sudo wget -O /usr/local/bin/vtt2txt https://github.com/gbm-dev/vtt2txt/releases/latest/download/vtt2txt-linux-amd64
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/vtt2txt

# Use it
vtt2txt recording.vtt

Installation

Download Pre-built Binary

sudo wget -O /usr/local/bin/vtt2txt https://github.com/gbm-dev/vtt2txt/releases/latest/download/vtt2txt-linux-amd64
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/vtt2txt

Or download from the Releases page.

Build from Source

git clone https://github.com/gbm-dev/vtt2txt.git
cd vtt2txt
go build -o vtt2txt
sudo cp vtt2txt /usr/local/bin/

Usage

# Auto-generate output filename (creates recording.txt)
vtt2txt recording.vtt

# Specify output file
vtt2txt recording.vtt transcript.txt

# Pipe to another command
vtt2txt recording.vtt | less

# Show help
vtt2txt --help

# Show version
vtt2txt --version

Batch Processing

Process multiple files at once using bash:

# Process all .vtt files in parallel
for f in *.vtt; do vtt2txt "$f" & done; wait

# Controlled parallelism (4 at a time)
ls *.vtt | xargs -P 4 -I {} vtt2txt {}

# Using GNU parallel (if installed)
parallel vtt2txt ::: *.vtt

Each file automatically outputs to its corresponding .txt file (e.g., meeting.vtt → meeting.txt).

Output Format

Speaker Name (HH:MM:SS - HH:MM:SS):
Combined text from all consecutive entries by this speaker.

Next Speaker (HH:MM:SS - HH:MM:SS):
Their combined text...

Example

Input (WebVTT):

WEBVTT

uuid-identifier-123/0
00:00:10.500 --> 00:00:15.750
<v John Doe>Hello everyone, welcome to the meeting.</v>

uuid-identifier-123/1
00:00:15.750 --> 00:00:20.100
<v John Doe>Today we'll discuss the project timeline.</v>

Output (Text):

John Doe (00:00:10 - 00:00:20):
Hello everyone, welcome to the meeting. Today we'll discuss the project timeline.

License

MIT