YouTube chapter checker & builder

Why aren’t my chapters showing?

YouTube turns timestamps in your description into chapters, but only if every one follows its rules, and when one doesn’t, it shows no chapters at all and doesn’t say why. Paste your description to find the line that’s breaking it. Or bring the markers from your edit in Final Cut, Resolve or Premiere and get a chapter list that’s right first time. Everything happens in your browser.

Start from your edit’s markers

Final Cut: File › Export XML. Resolve: right-click the timeline in the Media Pool › Timelines › Export › Timeline Markers to EDL. Premiere: File › Export › Markers (CSV). Or skip this and paste a chapter list or description below.

Chapters

Video length (optional)

Gives the length, and the timeline start and frame rate from its timecode. Only the header is read; nothing is uploaded.

YouTube’s chapter rules

The first timestamp must be 0:00.
There must be at least three timestamps, in ascending order.
Every chapter must be at least 10 seconds long, including the last one, up to the end of the video.

Break any one of them and YouTube shows no chapters for the whole video. That’s why a single typo, or a marker left five seconds after the one before it, makes all of them disappear.

From markers to timestamps

Editors mark in frames and timecode; YouTube counts in whole seconds of real time. This rounds every marker down to the second, so a chapter never starts after its moment, and converts timecode to real time. At 23.976 and 29.97 fps that matters: an hour of non-drop timecode is 3.6 seconds longer than an hour of clock, so reading markers as clock time drifts them late through a long video. Markers on parts of clips you trimmed off, which Final Cut still exports, are left out.

Where does your timeline start?

Markers are exported as timeline timecode, and the timeline doesn’t have to start at zero: Resolve starts at 01:00:00:00 by default, broadcast templates often at 10:00:00:00, and a project that’s been around a while can start anywhere. A marker EDL or CSV doesn’t record which, and if the start is wrong, every chapter is wrong by the same amount. So drop in the video you exported as well. Its timecode track records exactly where the timeline started, and the frame rate. Without one, set the start yourself, or use “same as first marker” if you put a marker on the first frame. The tool shows where your first marker lands, so a wrong start is easy to spot.