timestamp

A timestamp is a time stamp inserted into a recording, video, or transcript. Think of the sticker on a package that says 'shipped at such-and-such time.' Inside a video or audio file, it marks the exact spot where something happens, like 'this word appears at 3:12.'

For example, if you transcribe a one-hour meeting recording into text, without timestamps you'd have to listen through the whole thing to find when a particular statement was made. But if every sentence has a timestamp, clicking on a specific statement takes you straight to that exact point in the recording.

Recently, speech-to-text programs have started attaching these time stamps down to the level of individual words. This lets you pinpoint exactly who said what and when in a meeting transcript, and it also lets subtitle makers sync captions precisely with the video and audio.

The article includes the line: "It attaches time information (timestamps) to each and every word." Here, timestamp means marking which minute and second of the original audio each transcribed word corresponds to. It's important not to confuse this with a date showing when the recording file was created — it's a time marker pointing to a specific location within the file.

Turn on subtitles or transcription in a long YouTube video or a meeting recording service. If clicking on a sentence or word jumps the video or audio to exactly that moment, that's timestamps working behind the scenes, attached to each word to guide you to its location.