Fact · Transcription
The openai-whisper command-line tool's output format option accepts srt and vtt, along with txt, tsv, json, jsonl and all.
Checked against its source on October 17, 2026
In the source's own words
“choices=["txt", "vtt", "srt", "tsv", "json", "jsonl", "all"]”
whisper/transcribe.py: decoding defaults and command-line options (openai/whisper), OpenAI, GitHub (openai/whisper), 2026, Command-line argument parser, --output_format option.
Open the original- What it measures
- The option is written as --output_format or -f. Passing srt produces a file with the .srt extension, and passing vtt produces a WebVTT file.
- What it does not show
- The list of choices comes from the source file. A later release could change it, so check the output of the version you installed.