· CueID

How to add YouTube chapters to a DJ mix

Chapters turn a long mix video into something people can find their way around. Here’s what YouTube needs before chapters appear, and how to make the timestamps for a whole set without scrubbing through it by hand.

Upload a two-hour mix to YouTube and most people will listen to some of it. Add chapters and they can see the tracklist in the progress bar, jump to the track they came for, and come back to it later. They also stop asking “track ID at 47:12?” in the comments, or at least ask less.

What YouTube needs

Chapters come from timestamps in the video’s description. YouTube only turns them into chapters if:

  • the first timestamp is 0:00,
  • there are at least three timestamps, in order, and
  • each chapter is at least ten seconds long.

Each timestamp goes at the start of its own line, followed by the chapter’s title:

0:00 Intro
3:42 Artist – First Track
8:15 Artist – Second Track

If any rule is broken, YouTube quietly ignores the lot, which is why chapters sometimes don’t appear when you were sure you’d added them.

The slow way

Play the mix back, note where each track comes in, type up the list, then check every time. For a two-hour set that’s an evening, and blends make the start times hard to pin down.

The quick way, with CueID

CueID builds the list from the audio.

  1. Scan the mix’s audio. Use the audio file you made the video from. CueID can’t read YouTube links, but as the uploader you already have the recording. If your video opens with a title card or an intro before the mix starts, scan the audio exported from the final edit, so the times line up with the video.
  2. Tighten the timestamps. CueID can narrow each start time down to the transition, so a chapter starts where a track actually comes in rather than where it was first recognised.
  3. Name the gaps. Only named tracks become chapters, so use Review to step through anything it couldn’t identify, and type in your own edits and IDs.
  4. Export as YouTube chapters and paste the result into the description.

The export follows YouTube’s rules for you. It starts at 0:00, adding an “Intro” chapter if the first track comes in later. It keeps chapters at least ten seconds apart. And if there are fewer than three chapters, it tells you, rather than letting you paste a list YouTube would ignore.

Already uploaded?

You can edit the description of a video that’s already up, and chapters appear once the new description is saved. It’s a quick win for an old mix that’s still getting plays.

Posting the mix elsewhere?

The same tracklist exports for Mixcloud, 1001Tracklists, SoundCloud descriptions and more. See which export format to pick.

Your first scan is free, however long the mix, and exporting YouTube chapters is free with it.