You can use the datetime data type (with a few alterations, since duration for some reason does not accept datetime objects as arguments, or at least does not when I try it):
dtv = datevec(datetime({'00:05:00';'01:10:00';'23:59:59'},'InputFormat','HH:mm:ss'));
da = duration(dtv(:,4:end));
mins = minutes(da)
producing:
da =
00:05:00
01:10:00
23:59:59
mins =
5
70
1440
I posted ‘da’ to demonstrate the conversion. It is not necessary to return it specifically.
The duration data does not ‘wrap’ unless you also supply the year-month-day values, so as long as your data are all in the same 24-hour day, they will be accurate.