Free Subtitle Converter

Subtitle Converter rewrites subtitles from ASS, SSA, SBV, SUB, LRC into SRT or VTT, entirely inside your browser.

Drop a subtitle file here or click to choose

Convert to

Frames per secondMicroDVD .sub stores timing in frames, so it needs the frame rate of the video.

Converting…

Get the transcript from YouTube itself

YouTube Video to Text Converter is a free Chrome extension: open any video and it pulls the transcript right on the page - as clean text or as subtitles.

Transcript of any YouTube video in one click
Clean text without timecodes - or .srt with them
Copy to clipboard or save as a file
Works with subtitles in other languages

YouTube Video to Text Converter
Free Chrome extension

Install from Google Chrome Web Store

Get YouTube Video to Text Converter

Free Chrome extension - no account, no upload.

How to convert subtitles online in four steps

Add the file to the subtitle converter
Drop the file into the box above, or click the box to browse. The .ass and .ssa scripts, .sbv captions and .lrc lyrics all go in as they are. The .sub files go in too, though they want a frame rate first, and .srt or .vtt for a straight swap. Parsing happens in this tab, nothing is uploaded.
Set the frame rate if the file is MicroDVD
MicroDVD counts frames, not seconds, so the page asks for the speed of the video and offers 23.976, 24, 25, 29.97 and 30. NTSC sources sit at 23.976 or 29.97, PAL sources at 25. Some .sub files name the rate on their own first line, and then the converter just uses it. Every other format stores real time and skips this step.
Choose SRT, VTT or plain text
Pick SRT for players and video editors, which is where ASS to SRT and SBV to SRT end up. VTT is what HTML5 web players expect. The third option strips the timing and leaves only the words, and that mode has its own page for turning SRT into a text file.
Save the converted subtitle file
Click convert and the result downloads to your machine. Open it once next to the video and check the first cue and the last one, especially if you had to guess the frame rate.

Why use a browser subtitle converter

Players are picky in ways that are hard to predict. Many smart TVs read SRT and skip an .ass track without a word. A web player wants VTT, while a transcript workflow wants nothing but the words. Installing a desktop tool for a two kilobyte text file is rarely worth it, so it is cheaper to convert subtitles online. This subtitle file converter is JavaScript in the page and hands the result straight back. If the video itself also needs work, the rest of our video tools is collected on the toolkit page.

The five conversions this subtitle converter is built for

Five source formats, one target that every player understands:

ASS to SRT for players that ignore SubStation styling.
SSA to SRT for old fansub releases and archive files.
SBV to SRT for the caption track behind a video you published.
SUB to SRT and LRC to SRT, where timing is in frames or per line.

Add to Chrome

ASS to SRT and SSA to SRT keep the words, not the styling

Advanced SubStation Alpha files carry a [V4+ Styles] section that describes fonts, colors, outlines, karaoke effects, even where every line sits on the screen. The converter keeps the dialogue text with its start and end time and drops the rest. Style names go. So do override tags such as {\an8}, which pins a line to the top of the frame, and the Comment: lines translators leave for each other. A hard break written as \N becomes a real new line. SSA to SRT works the same way, only the older files label the block [V4 Styles]. Keep the original .ass, since styling cannot be rebuilt from the SRT afterwards.

SBV to SRT after a YouTube export

SBV is the caption file a channel owner exports from YouTube Studio, since a viewer has no download button on the video page. Each block holds a timing line like 0:00:03.120,0:00:06.500 with the caption text under it, and empty lines separate the blocks. The converter numbers the cues and rewrites the timing as 00:00:03,120 --> 00:00:06,500, with the comma decimal separator SRT requires.

SUB to SRT when MicroDVD counts frames

MicroDVD looks like {1250}{1400}Line of text, which is two frame numbers and no clock at all. Frames mean nothing until you say how fast the video runs, so choose 23.976, 24, 25, 29.97 or 30 before converting. Confusing 25 with 23.976 is an error of about four percent, which is roughly five minutes of drift by the end of a two hour film.

LRC to SRT with computed end times

LRC is the lyrics format that music players show line by line. Every line opens with a tag such as [01:23.45] and no line has an end time at all. LRC to SRT closes each cue where the next line starts, and gives the final line a short default duration. The result is a normal SRT for a music video, though the last line is worth a manual trim.

Who needs a subtitle converter

Video editors

Translators send .ass or .ssa, the timeline imports SRT and nothing else. One ASS to SRT pass here and the cues land on the timeline with the timing intact.

Creators and channel owners

Captions come out of YouTube Studio as .sbv, while course sites and HTML5 players ask for SRT or VTT. Same text, different wrapper. When the video belongs to someone else and there is nothing to export, our free YouTube transcript extension for Chrome reads the transcript from the page.

Students and note takers

A lecture often arrives with an .ass or .sbv sidecar that the campus player refuses to display. One pass through the subtitle converter turns it into an SRT the player accepts. When a recording has no subtitle track at all, our desktop transcriber for Windows builds the text locally instead.

🙋 Frequently Asked Questions

❓ How can I convert subtitles to SRT format?

Add the file at the top of this page and pick SRT as the output. Every input the subtitle converter takes ends up as SRT the same way, one file per run. Only .sub files need one extra decision, the frame rate, because MicroDVD stores timing in frames rather than in seconds. If you already have an SRT and need the web format, or the other way round, the dedicated SRT to VTT converter and the reverse VTT conversion do that single swap.

❓ What is a .ass file?

An .ass file is an Advanced SubStation Alpha subtitle. Inside it is plain text, but with sections for styles, fonts, colors, placement, even karaoke effects. Anime fansubs and typesetting-heavy releases use it precisely because SRT cannot do any of that. Open the file in a text editor and you will see blocks named [Script Info] and [V4+ Styles], plus the [Events] block where the dialogue lives.

❓ What are the differences between a .ass file and a .SRT file?

ASS stores styling and screen position along with the text. SRT stores a numbered cue with its start and end time plus the line of text. The SRT specification has no styling in it, although players in practice understand <i> and <b> tags, and many also honor {\an8} to push a line to the top of the frame. The narrow format is the compatible one. TVs and phones take it, so do editors and upload forms. Conversion runs in one direction only, since the rest of the ASS styling has nowhere to go.

❓ What opens an .ass file on a Windows PC?

Any text editor opens it, Notepad included, because the file is plain text. To see the subtitles over the video, use a player that renders SubStation Alpha, or convert it to SRT here and put the SRT next to the video with the same file name.

❓ Why does SUB to SRT ask for a frame rate?

Because MicroDVD marks every line with two frame numbers instead of a clock, frames become seconds only once you name the rate. Add the .sub file, tell the subtitle converter how many frames per second the video plays at, then pick SRT. If you are not sure about the rate, open the video in a player and read it from the file properties, because a wrong value shifts the whole track.

❓ How do I convert SBV to SRT and keep the timing?

Export the caption file from YouTube Studio, drop the .sbv here and choose SRT. Both formats store plain lines with a start and an end time, so the text and the timing survive as they are. The converter only adds the cue numbers and the arrow between timestamps that SRT expects.