Convert SBV to SRT

Free, instant, and entirely in your browser — your subtitle file is never uploaded.

100% private — your subtitles never leave your device
Drop your SBV file here, or click to browse

About SBV files

SBV is YouTube's own caption format, and about as simple as SRT with one line less: no sequence number, and the two timestamps separated by a comma rather than an arrow.

About SRT files

SRT is the plainest subtitle format there is: a number, a start and end time, the lines of text, a blank line, repeat. It came out of a 1990s DVD-ripping program called SubRip and has outlived every format designed to replace it, precisely because there is almost nothing in it to go wrong.

Converting SBV to SRT, specifically

Almost everyone doing this has just downloaded captions from YouTube Studio and found that nothing else will open them. SBV is YouTube's own format and barely exists outside it. The conversion is clean — both formats carry the same thing, lines of text between two times — so nothing is lost or approximated. You simply get a file the rest of the world reads.

Why convert to SRT

You almost certainly want SRT because something refuses to take what you have. It is the format with the fewest ways to be rejected: media players, Plex and Jellyfin libraries, YouTube, Vimeo, editing software and hardware players all read it without complaint. Converting into SRT is the standard move for making a subtitle simply work somewhere.

What converting SBV to SRT actually does

Both sides carry the same thing — lines of text with a start and an end — so this is the cleanest conversion in the set. Nothing is approximated and nothing is thrown away; the timestamps are rewritten in the target's notation and the text goes across as it stands. What changes is compatibility: which players, platforms and browsers will accept the file you end up with.

How to convert SBV to SRT

  1. Drop your SBV file onto the box above, or paste the text straight in.
  2. The file is read on your device — it is never uploaded anywhere.
  3. Press convert. You get a SRT file back immediately.
  4. Anything the conversion could not carry over is listed on screen, so you know before you use the file.

Questions

Is my SBV file uploaded to a server?

No. The conversion runs in your browser using JavaScript — your SBV file is read from disk, converted in memory and handed back as a download. Nothing is transmitted, so there is nothing for us to store or delete. You can disconnect from the internet after this page loads and the conversion still works.

Does converting SBV to SRT lose anything?

Almost everyone doing this has just downloaded captions from YouTube Studio and found that nothing else will open them. SBV is YouTube's own format and barely exists outside it. The conversion is clean — both formats carry the same thing, lines of text between two times — so nothing is lost or approximated. You simply get a file the rest of the world reads.

What if my file is not really SBV?

The page checks before it converts. Subtitle formats are identified by what is inside the file rather than by the extension — which matters, because .sub alone is used by three unrelated formats. If you hand this page something that is not SBV, it says so and points you at the all-format converter instead of producing a broken file.

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