SubtitleMedic

Convert SBV to SRT

Turn YouTube .sbv captions into SubRip for players, TVs and video editors.

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How to convert SBV to SRT

  1. Open your .sbv file

    Drop one SBV file into the box above, or click to browse. It’s read by your browser and never uploaded.

  2. Check the result

    The file text is shown before and after, side by side: the new cue numbers and the timing lines rewritten the SubRip way. The words don’t change.

  3. Download the .srt file

    Save the converted file. It keeps the original name with the new extension, so captions.sbv becomes captions.srt.

Where .sbv files come from

SBV is YouTube’s own caption format. You meet it in two places.

Downloading captions in YouTube Studio. Open a video, go to Subtitles, and the menu next to a caption track offers a download as .vtt, .srt or .sbv.

Older tutorials and tools. For years, guides to captioning YouTube videos told people to write an .sbv file by hand, because the format is so simple. Many caption files from that time are still around.

An SBV block is two lines or more: the timing, then the text.

0:00:03.120,0:00:05.480
Is this seat taken?

There are no cue numbers, the two times are separated by a comma, the milliseconds follow a period, and the hour is a single digit.

How SubRip writes the same captions

1
00:00:03,120 --> 00:00:05,480
Is this seat taken?

Numbers. Each block starts with its number, counting from 1.

Timing. The hour has two digits, the milliseconds follow a comma, and an arrow --> separates start and end.

Text. Unchanged. A caption of two lines stays two lines.

The differences are tiny, yet a player that expects one will not read the other: an .sbv file renamed to .srt shows no subtitles, because the parser finds neither a number nor an arrow.

When you need the .srt file

Editing the video again. Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro and CapCut import SubRip captions. To re-cut a video and keep the captions you made on YouTube, download them, convert them and import the .srt.

Other video platforms. Vimeo, Facebook, LinkedIn and most course platforms accept .srt uploads and don’t know .sbv.

Watching offline. A downloaded video with video.en.srt next to it gets its subtitles automatically in VLC, on Plex and on most TVs.

Translation. Translators and subtitle editors work in SubRip. Convert once, translate the .srt, and upload the translation back to YouTube, which accepts .srt as well.

Tips for a clean conversion

Auto-generated captions are short and overlapping. YouTube’s automatic captions come as many small blocks that roll onto the screen. They convert correctly, but they read better on YouTube than in a player, so skim the preview first.

Check accented letters. If they look wrong in the preview, pick the right encoding next to the file name, or repair the file with Fix Subtitle Encoding. The .srt is always saved as UTF-8.

Putting the captions on a web page? Browsers want WebVTT. Use Convert SBV to VTT instead.

Captions early or late after an edit? If you trimmed the start of the video, every caption is off by the same amount. Shift Subtitle Timing moves them all at once.

Frequently asked questions

What is an .sbv file?

SBV, also called SubViewer, is the caption format YouTube uses in YouTube Studio. When you download captions from your own video, .sbv is one of the choices. It is a plain text file with a start time, an end time and the caption text for each block.

Why won’t my player or editor open an .sbv file?

Outside YouTube, very few programs read it. Media players, smart TVs and video editors expect SubRip (.srt), which looks similar but numbers each block and writes times differently. Converting gives them a file they recognise.

Will converting change the caption timing?

No. Only the notation changes. SBV writes 0:01:02.345,0:01:04.000 on one line; SubRip writes 00:01:02,345 --> 00:01:04,000. Both describe the same start and end, to the millisecond.

Is anything lost when converting SBV to SRT?

Normally nothing. SBV holds only text and timing, and SubRip holds both. If a caption happens to contain a tag SubRip doesn’t use, it is removed and counted in a notice above the Download button.

Are my subtitle files uploaded anywhere?

No. The file is read and converted by JavaScript in this browser tab. It never leaves your device, and the tool keeps working if you go offline after the page has loaded.

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