SubtitleMedic

Subtitle Conversion & Encoding Tools

A player that won’t open your file, or letters that turn into é and question marks? Pick the tool that matches the problem. Everything runs in your browser, so your files never leave your device.

Tools in this category

Which tool do I need?

Why formats and encodings cause trouble

Subtitles are plain text files, but every player has its own expectations. Web players and browsers want WebVTT, most TVs and set-top boxes want SubRip, and video editors often accept only one of the two. Converting between them only changes the header and the way times are written, so nothing in the dialogue or the timing moves. Styled ASS scripts, YouTube’s SBV captions and frame-based MicroDVD files are read by even fewer programs, so they usually need to become one of those two first. Each conversion has its own page, which takes one format and saves one format.

Encoding problems are older than the web. Before UTF-8, each language used its own code page, and many subtitle files are still saved that way. Open one with the wrong code page and every accented letter turns into two or three odd symbols. Fixing it means reading the file with the encoding it was written in, then saving it as UTF-8 so every player shows it correctly.

Both jobs happen entirely in your browser. The file is read on your device and never uploaded, so it works the same for a single episode or a whole season.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between SRT and VTT?

Both store the same lines and times. SubRip (.srt) is the classic format that TVs and desktop players read everywhere; WebVTT (.vtt) is the web standard that browsers and HTML5 players expect, and it writes milliseconds with a dot instead of a comma.

Why do my subtitles show strange characters?

The file was saved in one text encoding and opened as another, for example a Windows-1252 or Windows-1258 file read as UTF-8. The letters are still there; they only need to be decoded with the right encoding and saved again as UTF-8.

Will converting lose my italics or colors?

Italic, bold and underline survive a conversion between SRT and VTT. Positioning and styles that only one format supports are dropped, and the tool tells you when that happens.

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