How to convert ASS/SSA subtitles to SRT

ASS (Advanced SubStation Alpha) subtitles support fonts, colors, positioning and karaoke effects — great for anime fansubs, but unsupported on many TVs, set-top boxes and editing tools. Converting to SRT keeps every line and timestamp while stripping the styling that breaks playback.

Just need one file converted right now? Free, runs in your browser — no install.

Convert ASS to SRT online — free

ASS vs SRT: what changes in conversion

An .ass file contains a style header (fonts, colors, margins) and dialogue lines with inline override tags like {\an8} or {\i1}. SRT is deliberately minimal: a counter, a timestamp range and plain text. Converting means:

Kept: every dialogue line, exact start/end times, line breaks, basic italic/bold where SRT supports it.
Removed: positioning tags, colors, fonts, karaoke timing and drawing commands that SRT cannot express.

AI Subtitle Studio parses the ASS dialogue properly — it does not just regex-strip braces — so overlapping events and multi-line dialogue survive the trip intact.

When you should NOT convert

If your player supports ASS (VLC, mpv, most Plex clients), keep the original: extraction from MKV preserves .ass exactly so signs, songs and typesetting stay styled. Convert to SRT when the target device rejects ASS, when a translation tool needs plain text, or when you want a clean base for AI translation.

Just need one file converted right now?

For a single .ass or .ssa file with no video involved, the free ASS to SRT online converter does the same conversion in your browser — no download or install needed. The desktop app is the better fit for embedded MKV tracks, batch folders, or anything you'd rather not upload.

Convert ASS to SRT step by step

Open the .ass file or the video containing it Drop the .ass file onto the Convert screen — or, for an MKV with an embedded ASS track, open Extract and drop the video there. Embedded ASS tracks are listed with their language.
Extract or load the track For embedded tracks, tick the track and click Extract. The original .ass is saved beside the video, so you keep a styled copy.
Export as SRT On the Convert screen set Output to SRT and click Convert. Styling tags are stripped cleanly while text and timing are preserved to the millisecond.

Convert ASS to SRT in seconds

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Frequently asked questions

Will the subtitle timing change when converting ASS to SRT?

No. Timestamps are carried over exactly; only styling information that SRT cannot represent is removed.

Can I convert SRT back to ASS?

You can load an SRT in any ASS-capable editor and add styling, but the original ASS styling cannot be reconstructed from an SRT — keep a copy of the .ass if you may need it.

My ASS file shows weird characters after conversion. Why?

That is an encoding issue, not a conversion issue. AI Subtitle Studio auto-detects legacy encodings (Windows-1252, Turkish ISO-8859-9, Shift_JIS, GBK, Big5 and more) and converts them to UTF-8, which fixes the garbled text.

Does batch conversion work?

Yes — add multiple files or a whole season folder and process them together.