AI Subtitle Studio
Free tool

Convert SBV (YouTube) to SRT

SBV is YouTube's original caption download format — convert it to a normal, numbered SRT that any player accepts.

Nothing stored afterward No account needed SBV (YouTube captions) → SRT (SubRip)

Your file is processed and sent straight back — never saved on our servers.

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How it works

Upload SBV (YouTube captions), get SRT (SubRip) back

Upload one file

SBV (YouTube captions) — .sbv.

Converted instantly

Parsed and rewritten as SRT (SubRip) in memory, no queue and no waiting.

Download the result

The converted file downloads straight to your device.

About this conversion

Converting SBV (YouTube captions) to SRT (SubRip)

.sbv (SubViewer, though YouTube's own variant is simpler than the original SubViewer format) is what you get when you download a caption track directly from YouTube Studio's older export option. It looks almost like SRT already — a time range, then the cue text, blocks separated by a blank line — but with two differences that trip up players expecting SRT: there's no cue number before each block, and the start/end times are separated by a comma instead of SRT's --> arrow.

Converting to SRT adds sequential cue numbers and rewrites the time-range line in SRT's own syntax. The actual timestamps and dialogue text aren't touched — this is a formatting conversion, not a re-timing one.

FAQ

Questions about this converter

Where do I get an .sbv file?
YouTube Studio's caption export previously offered .sbv as a download option alongside .srt and .vtt; older exported caption files are the most common source of .sbv files today.
Does this change the subtitle timing at all?
No — every timestamp carries over exactly. Only the formatting (cue numbers, the separator between start and end time) changes to match SRT.
Can I go the other way, SRT to SBV?
Not with this tool — SBV has become rare enough that converting SRT to it has little practical use; every platform that used to want SBV now accepts SRT directly.
Is there an API for this?
Yes — see the API reference for the sbv-to-srt endpoint and curl examples.
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SRT (SubRip) → Plain text

Strip cue numbers and timestamps from an SRT, WebVTT or ASS file, leaving just the dialogue as a readable transcript.

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