Convert your SBV subtitle file to TTML in seconds—right in your browser for quick editing, publishing, or compatibility needs.
SBV is the plain-text caption format YouTube's caption editor produces — each cue is a start and end time on one line followed by the wording, with no XML and no styling. TTML (Timed Text Markup Language) is a W3C XML standard for timed text that underpins broadcast and streaming caption pipelines. Converting SBV to TTML wraps your YouTube captions in that standards-based XML, giving you cues with correctly-mapped timecodes that professional and web caption tooling can read. This page converts in one direction (SBV to TTML) and runs entirely in your browser; to send SBV somewhere else, use the SBV converter.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Full name | SubViewer-style captions (YouTube's .sbv) |
| File extension | .sbv |
| Origin | Downloaded from and uploaded to YouTube's caption editor |
| Structure | Plain text — no XML, no markup |
| Timecode syntax | H:MM:SS.mmm,H:MM:SS.mmm — start and end on one line |
| Millisecond separator | Period (.) |
| Cue separator | Blank line between cues |
| Sequence numbers | None |
| Styling / positioning | None (plain text only) |
| Text encoding | UTF-8 |
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Full name | Timed Text Markup Language |
| Standard | W3C Recommendation (TTML1 first published November 2010; TTML2, 2018) |
| Structure | XML — root <tt>, cues as <p begin end> inside <body><div> |
| Namespace | http://www.w3.org/ns/ttml |
| Media type | application/ttml+xml |
| File extensions | .ttml (also .dfxp, .xml) |
| Timecode syntax | HH:MM:SS.mmm clock time on the begin and end attributes |
| Original profile | DFXP (Distribution Format Exchange Profile) |
| Derived profiles | SMPTE-TT, EBU-TT / EBU-TT-D, IMSC |
| Best for | Standards-based broadcast and streaming caption pipelines |
| SBV element | Result in TTML |
|---|---|
Start/end timecode (H:MM:SS.mmm,…) |
begin / end attributes on a <p>, written as HH:MM:SS.mmm |
| Caption wording | Text inside the <p> element, unchanged |
| Line break within a cue | <br/> inside the <p> |
| Blank line between cues | Becomes the next <p> element |
| Styling / color / position | Not present in SBV, so none is added — cues render with player defaults |
Because SBV carries text and timing only, the TTML you get back has correctly-timed cues with default styling. TTML is capable of rich styling, but this conversion never invents formatting your source file didn't have — nothing is lost and nothing is fabricated.
.sbv file you downloaded from YouTube's caption editor, or click "Upload .sbv". You can also paste the SBV text straight into the input (SBV) panel — the tool reads it as plain text and parses each cue's start time, end time, and wording line by line.<p begin end> element inside a <tt> XML document. Leave "From format" on SBV.Cue text is written into each <p> element exactly as it appears in your source, without XML entity escaping. That matters for two characters. An ampersand — in "R&B", "AT&T", "Tom & Jerry" — and a less-than sign, as in "under <5 euros", are both special in XML, so a caption containing either produces a document that is not well-formed and that a strict parser or broadcast validator will reject outright rather than repair.
The fix is quick once you know to look. Scan your source captions for &, < and > before converting, or search the downloaded file afterwards, and replace them with the entities &, < and >. Plain text with none of those characters converts cleanly and needs no attention.
Not quite. DFXP (Distribution Format Exchange Profile) was TTML's original name — it began in a 2004 draft called "Timed Text Authoring Format 1.0 – Distribution Format Exchange Profile" — and today .dfxp is one profile of the wider TTML standard. Both are the same underlying XML; a .dfxp file is TTML constrained to the DFXP profile. This page outputs plain TTML (the base http://www.w3.org/ns/ttml namespace); if you specifically need a .dfxp file, use SBV to DFXP instead.
The base TTML profile — a minimal <tt> document in the http://www.w3.org/ns/ttml namespace with your cues as <p begin end> elements inside <body><div>. It does not add the styling namespace or the extra constraints of the broadcast and streaming profiles (SMPTE-TT, EBU-TT-D, IMSC). If your delivery platform requires one of those specific profiles, treat this output as a clean starting point and run it through your platform's profiler.
No, and that is expected. SBV carries text and timing only; it has no font, color, or positioning data to carry over. The TTML output therefore contains correctly-timed cues with default styling, and players render them with their own defaults. TTML itself is capable of rich styling, but the converter never invents styling your source didn't have — nothing is lost and nothing is fabricated.
Yes. In our testing, an SBV cue timed 0:00:00.599,0:00:04.160 became <p begin="00:00:00.599" end="00:00:04.160"> in the TTML output — the millisecond precision is preserved, with the single-digit hour simply zero-padded to the two-digit HH:MM:SS.mmm clock format TTML uses on its begin and end attributes.
It is valid base TTML, which most timed-text tooling will open, but broadcast and streaming pipelines usually require a specific derived profile — IMSC for web and streaming delivery, EBU-TT-D for European broadcast distribution, or SMPTE-TT for US workflows. Use this converter to get standards-based XML with your timing intact, then conform it to the exact profile your platform mandates.
Because TTML is XML, any text editor opens it for inspection. For playback and editing, dedicated caption tools such as Subtitle Edit read and write TTML, and many streaming and broadcast pipelines ingest it directly, while web players consume its IMSC profile. It is not as universally supported by consumer desktop players as SRT, which is why many people later convert TTML down to SRT or VTT for general use.
Choose TTML when your destination is a standards-based, XML caption pipeline — broadcast authoring, a streaming platform that ingests TTML or IMSC, or any system that expects the richer structure XML provides. Choose SRT when you simply need the broadest player and editor compatibility. TTML's advantage is that it is a formal W3C standard with room for styling, regions, and metadata; SRT's advantage is that almost everything reads it.
The conversion runs entirely in your browser using JavaScript — your SBV file is read and rewritten as TTML on your own device, with no sign-up and no watermark. Once the page has loaded, the converter keeps working even if your connection drops, which is handy for captions you would rather not send to a server.