Turn SBV subtitle files into plain TXT text in a few clicks—upload your SBV, convert to TXT, and download the converted file.
SBV is the plain-text caption format YouTube's caption editor produces and lets you download — each cue is a start and end time on one line (H:MM:SS.mmm,H:MM:SS.mmm) followed by the caption wording, with a blank line between cues. Converting to TXT throws away the timing and keeps only the words, giving you a clean transcript you can read, edit, or reuse.
That transcript is what most people are actually after. Once the timecodes are gone you can paste the text into a blog post, turn a webinar or podcast recording into show notes, build an accessibility transcript, or feed it to a summarizer — none of which want timestamps breaking up every line. This page converts in one direction (SBV to plain text) and runs entirely in your browser; to send SBV to another subtitle format instead of a transcript, use the SBV converter.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Full name | SubViewer-style captions (YouTube's .sbv) |
| Origin | Downloaded from and uploaded to YouTube's caption editor |
| File extension | .sbv (YouTube also accepts .sub for SubViewer) |
| Timecode syntax | H:MM:SS.mmm,H:MM:SS.mmm — start and end on one line |
| Millisecond separator | Period (.) |
| Time separator | Comma between start and end |
| Cue separator | Blank line between cues |
| Sequence numbers | None |
| Styling / positioning | None (plain text only) |
| Text encoding | UTF-8 |
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Output | Plain text (.txt) — the caption wording only |
| Timing data | Removed (every timecode line is dropped) |
| Speaker labels | Kept verbatim if they exist in the caption text (e.g. >> ALICE:) |
| Line structure | One caption's text per block, blocks separated by line breaks |
| Styling | None (TXT carries no formatting) |
| Text encoding | UTF-8 |
| Opens in | Any text editor, word processor, or CMS paste field |
| Best for | Reading, summarizing, and repurposing the transcript |
| Reversible | No — keep the original SBV if you may need the timing again |
| SBV line | Result in TXT |
|---|---|
0:00:00.599,0:00:04.160 (timecode line) |
Dropped |
>> ALICE: Hi, my name is Alice Miller (caption text) |
Kept, unchanged |
| Blank line between cues | Preserved as a line break |
Every H:MM:SS.mmm,... timecode line is discarded and only the wording survives. The sample text above is YouTube's own example caption from its supported-formats documentation, which shows the same start,end line followed by the spoken text.
.sbv file you downloaded from YouTube's caption editor, or click "Upload .sbv". The tool reads plain text, so the file loads instantly and its cues are parsed line by line — nothing is re-transcribed or re-timed.An SBV file is the SubViewer-style caption file YouTube's caption editor produces — plain text where each cue is a start,end timecode line followed by the caption wording. Converting it to TXT strips the timecodes and leaves only the words, so you get a readable transcript instead of a timed caption file. Any text editor opens both, but the TXT version is the one you can drop straight into a document.
Yes — that is the whole point. Every H:MM:SS.mmm,H:MM:SS.mmm line is discarded and only the caption text is written to the .txt file. You end up with the spoken content and nothing else: no times, no cue markers, no formatting.
Yes. The converter copies the caption text verbatim, so anything that was part of the words — including speaker labels like >> ALICE: that YouTube captions sometimes carry — comes through unchanged. It only removes the timecode lines; it never rewrites, re-punctuates, or re-orders your text.
That is the most common reason people convert. A plain transcript pastes cleanly into a CMS for a blog article, into a document for podcast or webinar show notes, or into an accessibility transcript that screen-reader users and search engines can read. Because the timecodes are gone, you are editing prose rather than a subtitle file.
It follows your captions' line structure: each cue's text stays on its own line or block, separated by line breaks, rather than being reflowed into paragraphs. Captions are usually broken into short display-length lines, so if you want continuous prose you will typically join those lines yourself in a text editor after converting.
Yes. In our testing, SBV captions containing accented Latin characters, Cyrillic, and CJK text converted to TXT with the wording intact when the source was saved as UTF-8 — the encoding YouTube exports. If the transcript comes back with garbled characters, the original file was probably saved in a legacy single-byte encoding; re-saving it as UTF-8 in a text editor first resolves it.
No. Stripping to plain text is a one-way operation — once the timecodes are dropped they are not stored anywhere in the .txt file, so there is nothing to restore. Keep your original .sbv file if you might need the timing again, or convert to SRT instead, which rewrites the format while preserving every cue's timing.
Yes. This conversion runs entirely in your browser. There is no sign-up and nothing is watermarked. Because SBV is plain text, you can also open it in any editor first to see exactly what it contains.