Upload SBV files and pick an output format — SRT is selected by default. Batch supported, free up to 400 MB per file.
For the most common job, use the dedicated SBV to SRT converter.
.sbv file you exported from YouTube's caption editor, or click "Upload .sbv". One caption file converts at a time, and the original text and timing are read line by line — nothing is transcribed or re-timed.<track> captions on websites.sub for legacy desktop playersSBV is a SubViewer-style caption format that YouTube has used for downloadable captions and the output of its caption editor. It is plain text with no styling: each cue is a single line holding a start and end time — written as H:MM:SS.mmm,H:MM:SS.mmm (note the period before the milliseconds and the comma between the two times) — followed by the caption text on the next line, with a blank line between cues and no sequence numbers. That minimalism is exactly why people convert it.
The most common reason is that SBV plays almost nowhere except inside YouTube's own tooling. Desktop players (VLC, MPC-HC), non-linear editors (Premiere, DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut), and most online video platforms expect SRT, and websites embedding HTML5 video need WebVTT. If you exported captions from one video to reuse on another, you almost always have to re-wrap them first.
Beyond compatibility, the conversion target depends on the job: choose SRT for the broadest player and editor support, VTT for captions served on a web page, TXT when you only want the transcript without any timing, or ASS/SSA when you need styled or positioned on-screen text that SBV can't express. Because SBV carries no font, color, or position data, converting up into a styled format gives you an unstyled starting point you then style yourself — no information is lost, but none is invented either.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Full name | SubViewer-style captions (YouTube's .sbv) |
| Derived from | The SubViewer subtitle format |
| Primary use | YouTube caption editor export; one of YouTube's basic caption upload formats |
| Timecode syntax | H:MM:SS.mmm,H:MM:SS.mmm — start and end on a single line |
| Millisecond separator | Period (.) |
| Cue separator | A blank line between cues |
| Sequence numbers | None |
| Styling / positioning | None (plain text only) |
| Text encoding | UTF-8 (what YouTube exports) |
| Opens in | Any text editor; recognized by YouTube on upload |
| Format | Timecode syntax | Styling / positioning | Sequence numbers | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SBV (SubViewer) | H:MM:SS.mmm,H:MM:SS.mmm on one line |
None | No | YouTube caption export only |
| SRT (SubRip) | HH:MM:SS,mmm --> HH:MM:SS,mmm |
Basic (bold/italic tags) | Yes | Universal player and editor support |
| VTT (WebVTT) | HH:MM:SS.mmm --> HH:MM:SS.mmm, WEBVTT header |
Cue settings + CSS | No | HTML5 <track> web captions |
| ASS / SSA | H:MM:SS.cc (centiseconds) |
Full: fonts, color, position | No | Styled, positioned anime/karaoke captions |
| TTML / DFXP | XML <p begin="..." end="..."> |
Full (XML/CSS styling) | No | Broadcast and streaming exchange |
| TXT | None (timing stripped) | None | No | Plain transcript for reading or reuse |
An SBV file is a SubViewer-style caption file — the plain-text format YouTube's caption editor produces and lets you download. Because it's just text, any text editor (Notepad, TextEdit, VS Code) will open and let you read it, and YouTube itself accepts it on upload. The catch is that most video players and editors don't recognize the .sbv extension, which is why converting it to SRT or VTT is usually the first step in reusing the captions elsewhere.
SBV writes both times on a single line separated by a comma — 0:00:01.000,0:00:03.000 — using a period before the milliseconds and no cue numbers. SRT puts each cue's start and end on one line joined by an arrow — 00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:03,000 — uses a comma before the milliseconds, and prefixes every cue with a sequence number. The text content is identical; only the timing syntax and numbering change, which is exactly what a converter rewrites.
No. The conversion rewrites the timecode syntax (comma vs. period, single line vs. arrow, header line for VTT) but the actual start and end moments of every cue are preserved to the millisecond. Your captions will appear on screen at the same time as they did in the SBV source — only the file's grammar changes, not its timing.
Yes — choose TXT as the output. The converter drops every timecode line and keeps only the spoken text, giving you a clean transcript you can paste into a document, feed to a summarizer, or repurpose as an article. If you need the timing back later, keep the original SBV file, since stripping to TXT is a one-way operation.
No. SBV is a no-frills format: timing plus text, with no support for fonts, colors, italics, or placement. If you need styled captions — colored karaoke lines, positioned signs, or specific fonts — convert to ASS or SSA, which carry full styling, or to VTT, which supports cue settings and CSS. Converting won't add styling automatically; it gives you a compatible container in which you can then add the styling yourself.
Yes. In our testing, SBV captions containing accented Latin characters, Cyrillic, and CJK text converted to SRT and VTT with the wording intact when the source file is saved as UTF-8 — the encoding YouTube exports. If your captions come back with garbled characters, the original SBV was likely saved in a legacy single-byte encoding; re-saving it as UTF-8 in a text editor before uploading resolves it.
Yes. The conversion runs entirely in your browser. There's no sign-up and nothing is watermarked. Since SBV is plain text, you can also open it in any editor first to confirm exactly what it contains.
Yes — this converter runs in both directions. Switch the "From format" dropdown to SRT, VTT, or any other supported subtitle format, choose SBV as the "To format", and convert. That's the route to take when a tool or uploader specifically asks for SubViewer captions. For a single common swap there are dedicated SRT to SBV and VTT to SBV pages that walk through that exact conversion.