Free Tool
SBV to SRT Converter
YouTube hands you captions as .sbv, and almost nothing else opens it. Drop the file in and get a standard .srt that any editor, player or platform will take.
- Runs in your browser
- Nothing uploaded
- No signup
Drop your file here
or
Supports .srt, .vtt, .txt files
Add SRT files (2+)
Result
How it works
SBV to SRT Converter in three steps
Drop your SBV file
Drag in the .sbv you downloaded from YouTube Studio, or browse for it.
Convert to SRT
Each block is renumbered and rewritten with an arrow and SubRip timecodes.
Download the .srt
Copy the result or download a file any editor or player will open.
The format YouTube gives you
Download captions from YouTube Studio and you get an .sbv file — SubViewer, a format YouTube uses and very little else does. Premiere will not import it, VLC will not load it, and most subtitle editors will not open it. The content is perfectly ordinary; only the packaging is unusual.
What an SBV block looks like
Each block is a timestamp line followed by the caption text, with a blank line between blocks. The timestamp line holds both times separated by a comma and nothing else: 0:00:01.000,0:00:04.230. There is no arrow, no cue number, and the hour is written without a leading zero. SubRip wants all three of those things, which is why a rename to .srt does not work — the file has to be rebuilt.
What the converter produces
Every block becomes a numbered SubRip cue: a sequence number, then 00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:04,230, then the text. Hours are padded to two digits, the comma moves to where SubRip expects it as a millisecond separator, and the arrow is inserted. Times are copied exactly — nothing is rounded or shifted. Multi-line captions keep their line breaks, so a two-line caption stays two lines.
It runs on your machine
The file is read and rebuilt in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored, and no account is needed. Files up to 10 MB are accepted, far more than a caption file will ever use.
Answers
SBV to SRT — frequently asked questions
What is an SBV file?
It is the SubViewer caption format YouTube exports from YouTube Studio. Each block is a line holding the start and end time separated by a comma, then the caption text. It is a plain text file, just not one most software reads.
Why can I not just rename .sbv to .srt?
Because the structure differs in three ways: SBV has no cue numbers, it separates the two timestamps with a comma instead of an arrow, and it writes the hour without a leading zero. A renamed file is still an SBV and a player will reject it.
Where do I get the .sbv from?
YouTube Studio, under Subtitles for the video, then the download option on an existing caption track. SBV is what YouTube offers by default.
Are the timings preserved exactly?
Yes. Start and end times are carried across to the millisecond. The only change is how they are written.
What happens to captions on more than one line?
They stay on more than one line. Line breaks inside a block are preserved as line breaks inside the SRT cue.
Is my file uploaded anywhere?
No. Everything runs in your browser with JavaScript. The file is never sent to a server, never stored, and no account is needed.
Can I convert SBV to VTT instead?
Yes, with the universal subtitle converter — it takes SBV in and can write SRT, VTT or plain text.
The file did not convert. What went wrong?
Most often the file is not really an SBV: a caption downloaded as SRT or VTT and saved with the wrong extension will not parse as one. Open it in a text editor and look at the first line — an SBV starts with two timestamps separated by a comma.
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