Converts WebVTT to SubRip. WebVTT is a browser format; almost everything that is not a browser — smart TVs, set-top boxes, Plex, DaVinci Resolve, Premiere — wants SRT.
What WebVTT has that SRT does not
Cue settings — positioning, alignment and line placement written after the timestamp. SRT has no positioning at all, so these are dropped. If your captions were deliberately placed to avoid on-screen text, that placement is lost.
STYLE, REGION and NOTE blocks — CSS-like styling, named regions and comments. None has an SRT equivalent; each is skipped and counted so you know it was there.
Cue identifiers — WebVTT allows any string as a cue name. SRT requires sequential numbers, so cues are renumbered from one.
Nothing about the text or the timings changes.
Cue numbering, and why it is rewritten
What gets checked while converting
Cues out of order — some editors append late additions at the end of the file. They are sorted, and you are told it happened.
Zero-length or reversed cues — an end time at or before the start. Players skip these silently, so they are given a one-second duration instead.
Overlaps — two cues on screen at once. Left alone by default because some formats use it deliberately for speaker labels; there is an option to trim them.
Malformed blocks — anything without a readable timestamp is skipped and counted, rather than corrupting the cue numbering.
Fixing subtitles that are out of sync
If the subtitles are consistently ahead or behind by the same amount, use Shift. Find a line whose spoken time you know, subtract, and enter the difference — negative to move them earlier.
If they start right and drift further out as the file goes on, the source was timed for a different frame rate and you need Stretch. The common ratios are 1.0427 (23.976 fps subtitles on 25 fps video) and 0.959 (the reverse). Shifting will never fix drift, and stretching will never fix a constant offset.
Other names for this
Also searched as “webvtt to srt”, “convert vtt to subrip”.
Questions
- Will I lose the caption positioning?
- Yes, unavoidably — SRT has no way to express it. The tool tells you how many cues had positioning so you know what changed.
- What happens to the STYLE blocks?
- They are dropped, and counted in the notes. SRT carries no styling of any kind.
- My file came from YouTube and has no WEBVTT header.
- It is read anyway, with a note. Strict players would refuse the original — which is likely why you are converting it.
- My accented characters come out as gibberish.
- The file is not UTF-8 — usually Windows-1252 from an older tool, or UTF-16 from Notepad. Both are detected and decoded automatically here. If characters are still wrong, the source file itself declares the wrong encoding.
- Is my subtitle file uploaded?
- No. The parsing and rewriting happen in this tab. Subtitle files often contain an unreleased script or a client’s content, which is a good reason not to send them to a stranger’s server. Turn your Wi-Fi off and the tool keeps working.