Create an SRT from a video in three steps
- Drop the video on the box above. Leave the language on Auto-detect, or pick it from the menu if the clip is short or starts with music.
- Read through the lines on the right. Click one to fix a word; the video jumps to that spot so you can listen again.
- The Export tab is already open. Press SRT (or VTT) and the file downloads straight away, named after your video.
That's the whole mp4 to srt job. The video stays on your computer; only a small audio track goes to the speech model. Edits you make after the first download don't cost anything, so fix a line and press SRT again as often as you like.
What a clean SRT looks like
Here's the shape of a file from this video to srt tool. The words are an example; the layout is exactly what you get:
1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,240
Most people skip the subtitle file.
2
00:00:03,240 --> 00:00:06,900
That's a mistake if you post on YouTube.
3
00:00:07,400 --> 00:00:11,050
The file is plain text, so any editor opens it.A few things make a file like this work everywhere:
- Blocks are numbered from 1, in order, with a blank line between them.
- Timecodes use hours, minutes, seconds and a comma before the milliseconds. A period there is VTT syntax, and strict SRT readers choke on it.
- Lines stay short. We stop at about 42 characters, the same per-line limit in Netflix's English subtitle style guide, and break at pauses or punctuation.
- No block runs much past five seconds, and the generated blocks don't overlap.
- The text is plain UTF-8 with no styling tags, which is the version every player reads.
The tool handles the numbering and the timecode syntax for you. Line length and timing are where your edits help. If a line flashes by too fast, merge it with the next. If one sits on screen during a long silence, pull its end time in. For the history of the format and a line-by-line breakdown, read what an SRT file is and how it works.
Where to upload the file
| Platform | Where it goes | Format |
|---|---|---|
| YouTube | YouTube Studio, Subtitles, pick the video, Add language, then Add under Subtitles and Upload file (choose "With timing") | SRT or VTT |
| Vimeo | Open the video from your library and add the file under Languages | VTT preferred, SRT works |
| On desktop, start a video post, click Edit on the preview, then Select Caption | SRT only | |
| Edit the post, Edit, Add captions, Upload | SRT, named like video.en_US.srt | |
| Teachable | The lesson video's subtitle settings | SRT or VTT |
Menu names come from each platform's help center: YouTube, Vimeo, LinkedIn, Facebook and Teachable. They change their menus now and then, so check there if a button has moved. Facebook is the fussy one: its naming rule wants a lowercase language code and an uppercase country code in the file name, or Facebook may not recognize it. Rename the download before you upload it.
If your video already has YouTube's automatic captions, our guide to YouTube's automatic captions covers how to edit them or turn them off.
When to pick the VTT generator instead
SRT is the safe default. Pick VTT in two cases. First, if you host video on your own site with the HTML5 video player: the
<track> element only reads WebVTT, according to MDN.
Second, if the platform says it prefers it, as Vimeo does. The words and timing in both files are identical; VTT just starts with a
WEBVTT header and uses a period before the milliseconds. LinkedIn and Facebook want SRT, so if you post to several places,
download both.
Need the subtitles on the picture instead?
Short-form apps like TikTok and Reels make their own captions or none, and a muted autoplay feed shows nothing unless the words are in the picture. For those, the subtitles have to be drawn into the video. Bring your SRT to the burn-in tool, or start from the auto captions homepage for styled captions on short clips.