Subtitle Converter Online
A subtitle file is plain text with timestamps, so converting between SRT, WebVTT and ASS mostly comes down to rewriting timings and deciding what happens to styling. This page covers the conversions that actually come up, including old files that were never saved as UTF-8.
or drag & drop them here · images, video, audio, documents and subtitles · up to 2 GB
Popular conversions
About this converter
Three formats cover nearly everything. SRT is the lowest common denominator: numbered cues, timestamps separated by a comma, and markup that stops at bold, italic and underline. WebVTT is the browser format — it is what the HTML5 track element loads, and its timestamps use a dot instead. ASS carries real presentation: fonts, colours, outlines and absolute positioning, which is why fansub releases are built on it.
Encoding is where old subtitles fall apart. A file downloaded years ago is usually stored in windows-1251 or windows-1252 rather than UTF-8, and nothing inside the file declares which one it is. A player reading those bytes as UTF-8 shows a wall of broken characters instead of text. This converter inspects the bytes first, decides the encoding, and writes the result as UTF-8, so the text arrives intact.
Converting downward loses information, and it helps to know exactly what. ASS to SRT drops fonts, colours, outlines and screen positioning, because SRT has nowhere to store them; italic and bold survive. SRT to ASS restores none of that — it applies a default style instead. Timings are copied verbatim in every direction, so a file that drifted against the audio still drifts afterwards.
Frequently asked questions
- Will converting fix subtitles that are out of sync?
- No, and no converter can. Every timestamp is copied exactly as written, so a two-second offset before the conversion is a two-second offset after it. Sync is corrected by shifting all the timings, which is a separate operation; most desktop players let you apply a delay live during playback.
- Why do my subtitles display as question marks or random symbols?
- The file is not UTF-8. Russian releases are usually windows-1251 and Western European ones windows-1252, and the file carries no marker saying so, so the player guesses wrong. Converting it here works out the encoding from the byte pattern and rewrites the file as UTF-8.
- What is the actual difference between SRT and VTT?
- They are close relatives. WebVTT opens with a WEBVTT line, writes timestamps with a dot rather than a comma, drops the cue numbers, and can carry positioning hints. Browsers load VTT through the video track element, and most of them will not accept a plain SRT at all.
- Does converting ASS to SRT lose the styling?
- Most of it, and that is a limit of SRT rather than of the converter. Fonts, colours, outlines, karaoke effects and on-screen positioning have nowhere to go in SRT and are dropped. Italic, bold and underline survive, because SRT genuinely supports those tags.
- Can I upload SSA files, and why is there no SSA output?
- SSA is accepted as input — it is the older revision of the same format as ASS and is read the same way. Output is offered as ASS instead, because both are written by the same encoder, and labelling a modern ASS file .ssa would misdescribe what is inside it.
- Is the file kept anywhere after the conversion?
- It is uploaded to the server, converted there, and deleted immediately after the download — the subtitle text itself is not stored. There is no account to create, no watermark added and no cap on how many files you convert.