SRT to TXT
Or paste subtitle text
What this conversion changes
2 things are dropped or need a decision
- Timing
the whole timeline (the output format records no timings at all)
- Line breaks
line breaks (multi-line cues will be joined into one line)
This list comes from the capability matrix for these two formats, not from the particular file you loaded. A specific file may lose more if it uses features the format allows but the matrix does not model.
This page strips the timing off a subtitle file and leaves the words. SRT is a list of cues, each with a start time, an end time and some text; the text format is just lines of text. So the conversion drops the timestamps and the cue numbers and keeps the words, in the order they appear.
A cue that held two lines becomes two lines of text. Nothing is joined into a paragraph you did not write, and nothing is reflowed: the line breaks you put in the subtitle file are the line breaks you get out, which is what makes the result usable as a transcript, a translation source or a draft.
Inline markup is not stripped — it is text like everything else, so a tag in the input is a tag in the output. If you want the bare words, a search and replace afterwards will take them out. One file or a whole season, all of it in your browser, with a single ZIP at the end.
Examples
A typical SRT file, converted to TXT
Input
1
00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:03,500
Hello there.
2
00:00:03,500 --> 00:00:06,000
<i>Whispering</i> now.
And a second line.
3
00:00:06,000 --> 00:00:09,250
<b>Bold</b> statement.
Output
Hello there.
Whispering now.
And a second line.
Bold statement.
Dropped in this output: timing and line breaks. Everything else matches line for line.
The same conversion on an awkward input
Input
1
0:00:01,00 --> 0:00:03,500
<B>Bold</B> and <I>italic</I>.
2
00:00:03,500 --> 00:00:06,000
3
00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:09,000
Last one.
Output
Bold and italic.
Last one.
This is the kind of damage real files have — mixed line endings, stray whitespace, fields left empty. Compare it with the tidy example above to see what the parser forgives.
Frequently asked questions
Why would anyone want subtitles as plain text?
For anything that wants the words without the timing: a transcript to read, a script to translate, an article draft, a file to feed a search index, or simply a version you can hand to someone who does not have a subtitle player.
How do cues with two lines come out?
As two lines, in order, with no blank line between them. The text file therefore reads the way the subtitles read on screen, and the cue boundary is the only thing that disappears.
Are the tags removed along with the timings?
No. The markup is text, so it comes through as text. If your subtitles use italics for off-screen dialogue, you will see the tags in the output and can decide whether to keep them as a signal or remove them.
Do I lose the timings?
Yes, and that is the point of this direction — it is listed below the file box so there is no surprise. If you want plain text that keeps the timeline, convert to CSV or JSON instead; both are text files and both keep the start and end of every cue.
Does the output keep my file names?
Yes, with the extension changed. A batch comes down as one ZIP containing one text file per input, in the same names, so a folder of episodes stays in the order you dragged it in.