[How to] Free and Effortlessly Convert VTT and SRT to Each Other

WebVTT (Web Video Text Tracks), a subtitle format with growing popularity, is a W3C standard for displaying timed text in connection with the HTML5 <track> element. It was "broadly based on" the SupRip format, and was even called WebSRT with the same .srt file extension. It was renamed WebVTT later, and introduced the tag for HTML5. Though still in tentative stage, WebVTT's basic features are already supported by all major browsers. Its structure is very similar to SRT, making it easy to be converted to the latter, only attached with some extra features.

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VTT vs SRT	File starts with	Caption numbers	Time-code format	Metadata	Basic text formats (bold, italic, underline)	Encoding	Indication of the end of sequences	Comment
VTT	"WebVTT"	Unnecessary	Period, like: 00:00:11.580 --> 00:00:13.200	Included within frames	✓	UTF-8	A blank line	✓
SRT	"1"	Necessary	Comma, like: 00:00:11,580 --> 00:00:13,200	-	✓	Various	Sequence numbers	-

Things that you should know:

1. WebVTT and SRT are all text-based, you can properly open and even modify them with Notepad on your PC.

Related post: What Is an SRT File and How to Open .srt Files?

2. Comments in VTT subtitles will not be seen during display.

3. Cue settings when creating WebVTTs: If needed, type/paste in the desired styling & placement & width of the text area & alignment of the text, etc. right after every time codes, and separate adjacent texts with spaces. (And tags of course, at the start and end of the caption texts > Here's a good post that offers some practical cue setting code examples: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WebVTT_API

WebVTT Example:

WebVTT – A sentence of comment not shown
1.
00:00:11.580 --> 00:00:13.200 possition:20% aligh:middle line:90%
I'm glad the weather cleared up.
2.
00:00:13.540 --> 00:00:16.870 possition:20% aligh:middle line:90%
I'm surprised. I didn't know you can drive, Sensei.
…

Step 1. Locate your .vtt subtitle file, right-click on it > Open with > Notepad

Step 2. Delete the "WebVTT" that the VTT file starts with. And also the comment/title right next to "WebVTT", if there's any. Your subtitles file should start with "1 + timecode" like "100:00:11.580" by then.

Step 3. Press "Ctrl + H" (Replace) on your keyboard, and replace all commas with periods: Find what: , > Replace with: . > Replace All, so that this subtitle file will be in SRT time-code format.

Step 4. Save the changes. Rename your file to be in accordance with the name of the corresponding movie, and rename the subtitles file extension to ".srt".

With the above steps taken, your VTT subtitle is SRT now. SRT is well-supported by all mainstream platforms, try playing your movie on any popular media player like VLC and it should display just fine.

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Generally, doing what we do converting VTT to SRT backwardly will convert SRT to VTT subtitles. But when you open some SRT subtitles with Notepad, you'll find all sequences cluster close to one another so that it would be toilsome to manually add the blank lines one by one, for each sequence - which could be essential to VTT subtitles. Luckily, here's a free, easy and practical online WebVTT converter that facilitates the job here: webvtt.org

Step 1. Open the SRT file you intend to convert with Notepad, select all (Ctrl + A) and copy (Ctrl + C).

Step 2. Navigate to http://www.webvtt.org/

Step 3. Paste the copied texts into the upper box and hit "Convert".

Step 4. From the lower box, select all (Ctrl + A) and copy (Ctrl + C).

Step 5. Create a new Notepad file > Paste the copied texts into it.

Step 6. Customize comment, metadata, styling, placement, etc. for your VTT subtitles.

Step 7. Go to the "File" tab > Save as > Set "Save as file" to "All Files" > Set "Encoding" to "UTF-8" > Rename the file to the same as the corresponding video, with .vtt as file extension > Hit "Save"

Step 8. Happy VTT subtitles uploading!