About

Extracting readable transcripts from subtitle files is often a tedious manual process involving the deletion of hundreds of timestamps and index numbers. This Closed Caption to Text Converter automates the sanitization process, transforming raw caption data into coherent, publish-ready prose.

Unlike basic regex strippers, this tool employs a Smart Merge Algorithm. It analyzes line endings for terminal punctuation (., ?, !) to reconstruct natural paragraphs, rather than producing a disjointed list of sentence fragments or a single wall of text. It also filters out non-verbal cues (e.g., [Music], (Applause)) and cleans formatting tags.

All processing is performed strictly Client-Side via the FileReader API. Your files are processed in your browser's memory and are NEVER uploaded to a server, ensuring absolute privacy for sensitive transcripts.

Formulas

The core logic utilizes specific Regular Expressions to identify and strip metadata. The standard pattern for identifying an SRT timestamp block is:

{

Start : ^\d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2},\d{3}Separator : →End : \d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2},\d{3}$

To calculate the estimated Reading Time (T), we use the standard average reading speed (S) of 238 words per minute:

WordCount238 ≈ T (minutes)

Reference Data

Format Extension	Full Name	Time Structure	Supported
.srt	SubRip Subtitle	00:00:20,000 → 00:00:25,000	TRUE
.vtt	Web Video Text Tracks	00:00:20.000 → 00:00:25.000	TRUE
.sbv	YouTube / SubViewer	0:00:20.000,0:00:25.000	TRUE
.ass / .ssa	Advanced SubStation	Header-heavy, event-based	Partial (Text Only)
.txt	Raw Transcript	None (Plain Text)	TRUE

Frequently Asked Questions

Most subtitle lines break mid-sentence for timing purposes. Our algorithm checks the last character of every line. If it sees terminal punctuation (., ?, !), it keeps the line break. If not, it replaces the break with a space, reconstructing the full sentence.

Yes. YouTube typically exports as .sbv or .vtt. This tool supports both. It is particularly effective at removing the "duplicate line" artifacts often found in auto-generated scrolling captions.

Yes. The tool utilizes UTF-8 encoding by default, supporting all character sets including Cyrillic, Asian scripts, and emojis. The "Smart Merge" logic works best with languages that use standard Western punctuation.

This usually happens if the source file was saved with a non-standard encoding (like Windows-1252) instead of UTF-8. Try saving your subtitle file as UTF-8 in Notepad/TextEdit before uploading.