SRT Subtitle Viewer

Drop in a .srt SubRip subtitle file and read it as a clean table instead of scrolling through raw timecode blocks. The viewer parses each cue into index, start, end, duration and text, totals the cue count and overall runtime, and warns you about overlapping cues or zero and negative durations that break players. Inline styling like <i> or {\an8} tags is shown exactly as written. Nothing is uploaded — the file is parsed in your browser, so private or unreleased subtitles never leave your device.

How to use the SRT Subtitle Viewer

Paste SubRip text into the box or load a .srt file. The viewer splits the file into cue blocks on blank lines, reads the numeric index, parses the HH:MM:SS,mmm --> HH:MM:SS,mmm timing line, and joins the remaining lines as the caption text. A summary line above the table reports how many cues were found and the total runtime from the first cue's start to the last cue's end, and the table lists every cue with its computed duration.

Watch the notice area for problems the format hides. The viewer flags overlapping cues, where one caption is still on screen when the next begins, and zero or negative durations, where the end time is not after the start. Both cause captions to flash or disappear in real players, and both are easy to introduce when editing timings by hand. Inline tags such as <i>, <b>, <font> and SubStation override codes like {\an8} are displayed verbatim and safely escaped, so you can confirm the markup is intact without it rendering or breaking the page.

What SRT is, and how its timecodes work

SRT — the SubRip Subtitle format, named after the SubRip program that popularised it — is the most widely supported subtitle format in the world. Almost every media player, video platform and editing tool reads it, which is why it remains the default for fan subs, screeners and quick captioning despite being one of the oldest formats around. An .srt file is plain text with no header and no metadata: it is simply a list of numbered cues separated by blank lines, which makes it trivial to write, diff and edit in any text editor.

Each cue has three parts. A sequence number counting from one, a timing line of the form 00:01:23,456 --> 00:01:27,890, and one or more text lines that show on screen during that window. The timecode is the format's signature detail: hours, minutes and seconds are separated by colons, but the fractional part uses a comma before the three-digit milliseconds, a European convention that trips up anyone expecting a decimal point. The arrow --> separates the start from the end. Text may span multiple lines and may carry a small set of inline HTML-style tags — <i>, <b>, <u> and <font color> — plus, in practice, SubStation Alpha override codes in curly braces for positioning.

The format's simplicity is also its limitation, which is where WebVTT comes in. WebVTT is the modern W3C standard built for the HTML5 <track> element, and the two formats look almost identical except for a few telling differences: WebVTT requires a WEBVTT header line, uses a dot rather than a comma before milliseconds, drops the mandatory cue numbers, and adds cue settings for position and alignment plus CSS styling and regions. Converting SRT to WebVTT is mostly a matter of adding the header and swapping commas for dots. Because SRT carries no character-set declaration, encoding is the other common pitfall: a file saved as Windows-1252 or with a UTF-8 byte-order mark can render accented characters as garbage in a strict player, so saving as clean UTF-8 is the safe choice.

Common use cases

  • Proofreading captions. Read every line of dialogue in a table with its on-screen window before publishing.
  • Catching timing bugs. Spot overlapping cues and zero-length durations that make subtitles flicker or vanish.
  • Checking sync drift. Scan start and end times to find where subtitles fall out of step with the audio.
  • Inspecting markup. Confirm italics, font tags and positioning codes survived an edit or conversion intact.
  • Private review. Inspect unreleased or sensitive subtitles locally instead of uploading them to a web converter.

Frequently asked questions

Why does SRT use a comma before the milliseconds?
It is a convention inherited from European number formatting, where the comma is the decimal separator. So a timecode reads 00:01:23,456 rather than 00:01:23.456. This is the single clearest difference from WebVTT, which uses a dot. The viewer parses both the colons and the comma correctly.

What counts as an overlapping cue?
An overlap is when a cue starts before the previous cue has ended, so two captions would be on screen at once. Most players tolerate it but it usually signals a timing mistake. The viewer lists every overlapping pair in a warning so you can fix the end time of the earlier cue.

Does it keep italic and positioning tags?
Yes. Inline tags such as , , , and SubStation override codes like {\an8} are shown exactly as they appear in the file, safely escaped so they display as text rather than rendering. That lets you verify the markup without it affecting the page.

How is the total duration calculated?
It is the span from the start time of the first cue to the end time of the last cue, which approximates the length of the subtitled programme. Each row also shows the individual cue duration, the difference between that cue's end and start.

Is my subtitle file uploaded anywhere?
No. The .srt file is read and parsed entirely in your browser with client-side JavaScript. Nothing is transmitted, so unreleased scripts or confidential captions never leave your device.