SubRip (.srt)

Translate subtitles for your videos.

Ilya Krukowski avatar
Written by Ilya Krukowski
Updated over a week ago

In this article you'll learn how to work with the SRT file format.

Introduction

SubRip Subtitle (SRT) files are a type of subtitle file format, identifiable by the .srt extension. They enable the addition of subtitles to video content post-production. SRT files are structured in a human-readable format, where subtitles are stored in sequence along with their corresponding timing information.

An SRT file consists of formatted text blocks separated by blank lines. Each subtitle within the file is given a sequential number, starting from 1.

SRT file structure

An SRT file contains subtitles in the following format:

  1. A numeric counter identifying each sequential subtitle. Upon importing an SRT file to Lokalise, this counter is dismissed and then restored during the exporting.

  2. A timecode specifying when the subtitle should appear on the screen, followed by an arrow -->, and the timecode saying when it should disappear. The timecode format used is hours:minutes:seconds,milliseconds with time units fixed to two zero-padded digits and fractions fixed to three zero-padded digits (00:00:00,000). Timecode is used as a key on Lokalise. Upon exporting translations back, the keys are sorted by the timecodes.

  3. Subtitle text which can span one or multiple lines. The text is saved as a translation value on Lokalise.

  4. A blank line containing no text, indicating the end of the current subtitle.

Here's an example of an SRT file:

1
00:02:17,440 --> 00:02:20,375
Senator, we're making
our <b>final</b> approach into {u}Coruscant{/u}.

2
00:02:20,476 --> 00:02:22,501
{b}Very good, {i}Lieutenant{/i}{/b}.

3
00:02:24,948 --> 00:02:26,247 X1:201 X2:516 Y1:397 Y2:423
<font color="#fbff1c">Whose side is time on?</font>

4
00:02:36,389 --> 00:02:39,290 X1:203 X2:511 Y1:359 Y2:431
v

5
00:02:41,000 --> 00:02:43,295
[speaks Icelandic]

6
00:02:45,000 --> 00:02:48,295
[man 3] <i>♪The admiral
begins his expedition♪</i>

Please note that there's no placeholder, plural, or gender support in SRT format.

Formatting

The SRT format supports basic text formatting which is derived from HTML:

  • Bold — <b>…</b> or {b}…{/b}.

  • Italic — <i>…</i> or {i}…{/i}.

  • Underline — <u>…</u> or {u}…{/u}.

  • Font color — <font color="color name or #color_code">…</font>.

  • Line position — X1:… X2:… Y1:… Y2:… after the timestamp denotes the text coordinates.

Nested tags are supported as well. Some implementations prefer whole-line formatting only. The formatting could be stored "as-is".

Encoding

There's no character encoding standard for SRT files: it could be Windows-1252, Windows-1251, Unicode, UTF-8, UTF-16, with or without BOM.

Working with SRT files on Lokalise

Importing

To upload an SRT file, open your Lokalise project, proceed to the Upload page and start the uploading process as usual.

Please note that Lokalise will not perform a deep validation of your .srt file: any file with the valid extension will be accepted. However, if the file has invalid formatting, the corresponding translation keys and values won't be created in your project.

After the file was imported, you can perform translations in the project editor:

Exporting

To export your subtitles back in the .srt format, proceed to the Download page. Choose SubRip from the File format dropdown:

Since SRT files do not support placeholders or plurals, you won't be able to adjust the Plural format and Placeholder format options. The Order keys by option will be disabled as well because the keys will always be sorted by their timecodes.

Once you are ready, click Build and download to export the translation bundle!

Did this answer your question?