What's actually inside an SRT file
SRT (SubRip) and VTT (WebVTT) are the two most common subtitle formats. Open one in a text editor and you'll see the same pattern repeated:
A number, a start time, an end time and the text. VTT looks almost identical, with a dot instead of a comma in the times and an optional header. That's all. No fonts, no positions, no animation.
That simplicity is the point. Nearly every video tool can export it, and nearly every platform accepts it. It's the lingua franca of subtitles.
Why start from a subtitle file at all?
- Someone already proofread it. If captions were corrected for YouTube or for a client's accessibility requirements, that work is done. Transcribing again throws it away.
- It saves transcription minutes. Importing a file doesn't use any cloud minutes.
- Consistency. The closed captions and the burned-in animated captions say exactly the same thing.
- Languages. A professionally translated SRT in Spanish or German is often better than a fresh transcription of a dubbed track.
The catch: subtitles are timed by line, not by word
An SRT tells you when a whole line appears and disappears. Word-by-word animated captions need to know when each word is spoken. So any tool that turns SRT into animated captions has to estimate word timing inside each line.
Captyne does this by spreading the words across each line's time, giving longer words a bit more of it. For normal speech it lands very close. For a line with a long pause in the middle, the words after the pause can arrive slightly early. A quick check in the preview, or a fresh transcription for that section, sorts it out.
Before you import: a quick checklist
- Match the timeline. Subtitle times count from the start of the video. If your comp starts with a 3-second intro that wasn't in the exported video, the captions will be 3 seconds early. Line up the comp first.
- Remove what shouldn't be on screen. [Music], speaker labels like "JOHN:", and sound descriptions make sense for accessibility captions but not for animated ones.
- Keep the punctuation. Full stops and commas help with grouping, especially for stacked caption blocks. You can still hide punctuation on screen later.
- Check line length. Accessibility captions are often two long lines. In animated captions they'll be regrouped anyway, so don't spend time reformatting.
Where to get the file
- YouTube: in YouTube Studio, open Subtitles for the video and download the track as .srt.
- Premiere Pro: export the caption track as an SRT sidecar file.
- CapCut and most other editors: look for an option to export captions or subtitles as SRT.
- Transcription services: almost all of them offer SRT or VTT downloads.
What you gain by animating them
Once the text is in Captyne, it's treated exactly like a fresh transcript. You can regroup words, pick emphasis words, use stacked blocks, apply any preset and generate fully animated caption layers. Your closed captions stay simple and accessible, and your on-screen captions finally match the energy of the edit.
Bring your subtitles to life
SRT and VTT import is included in every Captyne plan, together with unlimited offline transcription.
See Plans & Pricing →Keep reading
- Exact steps: How to import SRT or VTT captions (Help Centre)
- A full project: YouTube subtitles to animated captions (Tutorial)