Convert text to subtitles
Paste your transcript and download the .srt, with the breaks and timings already worked out.
You have the text but not the timings. It happens when you transcribe a talk, when you write the script of a video before recording it, or when a translation arrives as a document and has to become subtitles.
Splitting that by hand is the tedious part of subtitling: deciding where to break each sentence, how many characters fit on a line, and how long each cue has to stay on screen to be readable. This tool does it in one go, following the rules of the trade: it breaks at the full stop first, which is where the eye expects the break; if the sentence does not fit it splits at the comma; and it only breaks by word when there is nothing else left.
Each cue lasts its length divided by the reading speed you choose, in characters per second. At 17 CPS, the figure Netflix uses for adults, a 34-character cue runs two seconds.
What comes out is a starting point in sync with itself, not with a particular audio track. It will almost always need adjusting against the video, and that is what the sync tool is for.
How to use it
- 01 Paste your text. Line breaks do not matter: punctuation is what drives the split.
- 02 Adjust reading speed and characters per line if you work to a different standard.
- 03 If the first cue does not land at second zero, say where it starts.
- 04 Download the .srt or .vtt and adjust it against the video.
Frequently asked questions
Will the timings match my video?
Not out of the box, and there is no way they could: the tool only sees the text, it does not hear the audio. What you get is a coherent sequence where every cue lasts as long as it takes to read. After that it needs adjusting against the video, starting with the second the first cue comes in.
Why is my sentence split across two cues?
Because it did not fit. With the defaults, two lines of 42 characters, a cue holds around 84. Anything over that is split at the comma, and if that still does not fit, by word.
What reading speed should I use?
17 characters per second is the adult standard and the default here. Drop to 13 for children content, and only go to 20 if your audience reads fast and the text is simple.
Can I mark where each cue starts myself?
Not from here: timings are worked out from length alone. Marking each cue by hand needs a subtitle editor with the audio waveform in front of you.
What if I want the opposite?
If what you have is a subtitle file and you want clean text out of it, that is the subtitles to plain text tool.
Related tools
This is what Eco does live.
These utilities work on files you already have. Eco transcribes and translates while the audio is still playing: meetings, classes, videos in another language.
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