Free tool

Audio to SRT

A subtitle file from any recording, free. Cues built from word-level timings, two lines each. SRT and VTT, up to 90 minutes.

Looked after by Clack, a typewriter with a sheet of paper in it.

We show the transcript here and email you the text, SRT and VTT, so you still have them tomorrow.

Free. No account. 2 files a day per person, up to 90 minutes each.

Ninety, because across 96 transcripts we measured the median episode was 47.3 minutes and 96% were 90 minutes or under.

How to make an SRT

  1. 1Upload the recordingAudio or video, up to 90 minutes and 600MB.
  2. 2Say where to send itThe SRT, the VTT and the plain text all arrive by email.
  3. 3Download the .srtOr the .vtt, if it is going on a web player.
  4. 4Import itPremiere, Resolve, Final Cut and YouTube all take SRT as it is.

Questions

How long is each subtitle?
A cue ends at whichever comes first: about seven seconds, roughly 84 characters, or the end of a sentence that has already run longer than a second and a half. In practice that gives cues of one short sentence or a clause — the length a person can read before it changes.
How many lines per cue?
Two at most, and the break is put at a word boundary near the middle so the lines come out roughly even rather than one long line and one word. Every broadcast subtitle guideline agrees on two lines; a third is where subtitles start covering the picture.
What is the difference between SRT and VTT?
The same cues in two spellings. VTT starts with a WEBVTT header and uses a full stop before the milliseconds; SRT numbers its blocks and uses a comma. Editors want SRT; web players and HTML5 video want VTT. You get both, so you do not have to choose now.
Are the timings accurate?
They come from word-level timings the speech model produces, not from splitting the text evenly across the duration. That is the difference between subtitles that sit on the words and subtitles that drift further out of sync the longer the file runs.
Can I edit the cues afterwards?
Yes — an SRT is a plain text file. Open it in any text editor, or import it into your editing software and adjust it there. Nothing here is locked.
How do I put the SRT on YouTube?
In YouTube Studio, open the video, go to Subtitles, choose your language, then Upload file and pick "With timing". YouTube accepts SRT and VTT both.
Does it burn the subtitles into the video?
No. You get the subtitle file to import or upload. Burning styled captions into a video is Slice’s paid captioning tool, which is a different job — this one hands you a standard file that works everywhere.
How this compares to Otter, Rev and the rest

We read the free tiers of six other transcription tools off their own pricing pages and put them in one table — longest free file, whether they label speakers, whether you need an account, and what happens when the free part runs out. It includes where we lose, because a comparison that does not is an advertisement.

What the cues actually look like

Most free transcribers hand you an SRT that is really a transcript with timestamps bolted on: twenty-second blocks, four lines deep, that you then have to re-cut by hand. These are built to be used as they are.

A cue ends at whichever of these comes first:

  • About seven seconds. Longer than that and a viewer has finished reading and is waiting.
  • Around 84 characters. Two comfortable lines, not a wall.
  • The end of a sentence, once the cue has run longer than a second and a half — so cues break where the speaker breaks, rather than mid-clause on a timer.

Lines are split at a word boundary near the middle, so a cue comes out as two roughly even lines instead of one long line and one orphan word. Timings come from word-level data the speech model returns, which is why they stay on the words at minute eighty rather than drifting.

Which looks like this:

1
00:00:00,160 --> 00:00:03,280
This is a smoke test for the
Slice free transcription tool.

2
00:00:03,440 --> 00:00:07,600
If you can read this sentence
back as text, the pipeline works.

Getting it into things

  • Premiere Pro — File → Import, then drag the SRT onto the timeline as a caption track.
  • DaVinci Resolve — right-click in the media pool → Import Subtitle.
  • Final Cut Pro — File → Import → Captions.
  • YouTube — Studio → the video → Subtitles → Upload file → With timing.
  • A web player — use the .vtt, in a <track> element inside your <video>.

If you need a different format

The subtitle converter turns SRT into VTT and back, and can build subtitles from a plain transcript — all in your browser, with nothing uploaded. And if what you want is captions burned onto the video rather than a file beside it, that is Slice’s paid captioning tool, not this.

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Shorts by Slice

From the team behind these free tools

One video. A week of posts.

Upload an episode and get back the moments worth posting, cut and captioned.

  • Reads the whole episode, then picks the excerpts worth posting
  • Captions burned in and framed vertical, ready to post
  • Seven days free, no card
Try Shorts by Slice