CSV to VTT
Or paste subtitle text
What this conversion changes
Nothing is lost in this direction — every feature of the source format has somewhere to go in the target format.
This list comes from the capability matrix for these two formats, not from the particular file you loaded. A specific file may lose more if it uses features the format allows but the matrix does not model.
This page converts CSV to VTT. Drop a file in — or paste the text — and you get the VTT version back. The conversion runs entirely in your browser, so nothing is uploaded and no account is needed.
Nothing is lost in this direction. Every feature CSV can express has an equivalent in VTT, so the output is the same subtitles in a different wrapper — the timeline, the line breaks and the text all survive. That holds for any CSV file, including one that uses every feature the format allows.
One file is fine, and so is a whole season: the queue works through them in order and the results come down together as a single ZIP.
Examples
A typical CSV file, converted to VTT
Input
start,end,text
00:00:01.000,00:00:03.500,The quick brown fox.
00:00:04.000,00:00:06.250,"Jumps over, the lazy dog."
00:00:07.000,00:00:09.000,"Two lines here.
And a second one."
Output
WEBVTT
00:00:01.000 --> 00:00:03.500
The quick brown fox.
00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:06.250
Jumps over, the lazy dog.
00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:09.000
Two lines here.
And a second one.
Nothing is dropped here: compare the two sides line for line.
The same conversion on an awkward input
Input
id,start,end,note,text
1,00:00:01,000,00:00:04,000,cue one,"Hello there, friend."
2,00:00:05.000,00:00:07.000,cue two,Second line.
bad,notatime,00:00:09.000,cue three,Unreadable start.
4,00:00:10.000,00:00:09.000,cue four,End before start.
5,00:00:12.000,00:00:14.000,cue five,Unquoted comma in text, right here.
Output
WEBVTT
1
00:00:01.000 --> 00:00:04.000
Hello there, friend.
2
00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:07.000
Second line.
4
00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:10.001
End before start.
5
00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:14.000
Unquoted comma in text, right here.
This is the kind of damage real files have — mixed line endings, stray whitespace, fields left empty. Compare it with the tidy example above to see what the parser forgives.
Frequently asked questions
What does the output look like when CSV becomes VTT?
Like VTT: an optional identifier line above each cue, which no player ever displays. Every CSV cue becomes one VTT cue, in the same order, with the same text.
Are the CSV timings exact in the VTT file?
Yes, to the millisecond — which is as fine as either format goes. Both CSV and VTT write a moment the same way, `00:00:04.126`, so the timecodes come out character for character as they went in.
How does a two-line CSV cue come out in VTT?
As two lines, one under the other. The pairing survives — the two CSV lines still belong to one subtitle in the VTT output, and a player shows them together.
Do CSV cues keep their order in the VTT output?
Yes, and they are sorted by start time on the way — earliest first, which is how every format here expects them and how players read them. If your CSV file listed its cues out of sequence, the VTT output puts them back in order; that is a change to the file's structure rather than its content, and it is deliberate.
Can I convert the VTT back to CSV?
Yes, and that is the lossy direction: styling and format-specific content have nowhere to go in CSV. This way round nothing is lost, so that cost only appears if you go back.
Does the VTT output keep the CSV file's encoding?
No — the output is UTF-8, with Unix line endings and no byte-order mark, whatever the CSV file used. A file that arrives in UTF-16, or in a Windows single-byte encoding, is decoded on the way in (the result panel says so when that happens); what comes out is always the same UTF-8 VTT.