JSON to MICRODVD
Or paste subtitle text
Options
Which frame rate the timings are counted in. On the format pages this is what MicroDVD needs, because it stores timing as frame numbers. On the frame rate pages it is the rate the file was timed against — the version the subtitles were made for — and the page's second box takes the rate of the video you are going to use them with. 23.976, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 50, 59.94 and 60 are the common ones. Getting it wrong shifts the whole timeline, and on the frame rate pages it shifts it by a ratio rather than by a fixed amount.
What this conversion changes
4 things are dropped or need a decision
- Styling
all styling (bold, italic, colour, outline, shadow)
- Positioning
on-screen positioning (every cue returns to the default position)
- Karaoke
karaoke timing (per-syllable highlighting)
- Frame rate
this format stores times as frame numbers — timings depend on the frame rate you supply
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 JSON to MICRODVD. Drop a file in — or paste the text — and you get the MICRODVD version back. The conversion runs entirely in your browser, so nothing is uploaded and no account is needed.
These two formats do not store the same things, and the difference is not cosmetic: styling, positioning, karaoke and frame rate have nowhere to go in MICRODVD. The list above comes from what the two formats can each express rather than from your file, so it is the same answer before you load anything.
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 JSON file, converted to MICRODVD
Input
{
"version": 1,
"title": "Fixture: typical",
"fps": 25,
"styles": {
"Default": {
"name": "Default",
"fontFamily": "Arial",
"fontSize": 20,
"primaryColor": "#FFFFFF",
"bold": false,
"italic": false
}
},
"generator": "subtitlematrix fixtures",
"cues": [
{
"id": "1",
"start": 0,
"end": 2000,
"lines": [
"Hello world.",
"Second line."
],
"style": "Default",
"position": {
"x": 100,
"y": 200,
"align": "center"
}
},
{
"id": "2",
"start": 2500,
"end": 4000,
"lines": [
"Plain line.",
{
"text": "Styled line.",
"tags": [
{
"kind": "italic",
"start": 0,
"end": 6
}
]
}
]
},
{
"id": "3",
"start": 4500,
"end": 6000,
"lines": [
"Roger: I am here."
],
"speaker": "Roger"
}
]
}
Output
{1}{1}25
{0}{50}Hello world.|Second line.
{63}{100}Plain line.|Styled line.
{113}{150}Roger: I am here.
Dropped in this output: styling, positioning, karaoke and frame rate. Everything else matches line for line.
The same conversion on an awkward input
Input
[
{ "start": 0, "end": 1000, "lines": ["First."] },
{ "start": 1000, "end": 2000, "text": "Second." },
"not an object",
{ "start": 2000, "end": 3000, "lines": ["Third."], "class": "top" }
]
Output
{1}{1}25
{0}{25}First.
{25}{50}Second.
{50}{75}Third.
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 happens to bold, italic and colour from JSON to MICRODVD?
MICRODVD stores no styling of any kind, so all of it goes: the `tags` a cue's line carries, or an entry of the document's own `styles` object — none of it has anywhere to land, and every line is written as plain text. The words themselves are untouched.
What happens to the on-screen position from JSON to MICRODVD?
MICRODVD cannot say where a subtitle is drawn, so the position stored with each cue is dropped on the way out of JSON, and every cue goes back to the default position the player chooses — the bottom of the frame, centred, for most of them.
What happens to karaoke timing from JSON to MICRODVD?
The timing goes; the words stay. Karaoke lives in the karaoke spans a JSON cue carries, which mark when each syllable lights up, and MICRODVD has no way to record a moment inside a line — so the marks come off and the syllables arrive as ordinary MICRODVD text.
Which frame rate should I set for the JSON to MICRODVD conversion?
MICRODVD stores a subtitle as a pair of frame numbers rather than as clock times — `{103}{175}` — so the frame rate is what turns the JSON timings into what the file needs: at 25 frames per second, four seconds in is frame 100. Set it to the frame rate of the video these subtitles are for; the wrong value barely shows at the start and drifts further out of step the longer the video runs.
What does the output look like when JSON becomes MICRODVD?
Like MICRODVD: no cue numbers: a pair of frame numbers in braces opens every line. Every JSON cue becomes one MICRODVD cue, in the same order, with the same text.
How does a two-line JSON cue come out in MICRODVD?
As one line with a vertical bar between the halves, which is how MicroDVD writes a line break. The pairing survives — the two JSON lines still belong to one subtitle in the MICRODVD output, and a player shows them together.
Do JSON cues keep their order in the MICRODVD 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 JSON file listed its cues out of sequence, the MICRODVD 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 MICRODVD back to JSON?
Yes, and it has its own list: converting MICRODVD to JSON drops frame rate. That list is different from the one above because the two formats keep different things.
Does the MICRODVD output keep the JSON file's encoding?
No — the output is UTF-8, with Unix line endings and no byte-order mark, whatever the JSON 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 MICRODVD.