SMI 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)
- Frame rate
this format stores times as frame numbers — timings depend on the frame rate you supply
- Format-specific content
content the source format keeps outside its cues (non-cue blocks, header text, per-cue settings, commented-out events) — the target format has no place for it
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 SMI 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, frame rate and format-specific content 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 SMI file, converted to MICRODVD
Input
<SAMI>
<HEAD>
<STYLE TYPE="text/css">
<!--
P { text-align: center; font-family: Arial; }
.ENCC { Name: English; lang: en-US; }
-->
</STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<SYNC Start=1000>
<P Class=ENCC>Hello there.
<SYNC Start=3000>
<P Class=ENCC>
<SYNC Start=3500>
<P Class=ENCC>How are you?<br>Fine, thanks.
<SYNC Start=6000>
<P Class=ENCC>
</BODY>
</SAMI>
Output
{1}{1}25
{25}{75}Hello there.
{88}{150}How are you?|Fine, thanks.
Dropped in this output: styling, positioning, frame rate and format-specific content. Everything else matches line for line.
The same conversion on an awkward input
Input
<SAMI>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Episode 1</TITLE>
<STYLE TYPE="text/css">
<!--
.ENCC { Name: English; }
-->
</STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<sync start="00:00:02,500">
<P Class=ENCC>Line one<br>Line two
<sync start=9000>
<P Class=ENCC>Tom & Jerry
<SYNC Start=12000>
<P Class=ENCC>
</BODY>
</SAMI>
Output
{1}{1}25
{63}{225}Line one|Line two
{225}{300}Tom & Jerry
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 SMI to MICRODVD?
MICRODVD stores no styling of any kind, so all of it goes: an `<i>` or `<font color="…">` written into the paragraph text, or a rule in the head's `<STYLE>` block — 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 SMI to MICRODVD?
MICRODVD cannot say where a subtitle is drawn, so the paragraph attributes and the CSS they point at are dropped on the way out of SMI, and every cue goes back to the default position the player chooses — the bottom of the frame, centred, for most of them.
Which frame rate should I set for the SMI 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 SMI 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 happens to SAMI's `<STYLE>` block, `<TITLE>` and `Class=` attributes in MICRODVD?
They are dropped. SAMI says what its subtitles look like outside the text of the cue: a `<STYLE>` block of CSS for the paragraphs, a `<TITLE>`, and the channel marker each paragraph carries — `Class=ENCC`, which points at one of those rules. MICRODVD stores cues rather than a document, so there is nowhere for any of that to go. Emphasis written inside a cue's own text is unaffected — that belongs to the line — and the cues come through with their text and timings whole.
What does the output look like when SMI becomes MICRODVD?
Like MICRODVD: no cue numbers: a pair of frame numbers in braces opens every line. Every SMI cue becomes one MICRODVD cue, in the same order, with the same text.
How does a two-line SMI 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 SMI lines still belong to one subtitle in the MICRODVD output, and a player shows them together.
Do SMI 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 SMI 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 SMI?
Yes, and it has its own list: converting MICRODVD to SMI drops frame rate. That list is different from the one above because the two formats keep different things.
Does the MICRODVD output keep the SMI file's encoding?
No — the output is UTF-8, with Unix line endings and no byte-order mark, whatever the SMI 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.