VTT 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
3 things are dropped or need a decision
- Styling
all styling (bold, italic, colour, outline, shadow)
- 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 VTT 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, 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 VTT file, converted to MICRODVD
Input
WEBVTT
intro
00:00:01.000 --> 00:00:04.000
Hello there.
00:00:04.500 --> 00:00:08.000 align:start position:10%
Second line with <i>italics</i>.
Output
{1}{1}25
{25}{100}Hello there.
{113}{200}Second line with italics.
Dropped in this output: styling, frame rate and format-specific content. Everything else matches line for line.
The same conversion on an awkward input
Input
a stray comment line
cue-id-1
00:00:01.000 --> 00:00:02.000
No header, two lines before the timecode.
Output
{1}{1}25
{25}{50}No header, two lines before the timecode.
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 VTT to MICRODVD?
MICRODVD stores no styling of any kind, so all of it goes: a `<b>` or `<i>` written into the cue text, or a rule in the file's own `STYLE` block — none of it has anywhere to land, and every line is written as plain text. The words themselves are untouched.
Which frame rate should I set for the VTT 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 VTT 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 VTT's NOTE, STYLE and REGION blocks in MICRODVD?
They are dropped. A WebVTT file can carry a header, comments, a style block, region definitions and per-cue settings such as `align` or `position`, and MICRODVD has nowhere to put them — it stores cues, not a document. The cues themselves, text and timings, come through whole.
What does the output look like when VTT becomes MICRODVD?
Like MICRODVD: no cue numbers: a pair of frame numbers in braces opens every line. Every VTT cue becomes one MICRODVD cue, in the same order, with the same text.
How does a two-line VTT 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 VTT lines still belong to one subtitle in the MICRODVD output, and a player shows them together.
Do VTT 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 VTT 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 VTT?
Yes, and it has its own list: converting MICRODVD to VTT drops frame rate. That list is different from the one above because the two formats keep different things.
Does the MICRODVD output keep the VTT file's encoding?
No — the output is UTF-8, with Unix line endings and no byte-order mark, whatever the VTT 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.