Kaltura at UW-Madison: Creating a Custom .SRT File for Subtitles

This doc provides an overview of the process of creating custom .SRT files which can be uploaded to Kaltura Mediaspace to add subtitles to videos.

What is an SRT file?

  • An SRT file is a plain text file consisting of four parts per caption
    1. A number indicating the subtitle's order in the sequence
    2. The times that the subtitle should appear on the screen and disappear in the format [hours]:[minutes]:[seconds],[milliseconds] --> [hours]:[minutes]:[seconds],[milliseconds]
    3. The caption itself
    4. A blank line to indicate a new subtitle

  • Here is an example of what this would look like:

    1
    00:01:15,550 --> 00:01:21,225
    Hello everyone, and welcome to History 100.

    2
    00:01:23,150 --> 00:01:27,880
    This lecture will cover the first chapter of the textbook.


How do you create one?

  • SRT files are plain text and can be written in any text editor, such as Microsoft Word, Notepad, TextEdit, etc.
  • Type out each subtitle as desired for the video you wish to caption in the format shown below.

    SRT_example.PNG

  • If using an editor such as Microsoft Word, you will need to convert the file to 'plain text' as shown below.

    file_convert.PNG

  • By default, the text may be saved as a .txt file. You can manually the file name's suffix to .srt to convert it to the proper type.
  • Now if the file is saved as filename.srt you are ready to upload it to Kaltura for captioning!