How To Create an SRT File - AI Voiceover Tools

This guide goes over how to create an SRT file for your video when you use text to speech software.

SRT file referes to "Subrip Subtitle", it's very easy to do for captioning video content. Here are step by step process:

Basic Understanding of SRT File Before Starting

SRT files are derived from the software SubRip, which “ripped” the extracted subtitles and associated timings from video content as a text file. The format is as follows:

hours:minutes:seconds, milliseconds --> hours:minutes:seconds, milliseconds

Every SRT file needs 4 components:

Number of the caption frame in sequence

Beginning and ending timecodes
Caption
Blank line indicating the start of a new caption sequence

Create Your Own SRT File Now (Easy Way)

Create Transcription Here

Use software recommended to generate the SRT file for you by converting spoken words into text.

Manual Method (Hard way)

Text Editor

1. Open a new file in TextEdit(Mac) or Notpad (Windows)

2. Number the sequence to the beginning of the first caption sequence

3. Enter the beginning and ending timecode of where you want the caption to show:

Follow this format:

hours:minutes:seconds,milliseconds --> hours:minutes:seconds, milliseconds

Why this is so time consuming: You have to manually mark timestamp for the entire video to match all dialogue

4. Enter the caption in any language. Make sure to limit the caption to less than 32 characters with 2 lines per caption on the screen.

A good video should pace the viewer with the caption. Not too slow, not too fast.

5. Rinse and repeat

PHP SRT File Generator

This script is for a file that has one line of transcription per line. It also assumes that the transcription is in English and that the length of each line of transcription is equal to the length of time that it should be displayed in the video.

Copy this code to create your own SRT file generator

<?php

// Set the input and output file names
$inputFile = 'transcription.txt';
$outputFile = 'transcription.srt';

// Open the input file
$inputHandle = fopen($inputFile, 'r');

// Open the output file
$outputHandle = fopen($outputFile, 'w');

// Initialize the counter for the subtitle number
$subtitleNumber = 1;

// Initialize the start and end times
$startTime = '00:00:00,000';
$endTime = '00:00:00,000';

// Read the input file line by line
while (($line = fgets($inputHandle)) !== false) {
// Write the subtitle number to the output file
fwrite($outputHandle, $subtitleNumber . "\n");

// Increment the subtitle number
$subtitleNumber++;

// Set the start time to the current end time
$startTime = $endTime;

// Calculate the end time by adding the length of the line to the start time
$lineLength = strlen($line);
$endTime = strtotime("+{$lineLength} seconds", strtotime($startTime));
$endTime = date('H:i:s,000', $endTime);

// Write the start and end times to the output file
fwrite($outputHandle, "{$startTime} --> {$endTime}\n");

// Write the line of transcription to the output file
fwrite($outputHandle, $line);
}

// Close the input and output files
fclose($inputHandle);
fclose($outputHandle);