The .sbv captions you downloaded from YouTube won’t import into your NLE
SBV file won’t import into Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve
Seen in: YouTube Studio export
What is actually wrong
SBV is YouTube’s own caption format from the old Google Video days. It carries the same cues as SRT but writes the timing as 0:00:04.000,0:00:07.500 with no cue numbers. No editing application lists .sbv as an import format, so the file is rejected or ignored.
Fix it here: SBV to SRT
Drop the file. It is detected and converted in your browser; nothing is uploaded. Free to start, no signup.
Convert a file now
Conversions …
Drop EDL, SRT, VTT, .prtranscript, or transcript files
Any caption, transcript or timeline file: CutConvert picks the converter and shows what survives · up to 100 KB per file
The fix, step by step
Download the captions as SBV or choose .srt if YouTube offers it
In YouTube Studio, open Subtitles for the video, use the three-dot menu on the track and download. If .srt is offered, take it and skip the rest.
Drop the .sbv into the converter
It reads the timing pairs, splits the cues on the blank lines, numbers them and writes standard SRT.
Import the SRT
Premiere: File > Import. Resolve: Media Pool > Import Subtitle. Final Cut Pro: File > Import > Captions.
Where .sbv comes from
YouTube Studio lets you download a caption track in several formats, but the default on older tracks, and the only option for some auto-generated tracks, is SubViewer (.sbv). The format dates from Google Video, predates YouTube’s SRT and VTT support, and survives only because YouTube still writes it.
An SBV file looks like this:
0:00:04.000,0:00:07.500
Welcome back to the channel.
0:00:07.500,0:00:11.200
Today we're grading the interview.Compared with SRT there are three differences: no cue numbers, a comma between start and end instead of an arrow, and a dot before the milliseconds. Each one on its own is enough to stop Premiere’s importer, which expects a numbered cue and a --> on every timing line.
Why renaming to .srt does not work
Changing the extension makes Premiere try harder, not succeed. It reads the first line, expects a cue number, finds a timestamp, and either aborts the import or produces a caption track with zero items. Resolve behaves the same way. Fixing it by hand means rewriting every timing line, which for a 20-minute video is several hundred edits.
What the conversion does
The converter parses each timing pair, converts the dot milliseconds to SRT’s comma form, keeps multi-line cues as multi-line, numbers everything in order and writes a file that the SRT validator on this site reports as clean. Timing is preserved exactly; SBV and SRT both carry millisecond precision.
After the import
YouTube auto-captions are typically fast and long: 3-line cues with reading speeds well over the 17 characters per second that viewers can follow. Once the SRT is in your NLE, expect to split cues. The SRT validator on this site flags the worst ones before you start.
Everything here runs in your browser. The caption file is never uploaded.
FAQ
- Can YouTube give me SRT directly?
- Often, yes. The download menu on a caption track offers .srt and .vtt on most videos. Auto-generated tracks sometimes only offer .sbv, which is when this converter is needed.
- Does Final Cut Pro read SBV?
- No. Final Cut Pro imports SRT, iTT and SCC captions. Convert the SBV to SRT, or to iTT if you need styled captions in Final Cut.
- Are the auto-caption timings accurate?
- They are accurate to the word YouTube recognised, which is not always the word spoken. The conversion keeps them exactly; correcting the text is editorial work.