Open SBV files in your browser
The captions YouTube's caption editor saves. Drop an SBV with its video to watch it on it, or open it alone to read every line with its time. Nothing leaves your device.
Or drop it anywhere on this page
What you'll see
Your subtitles show on the video they're dropped with, or open alone as a table of every line with its time.
- Shown on the video they're dropped with
- Alone, every line with its start, end and length
- Search • Every match counted
- Export • Save as CSV, Excel or JSON
About SBV
YouTube's caption editor saves captions as .sbv, a take on SubViewer's format, and YouTube Studio still offers it beside SRT and VTT when you download a video's captions.
An SBV is plain text: a line with the start and end, like 0:00:04.200,0:00:07.950, then the caption itself, with a blank line between each. It has no numbers and no styling.
Dropped with a video, an SBV named like it shows on the picture, with the Subtitles button to switch or hide it. Alone, it opens as a table of every line with its start, end and length, to sort, search and save as CSV.
YouTube SubViewer captions
.sbv
Format
- MIME type
- text/plain
- Made by
- YouTube
Inside the file
- Holds
- Lines with times
- Times
- To the millisecond
- Styling
- None
- Markup
- Plain text
Opens in every browser
Filepeek shows SBV captions on videos and as a table in Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari. On their own, browsers show them as plain text.
- YouChromeOpens through Filepeek
- YouEdgeOpens through Filepeek
- YouFirefoxOpens through Filepeek
- YouSafariOpens through Filepeek
Apps that open SBV
- WindowsSubtitle Edit • Notepad shows its text
- MacTextEdit shows its text
- iPhone and iPadA text editor shows its text
- AndroidA text editor shows its text
Questions
How do I show an SBV on a video?
Drop the video and its captions together, or the folder that holds them. A file named like the video shows on it at once, and the Subtitles button picks another or turns them off.
How do I turn an SBV into an SRT?
YouTube Studio saves a video's captions as SRT too. For a file you already have, Subtitle Edit turns it into an SRT, as both hold the same lines with their times.
Why won't my player take my SBV?
Few players know SBV, since only YouTube writes it. Most take SRT, which Subtitle Edit makes from it, and here it shows on the video it comes with.