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Simple Caption File Formatting

To begin, you must have, or be ready to create a transcription of your video. Once you have a completed transcript, open a text editor such as Notepad or Word.

Create a new text file and save it with an .srt or .txt file extension (pictured below). When you save a Word document as a text file, be sure to check “Allow Character Substitution” to minimize the editing you will have to do.

A screenshot of the file explorer where you can edit file name and file extension.

You will divide the captions into different sections. Each section should include:

  • Section number: The first line of each section should be a number indicating the order of the captions.
  • Start and end times: The second line should include the start and end time of the caption in the format hh:mm:ss,ms (hours:minutes:seconds:milliseconds). There needs to be a two-hash arrow ( --> ) to separate beginning and end times.
  • Text: The third and possibly fourth line(s) should include the caption text. Refer to “Captioning Best Practices” on page 4 for more guidance on text formatting.

Below is an example of what your caption file should look like.

Example of a properly formatted caption file

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