# 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.](https://kb.astate.edu/uploads/images/gallery/2025-10/scaled-1680-/s1.png)](https://kb.astate.edu/uploads/images/gallery/2025-10/s1.png)

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](https://kb.astate.edu/uploads/images/gallery/2025-10/scaled-1680-/s2.jpg)](https://kb.astate.edu/uploads/images/gallery/2025-10/s2.jpg)