.SBV File Format

Introduction

SBV is the plain text caption format of YouTube. YouTube Studio offers it, alongside SRT and other formats, when captions are downloaded, and accepts it when they are uploaded. The format is a simplified form of the older SubViewer format.

Structure

The file is a list of captions separated by blank lines. Each caption is a line with the start and end times separated by a comma, then one or more lines of text. Times are written h:mm:ss.mmm, with a full stop before the milliseconds. There are no caption numbers and no styling.

0:00:01.000,0:00:03.500
Where are we going?

0:00:04.000,0:00:06.250
Somewhere we have never been.

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