Subtitle Files

Reading time ~3 minutes

The following subtitle formats are supported with Cinegy Subtitling Service:

SRT (SubRip file format) – it is a popular format used for creating subtitles for videos. It is a plain text file with the .srt extension that contains a sequential number of subtitles, start and end timestamps, and subtitle text, allowing subtitles to be displayed at specific times during playback.
EBU-STL (Subtitling Data Exchange Format) – the STL format is a binary format developed by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU Tech 3264). It’s widely used as an archiving and exchange format. The file has the .stl extension.

SRT File Formatting

Each subtitle in the file is assigned a sequential index number, starting from 1.

Timing information: each subtitle consists of two timestamp lines. The first line indicates the start and end times of the subtitle, and the second line is usually left blank.

SRT files can be created and edited using any plain text editor. It’s important to ensure the timing information is accurate, as it determines when the subtitles are displayed during video playback.

Here is an example of an SRT with six subtitles:

1
00:00:08,800 --> 00:00:12,500
Welcome to the sample video.

2
00:00:12,700 --> 00:00:17,700
<b>This is an example of a subtitle.</b>

3
00:00:12,700 --> 00:00:17,700
{\i1}In this example{\i0},

4
00:00:12,700 --> 00:00:17,700
<u>we will walk through the process</u>

5
00:00:12,700 --> 00:00:17,700
<font color="green">of creating subtitles for video</font>

6
00:00:12,700 --> 00:00:17,700
{\a5}using different text formatting.

The SRT format supports basic text formatting which is derived from HTML:

Bold – text or {\b1}text{\b0}.

Italic – text or {\i1}text{\i0}.

Underline – text or {\u1}text{\u0}.

Note	Currently, the text style formatting is only topical for the DVB encoder.

Font color – text. You can define either the ARGB code that corresponds to the basic color or the color name itself for some colors. Supported colors for Teletext and DVB encoders vary, with the following colors available:

Teletext basics colors DVB basics colors

FFFF0000 or red – Red
FF00FF00 or green – Green
FFFFFF00 or yellow– Yellow
FF0000FF or blue – Blue
FFFF00FF or magenta– Magenta
FF00FFFF or cyan– Cyan
FFFFFFFF or white– White

FFFF0000 or red – Red
FF00FF00 or green – Green
FFFFFF00 or yellow – Yellow
FF0000FF or blue– Blue
FFFF00FF or magenta – Magenta
FF00FFFF or cyan – Cyan
FFFFFFFF or white – White
FF000000 or black – Black

FF7F0000 – Dark red
FF007F00 – Dark green
FF7F7F00 – Dark yellow
FF00007F – Dark blue
FF7F007F – Dark magenta
FF007F7F – Dark cyan
FF7F7F7F – Dark gray

Font formatting specified in the subtitle file takes precedence over the text settings in the subtitle encoder. Therefore, if the subtitle file includes font color formatting, the text color settings in the encoder will be ignored.

Line position – {\an1}…{\an9} or {\a1}…{\a3}, {\a5}…{\a7} and {\a9}…{\a11}, which performs the following line alignment:

{\an7} or {\a5}
Top left

{\an8} or {\a6}
Top center

{\an9} or {\a7}
Top right

{\an4} or {\a9}
Middle left

{\an5} or {\a10}
Middle center

{\an6} or {\a11}
Middle right

{\an1} or {\a1}
Bottom left

{\an2} or {\a2}
Bottom center

{\an3} or {\a3}
Bottom right

You can use any combination of text formatting by placing formatting tags one after the other. For example, to bold text and make it green, use the following formatting:

1
00:00:01,100 --> 00:00:10,100
{\i1}<b><font color="green">Bold green text is here</font></b>{\i0}

To use triangle brackets in subtitle text, use the \ character before < in the text line to avoid being read by service as a tag:

1
00:00:01,100 --> 00:00:10,100
Some text \<more text in triangle brackets>

By default, subtitle text is displayed in white on a black background.