How to Convert an SRT or VTT File to Plain Text
Stripping the numbers and timestamps out of a subtitle file you already have, so you are left with just the words — three ways, depending on what you have.
The Scriptorium team ·
An SRT or VTT file is mostly numbers and timestamps with your actual words sitting between them. To get just the text, you either paste it into a plain-text editor and delete the timing lines by hand for a short file, use a text editor's find-and-replace with a pattern for a longer one, or — if you still have the original recording, not just the subtitle file — re-transcribe it and export plain text directly, which skips the cleanup entirely.
What is actually in the file
Open an .srt file in any plain-text editor and you will see blocks like this:
1
00:00:01,200 --> 00:00:03,800
Welcome back to the show.
2
00:00:03,900 --> 00:00:06,100
Today we are talking about…Each block is a sequence number, a start and end timestamp, and one or more lines of text. VTT looks almost the same, with a WEBVTT header at the top and timestamps separated by a period instead of a comma. Converting to plain text means removing everything except that last line in each block.
If you have the file but not the recording
Short file: by hand
For a few minutes of dialogue, open the file in a plain-text editor, and delete the sequence-number and timestamp line above each block of text. Tedious for anything long, but reliable and requires no other software.
Longer file: find-and-replace with a pattern
Most text editors and word processors support find-and-replace with a regular expression. Matching a line that is only digits (the sequence number) or a line containing --> (the timestamp line) and replacing it with nothing removes both in one pass, leaving blank lines and the spoken text. A final pass to collapse repeated blank lines cleans it up.
There is no dedicated "upload an SRT, get plain text back" tool on this site today — this is a genuine gap, not something hidden behind another button. The find-and-replace approach above is the practical workaround until there is one.
If you still have the original recording
This is the better route when it is available. Upload the audio or video to audio to text or video to text and export as plain text directly — no subtitle file, no cleanup, and you also get speaker labels if there is more than one voice, which a subtitle file rarely carries in a way that survives stripping the timestamps.
Why not just watch the video with subtitles on and copy them?
You can, for a short clip, but it is slower than either method above and error-prone — you are transcribing by eye, pausing and rewinding, rather than reading a file that already has the text in it.