Extract text from Index files (IDX)
To convert IDX Indexes to another format, you need VobSub or other Data software.
To convert other file formats to the "Subtitle or System Index File" file type, you need software like VobSub or a similar tool.
.IDX files are supplementary index files used to speed up data retrieval by mapping metadata or offsets to a primary file. Their exact purpose depends entirely on the software that created them. For consumers, the most common use case is VobSub DVD subtitles, where the .IDX file stores timestamps and display coordinates for image-based subtitles held in an accompanying SUB file. Other frequent uses include database indexes for legacy Microsoft FoxPro, video event metadata for Dahua Technology security DVRs, and thumbnail caches for deprecated software like Google Picasa or definition indexes for ESET Antivirus.
The main disadvantage of an .IDX file is that it is structurally dependent and often useless on its own. It contains pointers, not media. For VobSub subtitles, the format is image-based (bitmap) rather than text. This requires a 50MB+ file pair that modern web browsers, mobile apps, and lightweight media players cannot read natively. Database and DVR .IDX files are binary, proprietary, and strictly locked to their specific hardware or legacy ecosystem.
To make VobSub subtitles usable on modern devices or the web, you must extract the text using OCR (Optical Character Recognition). For universal media player support, convert the .IDX/.SUB pair to SRT. For web-based video embedding, convert to VTT. If you are trying to read a database or system index, converting to plain TXT or XML might expose readable string headers, though the core data remains in the primary file.
Convert.Guru analyzes your IDX file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted SUB, DAV, 264, INDEX, IDDX, IDX3-UBYTE, LGH, DAT, IDX_, PACK, IDX00, TXT and IDX2 files.
If you want to convert IDX file to SRT, MP4, JPG, CSV, PDF, JSON, XML, YAML, YML, TOML, INI or CFG, you can use VobSub or similar software from the "Metadata and Data Indexing" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert DBF, XML, SQLITE, XLSX, SQL, TSV, ACCDB, YAML, MDB, CSV, ODS or JSON files to IDX, try VobSub or another comparable tool in the "Metadata and Data Indexing" category.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our IDX converter.