SUB Converter

Extract text from SUB files

Select File
Drop or upload your .SUB file

Online File Converter

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How to extract text from your SUB file

Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your SUB file.
You’ll see a preview, if available.
Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.

Convert SUB to another file type

To convert your SUB file to another format, you need VLC Media Player or other Video software.

Convert a file to SUB

To convert other file formats to the "Subtitle Format" file type, you need software like VLC Media Player or a similar tool.

About SUB files

The .sub extension is notoriously ambiguous, causing significant frustration for users who expect a simple text file but often encounter binary data. The most common format (approx. 50%) is the VobSub subtitle file. Unlike modern text-based subtitles, VobSub files are actually containers for bitmap images (raster graphics) extracted directly from DVDs. This means you cannot edit them in a standard text editor like Notepad++, and they usually require a companion IDX file to function correctly. This bitmap nature makes them large and incompatible with many modern web players or mobile devices.

Another frequent variation is the MicroDVD subtitle format. While these are text-based, they rely on frame numbers rather than timecodes (e.g., {125}{250}Dialog). This creates a major limitation: if your video's frame rate doesn't match the subtitle's source exactly, the text will drift out of sync effectively ruining the viewing experience. There is also a significant legacy use case (approx. 9%) where .sub files serve as subchannel data for CloneCD disk images, used to replicate copy-protection data on optical discs.

Conversion Strategies:

For Media Players & Editing: Convert VobSub or MicroDVD to SRT (SubRip). This is the universal standard supported by VLC Media Player and Adobe Premiere Pro. Note that converting VobSub to SRT requires OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to read the text from the images.
For Web & HTML5: Convert to VTT (WebVTT). This is essential for web accessibility and ensuring captions display correctly in browsers.
For Archiving/Reading: Convert to TXT or PDF if you simply need a script or transcript of the dialogue.

Convert.Guru analyzes your SUB file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.

Users also converted IDX, CCD, ECM, SUBTITLE, SUP, VP6, CUE, STR, SRT, IMG, MP4, G3D and ZIP files.

FAQ

If you want to convert SUB file to SRT, TXT, SUP, TEXT, ISO, IMG, DMG, VHD, VMDK, VDI, HDD or QCOW, you can use VLC Media Player or similar software from the "Video Subtitles" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….

To convert VFD, DMG, OVA, IMA, VBOX, ADF, PVS, VHD, OVF, ISO, DSK or IMG files to SUB, try VLC Media Player or another comparable tool in the "Video Subtitles" category.

The SUB Converter Story

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 SUB converter.