The explosion of video media and marketing online means that it is now one of the major modalities for marketing and communication. Cisco reports that video is expected to account for 82% of internet traffic by 2022. Its prominence and importance means that video marketing is critical to
the marketing strategy of most businesses.
According to HubSpot, over the past 3 years video marketing has eclipsed
other modalities to become the top of your marketing tactic list’.
Having the right tools and services to hand is increasingly critical to success in this area. Here we digest one of the key file types you need to know.
Contents
The SRT file
If you are a keen videographer, digital marketer or YouTube enthusiast it is likely you will have come across the SRT file extension in the day-to-day handling of your video work.
SRT stands for SubRip Subtitle and is one of the most common formats of subtitle or caption files. It derives as a file type from a Microsoft Windows-based software called SubRip. This free software program is widely used to rip’ subtitles from video, along with their timings.
This subtiltle text file is versatile and typically provides the subtitles in plain text unit separated by a single line.
Subtitles are presented in a sequential format with the text presented with start and end time-codes in hours:minutes:seconds,milliseconds. Positional information is also encoded with a default setting of placing the subtitles at the centre of the related images.
The text in SRT files is plain text allowing ready opening of these caption files in any text or word
processing programme.
Simply open to view and edit as required and save with the SRT extension.
Alternatively, there are a number of specialist SRT file editors that can be used including open source software like Aegisub.
If you want a SRT file with a film, this file type is supported for a number of programmes including Windows Media Player and VLC.
YouTube is an online platform that also supports this file type.
Creating a .srt file
- This type of file can be created using any text editor programs such as Note[ad++, Textedit or even Notepad. Ensure each of the lines within the subtitle starts with a 1.
- Next, include the time the sbtitles or captions start, then “” and then the end time.
- Then, the timestamp need to be formatted in this format: .
- Just below the start and end of the timestamp, include your first line of the text.
Editing a .srt file
Several programs have been created to help one in editing the .srt file. Such software include the subtitle workshop.
Unlock the utility of SRT video captions with our comprehensive transcription services.
The original SubRip software generated subtitles by using optical character recognition but accurate and search engine optimised (SEO) video captions can be made for any video in the SRT format with audio to text transcription.
Many video editing and hosting platforms provide automated transcription. This process often throws up numerous inaccuracies and denies the benefits of control of your video’s subtitles.
Video subtitles are increasingly crawled by search engines which can rank videos alongside other related content. Even major platforms such as YouTube will refer to keywords in captioned content to assist in the ranking of videos on a particular topic.
Automated transcription inaccuracies especially where related to keywords could mean that
the video content you create is simply not found.
Many viewers including those with language barrier or disability rely on good quality captioning so ensuring accuracy is worth the investment.
Audio transcription specialists like us are able to created high quality and keyword focused captioning for your videos which can be delivered in carefully crafted SRT format.
These search engine optimised files can then be uploaded to your videos on the platform of your choice, bypassing automated versions which can let you down.
Wrap-Up
You can also use our transcription services to add your subtitles to videos before publication.
We are comfortable handling jobs of any size and volume.
Contact us if you need high quality subtitle creation for corporate, training or educational videos, or any other video content you need to stand out online.
