Guide

How to make an SRT subtitle file on a Mac

Get timed subtitles out of a recording, then load them into Final Cut Pro, Premiere or YouTube. No upload, no converter website.

26 August 2026

Search for this and you will mostly find converter websites that want you to upload your video. You do not need any of them. An SRT is a plain text file, and you can produce one on your own Mac in a couple of minutes.

What an SRT file actually is #

This trips people up, so it is worth clearing up first. An .srt file is not a special binary format. It is a text file with a very simple structure, and you can open it in TextEdit:

1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:07,000
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to
FinTech+Sync's second quarter earnings call.

2
00:00:07,000 --> 00:00:10,000
I'm John Doe, CEO of FinTech+.

Each block is a number, a start and end timecode, the text, and a blank line. That is the entire specification.

One detail that causes real problems: SRT uses a comma before the milliseconds (00:00:07,000). WebVTT, the other common format, uses a period (00:00:07.000) and starts the file with a WEBVTT line. Mixing them up produces a file that looks fine and silently fails to load. If something rejects your subtitles for no visible reason, check that character first.

Step 1: Get a transcript with timings #

You need timecodes, not just text, so a plain transcription will not do — the tool has to give you segment-level timings.

Offline Transcription does this on your Mac without uploading the file: drop in the audio or video, click Transcribe, then export as SRT. It is free to download and try, and it works with the Wi-Fi off, which matters if the footage is confidential. Other tools will get you there too; the important thing is that the export includes timings.

Whichever you use, you now have a .srt sitting next to your video.

Step 2: Read it before you use it #

Automatic transcription makes mistakes, and subtitles are the most visible place for them to appear.

Open the file in TextEdit and skim it. The things that go wrong most often are names, technical terms, acronyms, and the boundaries between speakers. Fixing them now takes minutes; fixing them after you have styled 400 captions in an editor does not.

You can edit the text freely. Just leave the numbering, the timecodes and the blank lines alone.

Step 3: Load it into your editor #

Final Cut Pro #

1. Open your project.
2. Choose File → Import → Captions.
3. Select your .srt file.
4. In the Import as Role section, pick a closed caption role from the left menu, and a language subrole from the right.
5. Click Import.

The captions attach to the timeline at their timecodes. Final Cut accepts SRT, iTT and CEA-608, so the SRT you exported works directly. Apple's own closed captions workflow guide covers the styling options once they are in.

Premiere Pro #

1. Choose File → Import and select the .srt. It appears in the Project panel like a clip.
2. Drag it onto the timeline.
3. Premiere asks for a Create Caption Track Format. Choose Subtitle — it gives you the most styling control.
4. Switch to Workspaces → Captions and Graphics to edit the text against the footage.
5. To restyle everything at once, style one caption in Essential Graphics and use Apply to all, or save it as a Track Style.

On export, the Captions tab decides what happens: burn them into the picture, or write a separate sidecar .srt alongside the video.

YouTube #

Upload the video, then in YouTube Studio open Subtitles, pick the language, and choose Upload file → With timing. Select your .srt.

Do this rather than relying on YouTube's automatic captions. Auto-captions have no punctuation, handle names badly, and are not indexed the same way — a proper subtitle track is read as real text.

Just playing the file #

If you only want subtitles while watching, put the .srt in the same folder as the video and give it the same filename. VLC, IINA and most other players will pick it up automatically.

Common problems #

Everything is offset by a few seconds. Your transcript was made from a different cut of the video, or from an audio file that starts at a different point. Re-export the SRT from the exact file you are editing.

Captions are too long to read. Automatic tools sometimes produce long segments. Aim for roughly two lines and about 42 characters per line — split anything longer into two blocks with the timing divided between them.

The file will not load anywhere. Check the comma-versus-period issue above, make sure the file is saved as UTF-8 plain text, and check there is a blank line between every block. TextEdit can silently save as RTF: use Format → Make Plain Text before saving.

Accented or non-Latin characters show as garbage. The file is not UTF-8. Re-save it with that encoding.

The short version #

Transcribe with timings, export SRT, skim it for name errors, then File → Import → Captions in Final Cut or drag it onto the timeline in Premiere. There is no reason for the recording to leave your machine at any point in that process.