SRT and ASS Export: The Feature Our Pro Users Kept Asking For

Since day one, CaptionBolt has been about one thing: upload a video, get a captioned video back. Simple. But we kept hearing the same request from a specific group of users.

"Love the transcription and styles. But I edit in Premiere. Can I just get the subtitle file?"

For the first year, our answer was "not yet." As of last week, it's "yes."

What We Added

SRT export — the universal subtitle format. Import it into Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro, or upload it directly to YouTube. The timing data is accurate to the millisecond, so captions sync perfectly.

ASS export — this one's for the power users. ASS (Advanced SubStation Alpha — yes, the name is unfortunate) supports styled subtitles. That means when you export an ASS file from CaptionBolt, you get our caption styles baked into the subtitle format — fonts, colors, animations, positioning. Import it into Aegisub or any player that supports ASS, and it looks exactly like the preview.

Batch download — select MP4, SRT, ASS, or any combination. One click, you get a zip with everything.

Why It Took So Long

Honest answer: SRT is easy. We could have shipped it months ago. But we didn't want to ship SRT without ASS, and ASS was hard.

The challenge is style translation. Our caption styles are defined in a React-based rendering engine (we use Remotion under the hood). Converting those styles into ASS format means translating CSS-like properties into a completely different spec. Font sizes work differently. Positioning works differently. Animation keyframes map to different concepts entirely.

We spent about two months getting this right. The goal was: if you export ASS and play it in VLC or import it into a video editor, it should look like what you saw in our preview. Not "close enough" — actually the same.

We're about 95% there. A few of the more exotic animation styles lose some fidelity in ASS (the format has limits), but for the vast majority of styles, it's a faithful export.

Who This Is For

If you're a creator who posts directly to social media — you probably don't need this. Just export the MP4 with burned-in captions and upload.

If you're an editor who works in a professional NLE — this changes the workflow. Use CaptionBolt for the transcription and styling, then pull the subtitle file into your existing project. No need to render a whole new video.

If you're a team posting to YouTube — SRT export means you can use our transcription as YouTube's subtitle track. Better accuracy than YouTube's auto-captions, with proper segmentation.

How to Use It

After your video is processed, hit the download button. You'll see three options: MP4, SRT, ASS. Pick what you need. If you want all three, there's a "Download All" button that gives you a zip.

That's it. Nothing to configure. The SRT and ASS files use the same transcription and timing data as the MP4 — they're just different output formats.