YouTube Subtitle Downloader: SRT, ASS or VTT

What does the B-ROLL subtitle downloader do?#

B-ROLL saves YouTube subtitles embedded in the file or as separate .srt, .ass or .vtt files. You set the Subtitles menu next to Format, tick languages in a dialog that lists the tracks the video really has, and the subtitles arrive with the download.

Subtitles are part of the regular download, not a separate tool or website. B-ROLL, a free Windows app for editors, asks yt-dlp for the chosen tracks after the video finishes, with pauses and retries against YouTube’s rate limit, so a failed caption request never costs you the video. Auto-generated captions are included next to the creator’s own tracks (yt-dlp’s --write-auto-subs option, described in the yt-dlp README). The menu choice is remembered between sessions, and the rest of the app is laid out in B-ROLL features for video editors.

What does each subtitle option in B-ROLL produce?#

The B-ROLL Subtitles menu has five options: None, Embedded, SRT, ASS and VTT. None is the default; Embedded puts text tracks inside the video, and the other three write separate files named Title.lang.ext.

The table lists what each option gives you, what it usually suits in an edit, and where it stops.

For editing, SRT is the safe pick: a plain-text file of cues and timings that editing apps usually import as a subtitle or caption track. The trade-offs between the three sidecar formats, and when a track inside the file beats a separate one, are laid out in SRT vs VTT vs ASS: which subtitle format to keep.

For the import itself, follow importing YouTube subtitles into DaVinci Resolve or bringing YouTube subtitles into Premiere Pro. An SRT also works as a searchable, timed transcript for a paper edit from a YouTube transcript.

How do you choose the subtitle language in B-ROLL?#

B-ROLL shows a Subtitles dialog before the first download of a batch, listing only the languages that video really has. Tracks sit in two groups, “OFFICIAL: uploaded by the creator” and “AUTO-GENERATED”, so you can see which captions a person wrote.

The dialog marks the video’s original language with “· original” and pre-ticks it together with the app’s language and English. A search box (Search language…) filters long lists, Clear unticks everything, and Only official subtitles keeps the creator’s tracks and drops the automatic ones. When a video has no tracks at all, B-ROLL says “No subtitles available for this video.”

The language dialog asks once per batch. Ten links pasted together share one choice, so pick languages that most of those videos carry.

Auto-generated captions deserve a second look before they reach a timeline. As of September 2026, YouTube Help describes automatic captions as created by speech recognition technology (Add subtitles and captions), so names, jargon and punctuation often need fixing. What to expect from them, and how to clean them up, is covered in downloading YouTube auto-generated captions as SRT.

How do you add subtitles to a video you already downloaded?#

Paste the same YouTube link again with the same settings and a Subtitles option other than None, then choose Only subtitles in the “Already downloaded” dialog. B-ROLL fetches the subtitles for the existing file and does not download the video again.

The “Already downloaded” dialog opens when B-ROLL finds a finished download of the same video with the same type, quality, format, subtitles and part, and the file still exists. It offers Re-download, Only subtitles and Cancel; Only subtitles appears only while subtitles are on. The typical case is adding a second language to an SRT download you already have.

Because the Subtitles value is part of those settings, a video first downloaded with None counts as a different download: B-ROLL queues it again, and yt-dlp skips a video file that already exists under the same name. When the dialog works but no file arrives, go through YouTube subtitles not downloading: causes and fixes.

Do B-ROLL subtitles match a clip you downloaded?#

No. Subtitles for a clip cover the whole video and are named after the video, so their timings count from 0:00 of the full source, not from your in point.

A clip saved as Interview [02-10 to 02-38].mp4 gets Interview.en.srt with every caption of the full interview. The line spoken at 2:10 in the source sits at 2:10 in the subtitle file, so slide the subtitle track earlier by the start time in the clip’s name and trim the cues outside the clip.

The default fast cut snaps to keyframes, so a clip can start slightly before the requested time and the offset is approximate. Exact frame cut (slower, re-encodes) in Advanced options starts the clip at the requested time, which makes the offset exact.

Embedded does not add subtitle tracks to clip files, so choose SRT when you download clips.

Can you get subtitles for a whole playlist?#

Yes, when the playlist’s videos go into B-ROLL as one batch of video links. Paste the links together, or load them from a text file with URL list (.txt), and B-ROLL asks for languages once, then fetches subtitles after each video finishes.

The Subtitles dialog of a batch lists the languages of its first video, and every video in the batch uses that choice. Each video gets its own Title.lang.ext files next to it, and a video with several subtitle files gets its own Title - subtitles folder, so no caption file ends up beside the wrong video.

Playlist and channel links open B-ROLL’s “Download from channel” dialog instead, which saves the videos into a subfolder named after the channel. How that dialog picks videos, and how channel downloads are switched on in Advanced options, is explained in the YouTube playlist and channel downloader.