Batch Convert

Convert multiple subtitle files between formats and apply various transformations.

• Menu: Tools → Batch convert...

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How to Use

1. Open Tools → Batch convert...
2. Add subtitle files (drag and drop or use the Add button)
3. Select the output format
4. Optionally add conversion functions (fixes, adjustments)
5. Choose an output folder
6. Click Convert

Available Functions

You can chain multiple conversion functions:

• Fix common errors
• Remove text for hearing impaired
• Multiple replace
• Change casing
• Change formatting (add/remove)
• Offset time codes
• Adjust duration
• Change speed/frame rate
• Bridge gaps
• Apply minimum gap
• Merge lines with same text
• Merge lines with same time codes
• Split/break long lines
• Auto translate
• Delete lines

Auto-translate in Batch Convert

Batch Convert can machine-translate files as part of the conversion. Supported engines:

• Ollama
• LibreTranslate
• LM Studio
• llama.cpp — fully managed: Batch Convert reuses an already-running local llama-server, or downloads llama.cpp plus a curated translation model (e.g. TranslateGemma) and starts the server for you. Point it at your own server via the remote-server option in Auto-translate settings.
• NLLB (nllb-serve and nllb-api)
• DeepL (API key required)
• CrispASR MADLAD

The same feature is available headlessly in seconv via --translate-to — see the command line documentation.

OCR in Batch Convert

Batch Convert can OCR image-based subtitle files while converting them to text-based formats.

Supported OCR engines in Batch Convert:

• nOcr
• BinaryOcr
• Tesseract
• Ollama
• llama.cpp (curated OCR vision models — GLM-OCR, LightOnOCR, PaddleOCR-VL; a local llama-server is started automatically)
• PaddleOCR (Windows and Linux only)

Subtitle Edit 5 can auto-detect language and pixels-are-space settings for nOcr/BinaryOcr in many batch workflows. This reduces the amount of manual setup needed when converting many image-based subtitle files with similar fonts.

Speech to Text in Batch Mode

Speech-to-text batch mode can transcribe multiple media files and save the results next to the source files. See Speech to Text for engine setup and model details.

Settings

• Output format — Choose from 380+ subtitle formats
• Output folder — Where converted files are saved
• Overwrite existing — Whether to overwrite files
• Encoding — Text encoding for output files

For headless batch conversion, see Command Line (seconv).