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SeConv — Subtitle Edit Command Line Converter

src/seconv/README.md

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SeConv — Subtitle Edit Command Line Converter

A modern, headless command-line utility for batch converting subtitle files between formats. It reuses Subtitle Edit's core libraries (libse, libuilogic), so seconv supports the same formats, operations, and OCR engines as the desktop app — without any Avalonia / GUI dependency. Cross-platform (Windows, Linux, macOS); only needs the .NET 10 runtime.

What it does

  • 380+ subtitle formats (text, binary, image-based)
  • Container input: Matroska (.mkv/.mks), MP4, MCC, MXF, transport stream teletext
  • OCR for image-based sources (Blu-ray .sup, VobSub .sub/.idx, MKV PGS/VobSub, MP4 VobSub, TS DVB-sub) via five engines: Tesseract, nOCR, BinaryOCR, Ollama, PaddleOCR — or --time-codes-only to skip OCR
  • Image-based output and image-to-image conversion (preserve source bitmaps, no OCR)
  • Full operation pipeline: offset, fps change, renumber, adjust-duration, fix-common-errors, merge/split, balance, redo casing, RTL fixes, multiple-replace, custom-text format, plain text

Build

bash
dotnet build src/seconv/SeConv.csproj

The executable is seconv / seconv.exe.

Quick start

bash
seconv <pattern> <format> [options]
seconv <pattern> --format <name> [options]   # alternative syntax

seconv *.srt webvtt                                               # SRT → WebVTT
seconv movie.srt subrip --encoding:source --fix-common-errors    # keep encoding, clean up
seconv movie.mkv subrip --track-number:3                         # extract MKV text track #3
seconv movie.sup subrip --ocr-engine:tesseract --ocr-language:eng # OCR a Blu-ray .sup
seconv movie.sup subrip --time-codes-only                        # timing only, no OCR
seconv subs.srt bluraysup --resolution:1920x1080                 # render text → Blu-ray sup
seconv dump-settings > my.json                                   # starter --settings file (libse defaults)

Run seconv with no arguments for built-in help, or seconv formats to list every format.

Full reference

➡ Command Line (seconv) — full reference

The canonical reference documents every option, OCR setup, the operations pipeline, output-format aliases, templates/replacements, exit codes, and more examples. To avoid drift, detailed docs live there (and at docs/features/seconv.md) rather than being duplicated here.