Turn SBV captions into EBU-STL. It is converted in your browser, so the file never leaves your device.
Drop SBV files here
or choose from your computer paste with Ctrl V
from Photos or Files
Ready · several at once0 bytes uploaded, ever
Drop SBV files onto the box above, or click it to choose them. ToAny reads the file's contents to detect the type, so a wrong extension does not matter.
Press Convert. There is nothing else to set. The work happens in this tab.
Save the EBU-STL, or download everything as one ZIP if you converted several files.
The SBV to EBU-STL converter is part of this page and runs inside your browser. Your captions are never sent to ToAny or to anyone else.
Nothing has to travel to a server and back, so the conversion starts the moment you press Convert, even on a slow connection.
No sign-up, no email address and no watermark. Add several files and download them together as a ZIP.
SBV is understood mainly by YouTube and a few caption tools. EBU STL is the file European broadcasters ask for when subtitles are delivered with a programme. SBV is at home in uploading and downloading YouTube captions; EBU-STL is the usual choice for subtitles delivered to European broadcasters.
The text is read as UTF-8 or UTF-16, whichever the file is. An older file in another code page is read using the charset it declares, or as Windows-1252 if it declares none, so accented letters in an unlabelled legacy file can come out wrong. A file that is not text, such as the picture-based subtitles of a DVD, is refused instead of being converted to nonsense. Of the styling, only italic, bold, underline and the position on screen (top, middle or bottom, left, centre or right) travel between formats; fonts, colours, outlines and effects do not. The file is written as STL25.01 in the Latin character set, 25 frames per second, with italics, underline, line breaks, position and justification. Characters outside the character set become a question mark.
SBV is the plain caption format YouTube exports and accepts: a time range such as 0:00:01.000,0:00:04.000 followed by the text. It carries no styling and few other programs read it.
Opens in YouTube Studio and some caption tools; few media players
SBV converterEBU STL, defined in EBU Tech 3264, is the binary subtitle file of European broadcasters: a 1024-byte header followed by 128-byte blocks, each holding the in and out timecodes, position, justification and teletext-style text of one subtitle. It is usually named .stl, which is also the extension of 3D printing files, so ToAny tells them apart by the header inside.
Opens in Broadcast subtitling systems, Subtitle Edit, Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve
EBU-STL converter| SBVYouTube SBV subtitles | EBU-STLEBU STL subtitles | |
|---|---|---|
| Stands for | YouTube caption file | EBU Subtitling data exchange format (STL) |
| Type | Subtitles | Subtitles |
| Compression | None | None (binary) |
| Introduced | The late 2000s, by Google (YouTube) | 1991, by the European Broadcasting Union |
| Opens in | YouTube Studio and some caption tools; few media players | Broadcast subtitling systems, Subtitle Edit, Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve |
| Best for | Uploading and downloading YouTube captions | Subtitles delivered to European broadcasters |
| File extension | .sbv | .ebustl |
No. The SBV to EBU-STL conversion runs inside your browser, on your own phone or computer. The file is not sent to ToAny or to anyone else.
No further quality is lost: EBU-STL stores the decoded audio exactly. The result is identical in content.
Yes. Add as many as you like, convert them together and download each result or all of them as one ZIP.
The steps are the same everywhere because ToAny runs in the web browser: open this page in a current version of Chrome, Edge, Safari or Firefox, add the SBV file, press Convert and save the EBU-STL. There is nothing to install.
Yes, but a subtitle file is small. Files up to 50 MB are accepted, far more than any real subtitle file. Beyond that the limit is your device's memory, since nothing is uploaded; a computer copes with large files better than a phone.