VTT is less widely accepted than SRT by desktop players and editors. TTML is accepted by broadcast and streaming platforms. VTT is at home in captions on web pages and in HTML video players; TTML is the usual choice for subtitles delivered to broadcasters and streaming services.
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. WebVTT comments, STYLE blocks and region definitions are skipped; the cues, their text and positions are kept. Positions are written as TTML regions and italic, bold and underline as styled spans; the result is a plain TTML file with no broadcast-specific profile.