Free Facebook SRT Subtitle Generator: Create Closed Captions

What an SRT File Actually Is (and Why It Matters for Facebook)

An SRT (SubRip Text) file is a plain text document. Nothing fancy — just sequence numbers, timestamp pairs, and caption text, formatted in a specific structure that video players understand. Here's what two entries look like:

1
00:00:04,200 --> 00:00:07,600
Welcome to today's live session.

2
00:00:07,800 --> 00:00:11,400
We're going to walk through
the new product launch.

That's the whole format. Each entry: a number, start and end timestamps in HH:MM:SS,mmm form, and caption text. Facebook reads that file and shows the right caption text at the right moment when a viewer clicks the CC button.

Why this matters: 85% of Facebook videos play without sound. Captions aren't a niche feature for a small accessibility minority — they're how most people experience your content. For deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers, non-native speakers, and anyone in a sound-sensitive environment, the CC button determines whether your video is watchable at all.

Beyond accessibility: the text in your SRT file contributes to how Facebook surfaces your video in search and discovery. For branded content covering specific topics, this is a real SEO benefit.

How to Generate an SRT File from a Facebook Video: Four Steps

Step 1: Get the Video URL

Navigate to the Facebook video. Click Share → Copy Link, or copy the URL from your browser's address bar. Standard video URLs, Facebook Live replay URLs, and Watch video URLs all work here.

Step 2: Paste and Process

Go to the Facebook to Transcript homepage, paste the URL, select the spoken language, and click Transcribe. For a 10-minute video this takes about 30 seconds. A 60-minute recording takes 2–4 minutes.

Step 3: Download the SRT

Click the SRT download button. The file comes with timestamps already in HH:MM:SS,mmm format — commas for milliseconds, not periods. Facebook requires this format specifically and will reject files that use periods.

Step 4: Rename the File for Facebook

Before uploading, rename the file to the format filename.languagecode.srt. The language code tells Facebook which caption track to assign it to:

How to Upload an SRT File to Facebook

For New Video Uploads

When posting a new video, the Captions section appears in the upload dialog. Click Upload SRT File, select your renamed file, confirm the language, and publish. Captions attach from the moment the video goes live.

For Existing Videos via Creator Studio

Open Creator Studio at studio.facebook.com. Find the video in your content library and click to open the editing panel. Select Subtitles and Captions, click Upload SRT File, select your file, confirm the language, and save. Captions typically go live within a few minutes.

For Live replay captioning specifically, see the Facebook Live to text guide. For Reels, Facebook doesn't support direct SRT upload — see the Reels transcription guide for the CapCut burn-in workflow.

SRT Formatting: What Facebook Actually Requires

Most upload failures come from formatting errors that are easy to fix once you know what to look for:

• Comma, not period, for milliseconds: 00:01:23,456 is correct. 00:01:23.456 will cause a rejection. This is the most common upload error.
• Blank line between every entry: Missing blank line separators cause upload failure. Each caption block needs to be its own island, separated by an empty line.
• Line length under 42 characters: Comfortable on mobile. Two lines per entry maximum. Long lines wrap badly on smaller screens.
• Each caption displays for 1–7 seconds: Shorter than 1 second is unreadable. Longer than 7 seconds and viewers will have moved on from what you're saying.
• UTF-8 encoding (not UTF-8 with BOM): Save with UTF-8 to ensure special characters display correctly. The BOM variant causes display issues with some Facebook players.
• Split at natural speech pauses: Don't cut a caption in the middle of a phrase. Break at sentence boundaries or natural pauses where a speaker breathes.

Troubleshooting SRT Upload Errors

Facebook Rejects the File

Check four things in order: (1) filename format — must include the language code as filename.languagecode.srt; (2) timestamp separator — commas, not periods; (3) blank lines between entries — must be present; (4) file encoding — must be UTF-8 without BOM. Fix any of these in a plain text editor and retry. One of those four is almost certainly the cause.

Captions Are Out of Sync

If captions are consistently early or late by the same amount throughout the video, a fixed offset crept in — usually because the video was trimmed after transcription. Use Subtitle Edit (free, Windows) or Aegisub (free, cross-platform) to apply a global time shift to all entries at once. Both tools have a “synchronize subtitles” feature for exactly this.

Special Characters Display Incorrectly

Encoding issue. Open the file in VS Code and use Save As to explicitly select UTF-8 (not UTF-8 with BOM). On Windows Notepad, the encoding dropdown in the Save dialog shows both options — choose UTF-8.