Convert SubViewer (.sbv) to Premiere Pro markers
Takes the .sbv YouTube Studio gives you and writes Premiere sequence markers, one per caption, on exact frames. The captions you corrected once on a published video become a searchable transcript inside the edit.
Drop a .sbv file here
or click to choose one. It is converted in this page and never uploaded.
Premiere marker XML addresses frames, not seconds. This has to match the timeline you are importing into, or every caption lands slightly off and drifts further as the video runs.
Recovering work already done
Captions on a published video have usually been through a human pass: names spelled right, technical terms fixed, false starts cleaned up. When that video needs recutting, all of that is sitting in YouTube Studio in a format Premiere ignores.
Converting the .sbv to markers puts the corrected transcript back into the edit as something you can search, rather than as captions you would have to hide.
SBV is as plain as caption formats get
No cue numbers, no header, no markup, and the hour is written unpadded: 0:00:01.000. There is nothing to strip on the way to a marker, so what you see in the panel is exactly the text that was on the video.
Match the timebase to your sequence
Markers are integer frame counts at the sequence timebase. YouTube's copy of the captions has no frame rate attached, so this is a question only you can answer: pick the rate of the sequence you are cutting.
A subtitle file records when each line appears, not when each word is spoken. Anything built from one is accurate to the line. If you need per-word timing (for karaoke-style captions, or to split a line without the second half drifting), transcribe the audio instead, which times every word individually.
Nothing is uploaded
The .sbv is read and the .xml is written in this page, by the same code that builds exports in the editor. The file never reaches a server and no copy is kept. A subtitle file is a transcript, and a transcript is often the part of a project that cannot leave the building.
Why it asks for a frame rate
A .sbv stores times in milliseconds and says nothing about frames. Premiere marker XML addresses frames directly, so something has to decide which frame each cue lands on, and only you know the timeline you are importing into. Pick the sequence's rate rather than the source video's: they are not always the same, and that mismatch is the usual cause of captions that start slightly off and get worse.
Frequently asked questions
Where do I download the .sbv?
YouTube Studio → Subtitles → pick the language → three-dot menu → Download → SubViewer (.sbv).
Can Premiere open an .sbv directly?
No. SubViewer is a YouTube format and Premiere does not read it, which is why converting is the only route in.
No subtitle file yet?
Generate one from your audio or video with word-level timing, then export Premiere marker XML directly, no conversion step, and every word individually timed rather than every line. Free for 15 minutes and 5 transcriptions a month.
Transcribe a file instead