Convert SMI to SRT

Why convert SMI to SRT

SMI (SAMI) is an old Microsoft subtitle format. It was common for Korean and Japanese video files and in Windows Media Player. Many current players, video editors, smart TVs and upload sites do not read SMI, or show broken characters. SRT is supported almost everywhere, including VLC, Plex, YouTube and most editing software.

The file is converted in your browser and is not uploaded.

How to convert SMI to SRT

1. Drop the .smi file in the area above. You can also open the file in a text editor, copy everything and paste it with Ctrl + V.
2. Check the subtitle list. Characters should display correctly. SRT is already selected as the output format.
3. If the file contains more than one language, choose the language track to convert.
4. If the subtitles are out of sync with the video, shift the timing. Use a negative value if they appear too late and a positive value if they appear too early.
5. Click Save subtitles.

Broken characters and encodings

Most old SMI files are not saved in UTF-8. Korean files usually use EUC-KR (CP949), and Japanese files use Shift_JIS. Opened as UTF-8, they show garbled text. This tool tries UTF-8 first, then the legacy encodings, and picks the one with the fewest broken characters. The SRT file is always saved as UTF-8, so it displays correctly in any modern player.

What changes in the conversion

• SMI marks only the start time of each line. The end time comes from the start of the next line or the next blank sync point. SRT stores both times for each line.
• Font, color and size tags from SMI are removed. Only the text is kept, because SRT has no standard way to store those styles.
• Line breaks inside a subtitle are kept.

To use the subtitles in a web page, choose VTT instead of SRT.

Using the SRT with your video

Most players load subtitles automatically when the SRT file has the same name as the video and sits in the same folder, for example movie.mp4 and movie.srt. Rename the saved file to match. In VLC, you can also drag the SRT onto the playing video.