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Convert broadcast (DVB) subtitles to SRT

If you record digital TV — through a PVR, a tuner card, or a capture box — the subtitles come along as DVB subtitles: images, not text. Like Blu-ray and DVD subtitles, they need OCR before an editor can touch them. Converting DVB subtitles to SRT works exactly like the disc formats in PGSExtract — same browser flow, same free preview.

What DVB subtitles are

DVB is the digital-television broadcast standard used across Europe and much of the world. Its subtitles are bitmap regions — pre-rendered images of each line — sent alongside the video and drawn over the picture by your TV. When a recording is remuxed into an MKV, that stream rides along as a DVB subtitle track. Because the words only exist as pictures, converting them to text takes OCR. See image-based vs text-based subtitles explained for how DVB compares to PGS (Blu-ray) and VOBSUB (DVD).

Convert DVB subtitles to SRT in three steps

  1. Open your MKV and pick the DVB track. The file is parsed locally in your browser; only the small subtitle stream is uploaded, never your recording.
  2. Choose the language and run OCR. Broadcast subtitles exist in dozens of languages — pick yours from over a hundred, and run the free 100-frame preview first to judge the quality.
  3. Download your SRT. Every recognised cue lands in a clean SubRip .srt with the original broadcast timing preserved.

One credit converts one subtitle frame, and you’re only charged when a job succeeds — the pricing page has the numbers.

Recording still in TS form?

DVB subtitles survive remuxing, so if your capture is a raw .ts transport stream, remux it into an MKV first (MKVToolNix does this losslessly in one step) and the subtitle track carries over intact — then extract as above.

The same flow handles PGS from Blu-ray (convert PGS to SRT) and VOBSUB from DVD (VOBSUB to SRT). Text tracks in the same recording — SRT, ASS, WebVTT — extract free, no OCR. The docs cover the full pipeline.

Convert your DVB subtitles now — free preview, no account needed.

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