SRT to ASS / SSA Converter

Convert SRT subtitles to Advanced SubStation Alpha for styled playback

Convert SubRip (.srt) subtitles to Advanced SubStation Alpha (.ass) with a configurable default style: font, size, text and outline colour, bold, italic, outline and shadow. Maps SRT cues to Dialogue lines and converts inline tags. Browser-only, ideal for MKV soft-sub workflows. It runs free in your browser on Gera Tools, with nothing uploaded.

Last updated Source: Gera Tools

What is the ASS format?

Advanced SubStation Alpha (.ass) is a styled subtitle format that supports fonts, colours, outlines, shadows, positioning and animation. It is the standard for fansubs and MKV soft-subs because it can render rich styling that plain SubRip cannot.

Advanced SubStation Alpha (.ass, the successor to .ssa) is the subtitle format used whenever captions need real styling — custom fonts, coloured text, outlines and shadows — which is why it dominates fansubbing and MKV soft-sub workflows. Plain SubRip can’t express any of that. This converter takes an .srt and wraps it in a complete ASS script with a default style you control.

How it works

An ASS file has three sections, all of which the converter generates:

  • [Script Info] — metadata including the playback resolution (PlayResX / PlayResY) you set, so styling scales correctly to your video.
  • [V4+ Styles] — a single Default style built from your controls: font name and size, primary (text) colour, outline colour, bold and italic flags, and outline and shadow thickness.
  • [Events] — one Dialogue line per subtitle cue.

For each SubRip cue the converter:

  1. Converts the timestamps. SubRip uses milliseconds (00:00:01,000); ASS uses centiseconds with a single-digit hour (0:00:01.00). The milliseconds are rounded to the nearest centisecond.
  2. Translates inline tags. SubRip’s <i>, <b> and <u> become ASS override codes — for instance italic maps to the italic-on code and its closing tag to the italic-off code. Unsupported HTML-style tags are stripped, and hard line breaks become ASS’s \N.
  3. Emits the Dialogue line referencing the Default style.

Colour handling

ASS stores colours in &HBBGGRR& order (blue, green, red) — reversed from the usual #RRGGBB. When you pick a colour the converter reverses the channels and writes it into the style’s PrimaryColour (text) and OutlineColour fields with an opaque alpha byte.

Tips

  • Set the width and height to match your video (1920×1080 by default) so the font size and outline render at the intended scale.
  • A small outline (1–3 px) with no shadow keeps subtitles readable over varied backgrounds; increase the shadow for extra contrast on bright footage.
  • To soft-sub an MKV, mux the generated .ass alongside the video with a tool like mkvmerge; players that support ASS will render the styling.
  • Everything runs in your browser — your subtitles are never uploaded.