WebVTT

Draft

Introduction

“The WebVTT format (Web Video Text Tracks) is a format intended for marking up external text track resources. The main use for WebVTT files is captioning video content.” (WebVTT, retr. April 23 2012).

WebVTT can be used in the track element of HTML5 video. As of April 2012, browsers may not implement this, but probably some JavaScript-based HTML5 players do.

See also:

• Timed Text (TT or TTML)
• HTML5 audio and video

The format

The WebVTT format is fairly complex plain text format. It surprisingly doesn't use XML.

File structure

A WebVTT file has the following structure:

• First line must be the word "WEBVTT"
• Entries, separated by at least blank line

Simple entries A header, e.g. a number (optional) A time using the hh:mm:ss.mmm format, optionally followed by layout clues The text to be displayed. This text can include some html and other markup

Example of a simple entry:

WEBVTT

1
00:00:01.000 --> 00:00:20.000
<v DKS>This is a <b>very short</b> video that is not about WEBVTT

Karake style entries (source: HTML5 doctor)

WEBVTT

1
00:00:01.000 --> 00:00:10.000
Never gonna give you up <00:00:01.000> 
Never gonna let you down <00:00:05.000> 
Never gonna run around and desert you

Examples

Simple example 1 (taken from the draft specification)

WEBVTT

00:11.000 --> 00:13.000
<v Roger Bingham>We are in New York City

00:13.000 --> 00:16.000
<v Roger Bingham>We're actually at the Lucern Hotel, just down the street

Links

Specification

• WebVTT, Living Standard — Last Updated 19 April 2012, retrieved April 2012.

Introductions

• Video Subtitling and WebVTT, November 29th, 2011 by Tom Leadbetter.
• Getting started with the HTML5 track element, by Sam Dutton, Feb. 8, 2012