CHAT2SRT – CHAT to Subtitle Conversion

Status: Current

Purpose

Converts CHAT files to subtitle format for captioned video. The legacy manual describes CHAT2SRT as converting a CHAT file to SRT for video captioning and then walks through a GUI workflow using external subtitle software.

This book focuses on the CLI semantics only: clan-core converts timed CHAT utterances to SRT or WebVTT subtitle entries.

Usage

chatter clan chat2srt input.cha

Output Formats

Format	Function	Timestamp style
SRT	`chat_to_srt()`	`HH:MM:SS,mmm`
WebVTT	`chat_to_vtt()`	`HH:MM:SS.mmm`

Options

Option	Default	Description
(none)		This converter operates on a parsed `ChatFile` and has no additional configuration options.

Input Format

Standard CHAT (.cha) files with timing bullets on utterances. Utterances without timing bullets are excluded from the output.

Output

Numbered subtitle blocks with timestamps derived from CHAT timing bullets and cleaned text content (no CHAT markers, annotations, or speaker codes).

Example SRT output:

1
00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:03,500
hello world

2
00:00:04,200 --> 00:00:06,800
how are you

Differences from CLAN

GUI material intentionally omitted here: The legacy manual’s Subtitle Writer walkthrough belongs in the TalkBank VS Code extension docs, not in this CLI command chapter.
Uses typed AST for subtitle text extraction
Produces valid, well-formed SRT/WebVTT output
Additionally supports WebVTT output format
Manual feature not yet mirrored: The legacy manual documents using +t%glo to caption from the gloss tier. This chapter should not imply that arbitrary dependent-tier caption sourcing is available unless explicitly implemented.

Reference

See the CLAN manual for the original CHAT2SRT command documentation.

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