Shotcut imports four subtitle formats and exports exactly one. Its User Guide lists the import formats as "SRT, VTT, ASS, and SSA", then settles the export question in a single sentence: "Subtitles are exported in SRT format."
That asymmetry is the entire answer to "can Shotcut export VTT." Shotcut will read a .vtt file you bring into the Subtitles panel. When subtitles go back out to a file, the documented output format is SRT — so a WebVTT file for a web player is a conversion step after the export, not a dropdown inside it.
The limits, at a glance
| Subtitle operation | What Shotcut's official docs state | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Import from a file | "SRT, VTT, ASS, and SSA" | User Guide (June 2026), Features page |
| Export to a subtitle file | "Subtitles are exported in SRT format." | User Guide |
| Embed into the exported video | "subtitles will be embedded in the output file if the file format supports it" | User Guide |
| Containers named for embedding | "MKV, MOV and MP4" — given as formats that "commonly support subtitles", not as a whitelist | User Guide |
| Burn into the picture | Subtitle Burn-In filter; "can only be added to the Timeline Output" | User Guide, release notes 24.08.29 |
| Pull subtitles out of a source clip | Properties > Extract Subtitles; mov_text and SSA support added in Release 25.12.30 | Release notes |
| Character encoding of the exported SRT | not described on the official pages we could find — check the official documentation | — |
The asymmetry is written down in two places
Shotcut's Features page mentions subtitles twice. The capability bullet is broad — "Create, import, edit, export, render, and embed subtitles" — but the bullet that names formats attaches them only to reading: "Imports subtitle formats SRT, VTT, ASS, and SSA."
The User Guide's Subtitles section repeats the same split in more words. On the way in: "Supported subtitle import formats include: SRT, VTT, ASS, and SSA." On the way out: "Subtitles can be exported to a file. Subtitles are exported in SRT format."
Neither page describes a VTT, ASS, or SSA export option, and neither gives a reason for the difference. The practical reading: plan your pipeline around getting SRT out of Shotcut, whatever you put in.
Three different things people mean by "export subtitles"
The question gets muddled because Shotcut has three separate subtitle outputs, and only one of them involves a file format you choose.
- A separate subtitle file. This is the Subtitles panel's export, and it is the SRT-only path described above.
- Soft subtitles inside the video file. The guide says that when exporting a project, "subtitles will be embedded in the output file if the file format supports it," and that formats which "commonly support subtitles include MKV, MOV and MP4." Note the conditional — embedding depends on the container you picked in the Export panel. Release notes for 24.08.29 record the addition of an
Export > Other > Disable subtitlescheckbox if you want the video without them; that checkbox appears in the release notes rather than in the User Guide. - Burned into the picture. The Subtitle Burn-In filter "can overlay subtitles that have been authored in the Subtitles Panel," and the guide is blunt about where it goes: it "can only be added to the Timeline Output." Adding it to a clip is the classic reason a burn-in appears to do nothing.
Only the first of the three produces a standalone caption file — and its format is fixed at SRT.
What to do when you need VTT
Export the SRT from Shotcut, then convert it. This is not a workaround for a missing feature so much as the normal shape of the job: SRT is the interchange format, WebVTT is the delivery format for the web.
Renaming the file will not do it. The W3C WebVTT specification (Candidate Recommendation Draft, 20 May 2026) requires that a WebVTT file "must consist of a WebVTT file body encoded as UTF-8 and labeled with the MIME type text/vtt", that it begin with the string "WEBVTT", and that cue timestamps use "A U+002E FULL STOP character (.)" before the milliseconds. SRT uses a comma there. The two formats differ at the byte level, so an extension swap produces a file a browser will reject.
Try it right here
Runs in your browser. Your file is not uploaded anywhere.
This runs in your browser tab — the file is read from disk, processed locally, and handed back, so a client's transcript never leaves your machine. SRT to VTT is the lossless direction of the pair: the WEBVTT header is added, the timestamp separators are rewritten, and the cue text is carried across unchanged.
Two things worth knowing once you have the .vtt:
- Serve it as
text/vtt. The spec requires that MIME type. A server that sends.vttas plain text is a real cause of "the file looks fine but no captions appear." - You do not need to convert in the other direction for Shotcut. VTT is on its import list. VTT to SRT is for the tools further down the chain that only read SRT — see SRT vs VTT compared for which is which.
Shotcut-specific gotchas
Subtitles land wherever the playhead is. The guide warns: "So be sure to place the cursor before importing subtitles from a file." Import with the cursor mid-timeline and the whole track is offset.
Do the subtitles last. The guide's recommendation is explicit: "We recommend to save subtitle editing until the timeline editing is complete because moving or cutting clips on the timeline will break the subtitle synchronization." Subtitles also "can only be added to the Timeline" — not to the playlist, not to individual clips.
Know which track you are looking at. A subtitle track is created with a name and a language, and the guide notes that "Multiple subtitle tracks can be added. But only the currently selected subtitle track is shown in the Subtitle Panel and the Timeline." If a multilingual project looks like it lost a language, check the track selector before checking the export.
Captions already inside a source clip have their own route. The User Guide lists Properties > Extract Subtitles among the Properties menu items, and the release notes for 25.12.30 record added support for mov_text and SSA there. The guide gives no description of the feature beyond the menu entry, so treat anything more specific as something to verify in the official documentation.
Auto-generated captions use the same exit. Speech To Text puts its results "in the Subtitles panel as a new top-level Subtitle Track," which means machine transcripts leave Shotcut through the same SRT-only export. The guide also states a known quirk up front: "Subtitle items sometimes start earlier than expected."
Release notes name specific subtitle bugs, with versions. Shotcut's release notes record that using Export > From > Marker with subtitles creating bad output was fixed in Release 24.11.17, that subtitles working incorrectly after a couple of minutes with non-integer frame rates was fixed in 25.01.25, and that off-by-one frame errors in the timeline subtitle bar and the Subtitle Burn In filter were fixed in 26.8.1. Those are "fixed in version N" entries, not descriptions of current behaviour — if you are on an older build, they are worth reading as a checklist.
FAQ
Can Shotcut export subtitles as VTT? Not according to its documentation. The User Guide states "Subtitles are exported in SRT format." Export the SRT and convert it with SRT to VTT.
Can Shotcut open a VTT file? Yes. Both the Features page and the User Guide list VTT among the import formats, alongside SRT, ASS, and SSA. Importing is where the four-format support lives.
Can I rename my .srt to .vtt?
No. WebVTT requires the WEBVTT string at the start of the file and a full stop before the milliseconds; SRT uses a comma. The bytes have to change, not just the extension.
Do I even need a separate file, or can Shotcut put subtitles in the video? It can. The guide says subtitles "will be embedded in the output file if the file format supports it," naming MKV, MOV and MP4 as formats that commonly do. Burning them permanently into the image is a different job — the Subtitle Burn-In filter, on the Timeline Output only.
What character encoding is Shotcut's exported SRT? The official pages we could find do not state it. Check the official documentation, and if your converted VTT shows mangled accents, the encoding is the first thing to look at — WebVTT must be UTF-8.
Convert the SRT that Shotcut gives you with SRT to VTT, or browse all Clapr tools — every one of them runs locally in your browser. More posts on what editors and platforms will and will not accept live in format limits.
