Fix subtitles that come too early or too late
Drop the subtitle file, say how many seconds it is off and in which direction, and save it back. Every line moves by the same amount.
When this is the fix
A constant delay means the subtitles were timed for a slightly different cut of the same film: a longer studio logo, a recap at the start of an episode, a release that trimmed the opening credits. The gap is the same in the first minute and in the last, so moving every line by that amount puts all of them right.
To measure it, find a line that is easy to hear — a name, a shout — and note how far apart the voice and the text are. Enter the number, pick “later” if the text shows up before the voice and “earlier” if it shows up after.
When it is something else
If the subtitles fit at the start but slip further and further behind, no single shift will fix them — the timing has to be stretched. Sync by two lines does that from one early and one late line, and change the frame rate fixes the most common cause, a 25 fps release played at 23.976.
If everything is fine until one scene and late after it, a scene was cut or added there. Shift only from that line on: the form has a “starting from line” box, and clicking a line in the table shows its number.
Questions
- Which way do I shift?
- Text before the voice — move it later. Text after the voice — move it earlier. If you guess wrong, Undo puts it back and you try the other way.
- Will the file still work on my TV?
- Yes. The format is kept: an SRT is saved as an SRT, with the same line breaks and italics. “Save the fixed file” writes it in the format it came in; “Save as” offers the others.
- Can I fix several episodes at once?
- Open them together and pick each one from the file list; each keeps its own changes. The shift is entered per file, since each episode can be off by a different amount.