How to Fix Out-of-Sync Subtitles (Delay, Frame Rate and Overlaps)

Few things ruin a film faster than subtitles that appear a second too late. Fortunately, almost every sync problem has one of three causes, and each one has a quick fix.

1. Subtitles are always early or late by the same amount

This is the most common problem. It happens when the video has a different intro, an extra logo or a cut scene compared with the version the subtitles were made for. The gap is the same from start to finish.

Fix: shift all cues by that amount. Find one line, note how far off it is, and enter the offset in milliseconds in the online converter (for example -1500 if subtitles appear 1.5 seconds too late). Positive numbers make subtitles appear later, negative numbers earlier.

2. Subtitles drift further out of sync over time

If the first scene is fine but by the end the text is several seconds off, the subtitles were made for a different frame rate. A typical case is a 23.976 fps film subtitled for a 25 fps PAL release; the gap grows by about 4% over the running time.

Fix: convert the frame rate. In the converter, choose the matching option such as 23.976 → 25 or 25 → 23.976. If you are unsure which way, try one, check the last scene, and switch if it got worse.

3. Lines flicker or two subtitles show at once

Some files, especially auto-generated captions, have cues that overlap. Players then show two lines stacked on top of each other, or the text flickers. Fix overlapping lines in the converter trims each cue so it ends just before the next one starts.

Fix the delay first, then the frame rate, then overlaps. Doing them in this order gives the cleanest result.

Bonus: strange characters like é instead of é

That is an encoding problem, not a sync problem: the file was saved in an old encoding and read as UTF-8. Turn on Repair broken characters in the converter to fix it. If an old TV still shows the wrong characters, also enable Add UTF-8 BOM.