Subtitles Generally 5Seconds Off

[coffeecup]

Hi!

I was wondering why, in general, the subtitles I download are 5 seconds off? An example would be....

Curb Your Enthusiasm - S07E02 - PROPER 720p HDTV X264-DIMENSION.mkv

When grabbing the english subs from places all over the net (addic7ed, opensubtitles), all the subtitles I download are 5 seconds off. It seems to happen to all episodes too. They've had lots of downloads, so I have to imagine that it's something I'm doing wrong.....right?

Thanks in advanced for any help.

[DrJackson]

1. Are you sure you use the proper subtile version for what video file do you have?

2. Check ffdshow settings - subtitles - delay. It is possible to have set a - or + 5000ms delay time. If the value is 0 (zero), set manually a value as I said.

doc

[coffeecup]

Thanks for the response. It is definitely the right subtitle for the show....according to filename and hashes.

In any case, I could adjust the delay, but I was wondering if I was doing something wrong because it seems like many shows have the wrong timings.

Thanks!

[majork]

FYI: There are no subtitles uploaded to addic7ed.com for the 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' S07E02 720p 'PROPER' HDTV release by DIMENSION.

http://www.addic7ed....icular_Fellatio

The only subtitles I see currently listed there have been synced to the 'NoTV' SD HDTV and the 'REWARD' DVDRip releases.

Subtitle timings will vary from one release group's release to the next, especially for HDTV releases and often by a significant amount, because each group will vary in where they made each cut at the beginning of the show and at each commercial break.

I believe LOL subs will also work for DiMENSiON releases (afaik LOL is DiMENSiON's SD HDTV release group name) but not other group's releases like NoTV, and then any time there's a PROPER or REPACK tag that means you will need subs specifically for that PROPER/REPACK release also.

The only site I see any subs for that 720p 'PROPER' are English subs at opensubtitles and they were uploaded anonymously so I won't venture to guess whether they are a good working set or not. Subs from there can be a bit hit & miss sometimes except those they have tagged as being from a 'trusted source'.

I guess you could always try to learn how to resync a subtitle to a different release yourself. There are a few guides here in the forum that can help you with doing that, but It can be a bit tricky to do with HDTV releases as you will often need to sync each section of the show between each commercial break separately to get the timings right (and just finding the commercial-breaks can be a bit of a pain) instead of like for movies or DVD/Blu-ray version of TV releases where you can often get away with a simple extrapolated resync of just the first and last subtitle timings.

If the subs you are having problems with are, as you wrote, uniformly (5 secs) out of sync throughout (beginning, middle, end) then they might not be that hard at all to sync to your release. Here's from the guide for Subtitle Workshop:

The Subtitle Workshop Manual
Subtitle Workshop version: 2.51
[...]
2.2.1 Method 1: simple adjust, first and last dialogs

This method offers a lot of accuracy, and is recommended in most cases. After you loaded the subtitle file and video, do this:

* Play the video until you reach the first spoken dialog or the first place that should be subtitled in the movie, and when you hear/read it, take note the time (you will need it later).
* Seek to the near end of the video and when you hear/read the last spoken dialog or the last place that should be subtitled, take note the time, too.
* You can additionally take this two time values from an external video player instead of using Subtitle Worksop's video preview.
* After you have followed this steps, click the "Edit/Timings/Adjust subtitles..." or the [Ctrl]+ keys. Switch to "Simple" tab. In "First spoken line" write the first time, and in "Last spoken line" write the last time. Then press Adjust! button.

NOTES:
- You will need to have the proper shared codecs to be able to play the file format to be able to use Subtitle Workshop. So, if you can play the video in 'Windows Media Player' then you shouldn't have any problems.

- If the first or last lines are a "sync and corrections by *** " line added to it, just highlight it and click your 'delete' key so they don't interfere with the simple sync operation.

- Then, if/when you have the subtitle in sync like you want, when you go to save it you'll probably want to pick the 'SubRip' format to save it as an .srt.