How can I re-sync the subtitle and the video using VLC media player?

Question

When I play a movie with subtitles (on VLC media player), the text is often displayed too soon or too late. Is there a way to delay the starting point of the subtitles?

A lot of the information in the answers below can simply be found here: https://wiki.videolan.org/VLC_HowTo/Adjust_subtitle_delay — Andrew, Jun 08 '20 at 05:24
Gave up vlc and installed smplayer (`sudo apt install smplayer`). Runs flawlessly and handling custom subtitles is a treat. — Déjà vu, Oct 10 '22 at 12:53

NoNameProvided · Answer 1 · 2016-02-11T10:21:41.227

123

There is a much more easy way to do this via the advance synchronisation functionality of VLC

Detect (“hear and see”) that subtitles are out of sync
Press Shift + H when you hear a sentence that you will be able to easily recognize
Press Shift + J when you read the same sentence in the subtitle
Press Shift + K to correct the sync

edited Feb 11 '16 at 10:21

answered Sep 13 '14 at 14:44

NoNameProvided

2,370
3
16
27

6

Nice one - solves the problem when the subtitles are out of sync. I wish there was a similar facility for solving issues when the subtitles have a different FPS. – axel22 Dec 24 '14 at 13:29
5

@axel22 Wishes of Christmas often are fulfilled. You can start it from command line with the option `--sub-fps` and the new `fps`, or change it in the options windows. Give it a look to [another answer](http://superuser.com/a/866450/257269) and to the full help of `vlc`. – Hastur Jan 19 '15 at 08:19
8

This is better than the accepted answer. – Computist Jan 17 '16 at 19:15
Agree. This one is better and so much easier to perform. – Bryan CS Nov 24 '16 at 04:59
how do you perform this when the subtitles are ahead of sound? I cannot press SHIFT+J before pressing SHIFT+H – johni Jan 20 '18 at 19:42
1

You can rewind the movie after pressing Shift+H, no? – NoNameProvided Jan 20 '18 at 19:48
Way better than the accepted answer. – Diaa Aug 14 '18 at 13:16
6

Doesn't seem to work properly when the sub is ahead of sound, with rewinding. – woony Dec 11 '18 at 20:13
1

Is there any way to save the modified / synced .SRT after performing this action? – topher Feb 08 '19 at 17:21
I don't think so. – NoNameProvided Feb 09 '19 at 13:31
@woony When sub is ahead of audio, first bookmark the sub using Shift+J, then use Shift+H and then Shift+K. This works like a charm! Thanks. – Kaushal28 Jan 07 '21 at 17:33
This is brilliant. Thank you. – jgthms Apr 11 '23 at 13:55

score 85 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 20 '23 at 15:51

85

Open VLC media player.
Click the File Menu.
Click Open File.
Click Browse to Open the Movie.
Check the "Use a subtitle file" Box.
Click Browse to Open the Subtitle.
Click "Advanced Settings"
Move the Delay into the minus if the subtitles are too fast. Move it into the positive if the subtitles are too slow.

You can also just press H and G while the video is running to align the subtitles backward and forward in time; for the voice use J and K. The increments are in milliseconds, so it can be pretty easily fine tuned that way.

Source

edited Jul 20 '23 at 15:51

David

166
7

answered Jan 14 '10 at 12:27

3

with the kmplayer you could adjust the timing of your subtitles while you watching the video AND saving it. (And you could also set the amount of milliseconds incremented by the hotkeys) – fluxtendu Jan 14 '10 at 13:33
true enough, subtitle handling of VLC was always somewhat 'orphaned' compared to KMPlayer or SMPlayer. – Jan 14 '10 at 13:42
3

it's G & H on my fresh install of VLC 1.0.3, and the default jump is around 50ms. J/K are the audio delay. (i expect your source just reported the keys wrong.) – quack quixote Jan 14 '10 at 23:15
3

This solution permit to "slide" the subtitle starting point. But I have the problem that the subtitles slowly become de-sync with time. Just as the "pitch" was a little bit higher... Is there a way to "to accelerate" or "to slow down" the subtitles speed ? – Rabskatran Jun 18 '10 at 12:09
1

All the steps are correct except for step 8. If the subtitles are too fast, then you need to induce some positive delay and vice versa. So 1. If subs come before audio -> set subtitles delay in +ve. 2. If audio comes before subtitles -> set subtitles delay in -ve. – Jul 01 '12 at 02:39
1

I'm using Version 2.1.2 Rincewind (Intel 64bit) on Mac OS and the correct keys are F and G for Audio delay and H and J for subtitles. – Tim Büthe Jan 31 '15 at 20:34
5

Why would VLC not allow you to simply save this setting out to a file that gets automatically loaded with the movie when you open it? – Jake Wilson Apr 16 '16 at 05:02
1

Note: This method does not work with all subtitles. Sometimes you can make the subtitle sync for a short time, but the next minute they're desync again. As if there is a growth in delay. So you can set an additional value in VLC a factor for delay or so, but that sometimes also doesn't help, because the delay then seems to be exponential. I am convinced, that VLC does not handle subtitles correctly in some cases causing this kind of issue. – Also when you check the subtitle files their timings don't seem to be THAT much wrong. – Zelphir Kaltstahl May 22 '16 at 14:54
Thanks for the recommendation of Subtitle Workshop. For some reason my Comodo Internet Security blocks access to that website, as if it had bad reputation or something. I made it make an exception and I downloaded the program (Windows) and I made Comodo scan the files and no malware was found. – SantiBailors Nov 11 '20 at 16:15

score 7 · Answer 3 · edited Jul 10 '22 at 11:35

By command-line is possible to use the option --sub-delay followed by the number positive or negative of 1/10 of seconds of delay to add. So to shift the subtitle of 3 second you can run vlc with the following command line

 vlc --sub-delay 30  myfile.avi

In a similar way acts the option --sub-fps that override the normal fps.

--sub-fps Frame per second
Override the normal frames per second settings. This will only work with MicroDVD and SubRIP (SRT) subtitles.

With VLC 3.0.0 there are some other option that can be useful (and almost self-explicative)

--sub-fps
--sub-delay
--sub-type
--sub-file
--sub-language
--sub-autodetect-file

More options maybe interesting:

--sub-description, --sub-autodetect-fuzzy --sub-autodetect-path --sub-margin -sub-source --sub-filter --sub-track --sub-track-id

Specifically with subsdelay

--subsdelay-mode --subsdelay-factor --subsdelay-overlap --subsdelay-min-alpha --subsdelay-min-stops --subsdelay-min-start-stop --subsdelay-min-stop-start

For further information invoke vlc -H or check the online vlc user manual

@Zimba If I correctly understood... you can use any subtitle editor (the 1st I [found open source](https://www.nikse.dk/subtitleedit))... or you can write a script with the used command line (`.sh` or `*.bat` if you are under Linux or Windows)... `:-)` — Hastur, Sep 12 '19 at 19:00

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 17 '17 at 13:33

2

2017 VLC version 2.2.6

Open

Tools => Track Synchronization => Subtitle Track Synchronization

Here you can increase/decrease the speed.

answered Jul 17 '17 at 13:33

Atul Soman

121
3

are we actually changing the speed here? isn't it supposed to shift the position in time instead? – Ulf Gjerdingen Feb 11 '20 at 20:48

score 2 · Answer 5 · edited Jul 19 '23 at 18:00

2

VLC has an advanced support for subtitles. You can easily synchronize subtitles with keyboard shortcuts G and H within the application.

This way, you can sync subtitles by +/- 0.5 seconds by default.

However, if you want more functions and possibility to save synchronization permanently in your subtitle file, then you would need to use tools such as Subtitle Workshop (Windows only) or Jubler (Java cross-platform).

With these apps, you can easily set the first and the last spoken word in the movie and subtitle timings are automatically adjusted between these two lines.

edited Jul 19 '23 at 18:00

David

166
7

answered Oct 10 '14 at 08:06

John Siemens

97
3

1

Subtitle Workshop is quite poor, at least on macOS, menus don't open, I tried to open a file from the splash menu, hung forever, two times. – zakmck Aug 28 '19 at 16:47

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Feb 22 '19 at 18:52

With VLC for Mac (mine is v3.0.6),

Use the menu File > Advanced Open File ...;
In the prompt, select the File tab, and browse to your video file;
Check Add Subtitle File, then click Choose... to bring up the next prompt;
In that prompt, browse to your subtitle file;
Check Override parameters;
Set your delay in seconds in Delay. Minus values speed up subtitle and vice versa;
Hit OK then hit Open. The video either restarts or continues depending on your related settings in your Preferences;
If the delay is not quite there, repeat #1-7 with adjustments; if that still doesn't seem to work, then after resetting, close and reopen VLC.

One trick: Use big numbers at first, e.g., 20s, to test water, then fine-tune to close in on the actual delay.

If only I could up vote twice – karuhanga Mar 01 '19 at 21:21 — karuhanga, Mar 01 '19 at 21:21

score 1 · Answer 7 · edited Jul 19 '23 at 11:39

Other answers are good temporary solutions, but...

To permanently fix the timing of subtitles on Windows:

Download the free Subtitle Workshop program.
Convert at least a little bit of your video to .avi or other formats it supports (not .mp4). For example, you could convert it with a program like Ffmpeg:
```
ffmpeg -i .\myMovie.mp4 -t 0:02:00 .\myMovie_cut.avi`
```
In Subtitle Workshop, open the video and the .srt subtitle file.
Use a stopwatch (such as an app on your phone) to time how far out of sync your subtitles are with the audio when you play the video.
Edit > Timings > Set Delay, set a positive or negative delay time, select the "All subtitles" radio button, Apply. (Thanks to this answer to How to accurately shift subtitles)

I have fixed the dead link, but it only works on Windows as far as I can see. — David, Jul 19 '23 at 10:12

score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Jan 17 '21 at 13:56

0

On OS X 10.13.6, running VLC 3.0.11.1 (Vetinari), to advance and retard (respectively), the keys are:

Audio: F & G
Subtitles: H & J

It's unclear why the keys differ from this answer.

answered Jan 17 '21 at 13:56

Greenonline

2,235
11
24
30

score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Jun 20 '21 at 07:28

0

My answer I just did this works great: start the movie and add the subtitle file as normal. Then, go "tools" select "Track Synchronization" then you have options to delay or advance(start earlier) the subtitle file by as many seconds as you want! Keep fiddling with it until the first statement and first subtitle aligln. Easy.

answered Jun 20 '21 at 07:28

George Revell

1

1

Welcome to Super User! Before answering an old question having an accepted answer (look for green ✓) as well as other answers ensure your answer adds something new or is otherwise helpful in relation to them. Here is a guide on [answer]. There is also [tour] for the site tour, and [help] for the help center. – help-info.de Jun 20 '21 at 07:52

How can I re-sync the subtitle and the video using VLC media player?

9 Answers9

To permanently fix the timing of subtitles on Windows: