Having issues with using downloaded subtitles that seem different than the movie's subtitles

[adina35]

Ive been collecting foreign movies with no English subtitles. The English subtitles I've managed to download from the net. To my surprise I stumbled on 3 frequent issues.

The subtitles have different timestamps

Most downloaded subs have more/less caption entries (you would think that a movie had the same amount of dialog)

even adjusting the timestamps in bulk to reflect those of the movie's included subtitles, the subs seem to progressively get out of sync. (maybe frame rate issue?)

So issue #1 I tried fixing with a subtitle editor. I took the difference between the first timestamps in both files (native vs downloaded subs) and added/subtracted the difference to all timestamps in the downl. subs. The thing is some srt file contain more/less caption entries (might be due to a different movie cut). I have no clue why this is something that occurs regularly. But like I stated in issue#2 caption seem to get out of sync as the movie progresses. I havent found a solution to this issue or how to trace the issue with software. I have no clue what to look for.

Manually adjusting each caption in the downloaded file is a time consuming task. Mind you I have more than 100 foreign movies. So this approach is a No Go. I was wondering if any of you had subtitle issues and how did you manage it?

So I want a way whereby I can easily download subs and make minimal adjustments to it. Or if someone has a way to remedy the framerate issue when editing subs I would love to know it.

[Woodstock]

Sometimes subtitles are regionalized. I have several movies where the subtitles do not match the translated audio, and others where they match the translated audio, but do not match the original audio. Most likely, "after market" subtitles match the original audio exactly... which means they can have different timing.

What is really bad is when the subtitles match up with a translation of a translation... My first copy of one series was a Malaysian translation to Chinese which was then translated to English. THAT was weird. And quite different from the official version, which went Japanese->English.

[wmcclain]

It is a great day when your downloaded srt file fits the video perfectly the first time.

For all other days, I use a bash command-line script: https://github.com/helixarch/subedit

It has many modes but I find "-a" the most useful. Play the video and note the timestamps of the first and last audio that has subtitles in the file. Run subedit with those values and the first and last subtitles will be pinned to those times and everything in between will be shifted proportionally.

Sometimes I first edit out non-voice subtitles at the beginning and end of the file because it is easier to note the times with dialog.

Sometimes I have to try several versions of downloadables to get good results.

And sometimes perfection is not possible.