Subtitle translation programs say my srt files are bad

[philthethrill]

I have a DVD in German from Warner Brothers called Zwerg Nase, which is based on a story by Wilhelm Hauff. It has German subtitles and I want to translate them into English. I ripped the vobs with DVD Shrink, created an srt file with Subrip and converted the DVD to AVI using Auto Gordian Knot. I did that because I read in a subrip guide that if I have the AVI file together with the srt file in the same folder, then I could see the subtitles and make sure they're synched with the audio. I used VLC media player and it looked alright to me.

The only problem is that I've tried different programs like Subtitles Translator, Aegisub, Subtitle Workshop, and Subtitle Processor, and they didn't like the srt file. Subtitle Processor froze when I tried to open it and Subtitles Translator didn't display the text correctly. I read that the program supports the MicroDVD format. I converted the srt file to that format but I guess that the program didn't recognize it because I used Unicode instead of ANSI. When I opened the srt file in Subtitle Workshop, it said it's a bad subtitle or unsupported format. Same thing happened when I tried opening the sub file. When I tried opening the srt file with Aegisub I got an error message Parse error on entry 911 at line 4114 (expecting line number). Possible malformed file. I converted the srt to ssa, and it worked. The text displayed correctly.

I just don't get why the ssa file works with Aegisub, but the srt file doesn't. Is there anything I'm doing wrong?

[AlanHK]

I had what sounds like the same problem.

If you have the sub file and the AVI file in the same folder, with the same name (i.e. movie.avi, movie.srt) and open the AVI, many media players will detect and use the subtitle file automatically.

Opening the SRT file in a subtitle editor and then displaying the AVI file caused the errors as you mentioned; whatever Windows function that displayed the AVI within the subtitle editor also tried to show the linked subtitle and apparently conflicted with the display of the subtitle editor. Error messages and crashes followed.

There is probably a codec conflict or setting behind it. I uninstalled a bunch of things and reinstalled, never worked out what. But as a workaround, I just renamed the SRT file to movieX.srt. Now I can open that in Subtitle Workshop, and then choose the AVI file to display manually; and no errors.

After you've finished editing the subtitle, just rename it back to movie.srt if you want to use the autoloading.

[philthethrill]

Thanks AlanHK. I renamed the srt file but Subtitle Workshop gave me the same error message. I even opened the ssa file that worked with Aegisub, but that didn't even work, even after renaming it. I tried to open it in Subtitle Processor again but it didn't display the text correctly. It looked garbled and for every line the timestamp was 0/ 0:00:00.000 under where it says Start. Under where it says End there's just a blank line. Same thing happened when I opened the sub file that I got after converting the srt file. I even renamed it but it didn't make a difference. I tried the ssa file too but the same thing happened. Aegisub gave me the same error message when I tried to open the srt file, and Subtitles Translator gave me garbled text when I imported the sub file. Even with the srt file and ssa file it didn't work. The program prefers the MicroDVD format but it still accepted the srt and ssa file. Do you think it's because the srt, sub or ssa file is in Unicode instead of ANSI?

[AlanHK]

Unicode support is patchy, quite likely that's the problem. Why can't you use ANSI?
Doesn't it have all the characters you need for German?
I do most of my subs in ANSI, so I can get curly quote marks and real dashes, and it works with almost everything.

[manusse]

Hi,

Maybe you could try to convert them to the VobSub format using the new beta of SubtitleCreator that supports SRT files and can output subtitle bitmaps in the VobSub format?

Cheers
Manusse

[machf]

If the problem is Unicode, try opening your subtitle file with Notepad and use the "Save as" option to change the encoding.

[jman98]

dmihailescu - The last post in this thread was almost 4 years ago and the original poster hasn't logged in since his posts. What on earth made you look for a post 4 years old to reply to? I'd really like to know. Google's translator is probably just as good as the one in your link and it doesn't require any installation.

Unicode is a known problem for most subtitle tools.

[jman98]

I don't see why only the latest posts deserve attention in your opinion. Many people are looking for help with the same issue and I just offered a possible solution.
If google.com was the panacea you claim to be, may be the encoding issue should have been solved long ago, but it's not.

Looks like the honey approach isn't working... I'll try vinegar...

Look moron, we don't like it when people dig up old posts to add to them. It's called grave robbing. Now do you get it?

I find it odd that you joined apparently only to tell people about some free program that requires you to download it and install it. Do you make money off every download? And how do we know that the program doesn't contain viruses or other nasty programs?

The thread is 4 years old! How do you know that the original poster didn't solve his problem? And your program is simply a translation program. Did you know that Google Translate wasn't even introduced until AFTER this thread had its last post - prior to you bringing it back from the dead.

[giunghi]

I had the same problem (on Windows7 64). I use TextPad as text editor and I solved the problem by changing the file format to PC from UNIX. I do not much about character encoding but I think that the problem is with the end of the line character.

In any case, jsut do that and it will work. The srt file had a different name than the avi, if it makes any difference.

hope this helps.

ciao to all.

[dylz]

I had a similar problem subworkshop, subcreator, etc couldn't open the srt even if I changed to unicode or back to ansi,
I solved it by opening with notepad select all the text copied it and pasted in a new notepad file and added .srt as the extension.