The subtitles are not matching the video

[cns00]

I am currently watching a German movie that has an English dub. Text like movie title and locations are in German so I am translating them to English and I am making English subtitles.

I created a .srt file in Aegisub and I opened the movie in Aegisub. I went to a part that has German text and I played it frame by frame in Aegisub. I set the start time to the first frame that showed text and I set the end time to the last frame that showed text and the text went away in the next frame. It played perfectly in Aegisub and the subtitles showed exactly when the text showed and they went away exactly when the text went away.

However, when I played the movie in PotPlayer by using the subtitles I noticed that the subtitles showed a few frames before the text showed and it went away a few frames before the text went away. I had to advance the start time and the end time of the subtitles by a few frames in Aegisub. Now the subtitles don't match the timing of the text when I played the movie in Aegisub but when I played the movie in PotPlayer the subtitles showed exactly when the text showed and they went away exactly when the text went away.

I want to ask why is this happening? Is the fps of the movie when it's playing in PotPlayer different from the fps when it's playing in Aegisub? I checked the fps of the movie in PotPlayer. It's 24 fps. I checked the fps of the movie in the video properties of Aegisub. It's also 24 fps.

I need to make the subtitles exactly match the text when I play the movie in Aegisub and the subtitles should exactly match the text when I play the movie in PotPlayer. Is that possible?

[eunice]

facing this exact issue

[netmask56]

The length of a sentence in English doesn't always match the length in German or French or Greek etc and visa-versa. You will need to go through manually and adjust as necessary the entry point. You can't rely on simply setting the start point of the movie and expect everything will sync. Subtitles are never that simple. Also word usage in translating or when its a transliteration the syncing can be worse.

[cns00]

The length of a sentence in English doesn't always match the length in German or French or Greek etc and visa-versa.

That doesn't matter and what matters is when the German text shows and when it goes away. For example when I played the movie in Aegisub I saw that German text showed at 05:03.22 and it went away at 05:09.22 so I created a subtitle line which started at 05:03.22 and it ended at 05:09.22. The subtitle line shows exactly when the German text shows and it goes away exactly when the German text goes away when I play the movie in Aeigsub.

I think that the fps when I play the movie in PotPlayer is a different than when I play the movie in Aegisub because the subtitle line showed a bit before the German text showed and it went away a bit before the German text went away. I had to set the start time to 05:03.31 and I had to set the end time to 05:09.31 so that the subtitle line shows exactly when the German text shows and it goes away exactly when the German text goes away when I play the movie in PotPlayer.

[Ennio]

It's not uncommon for players not exactly honouring subtitle timestamps whilst displaying them.
PotPlayer does have a subtitle-sync function. Right-click in the video, go Subtitles --> Subtitles Sync --> Adjust Subtitle Sync. Here you can set positive/negative value in milliseconds.

[ProWo]

See if there is a video delay (Start after 00:00:00.000) and adjust the subtitle timing with this value.