What is "encoding" of an srt file?

[applejuiceIP]

Hello everyone
I downloaded a lot of chinese subtitles in *.srt files. The thing is that when I open them in notepad, it's these weird gibberish characters.
Something like this?

±¾×ÖÄ»½ö¹©Ñ§Ï°ºÍ½»Á÷ʹÓ㬲»µÃÓÃÓÚÈκÎÉÌҵĿµÄ¡£

When i load the subtitle file on VLC or burn to dvd, the same gibberish appears on the subtitles

I've been reading a lot on this and I keep hearing "encode this in GB2312" but I'm not sure how to even do that...

Oh I forgot to include that when I open the srt file in Microsoft Word, there is this file conversion dialog box and I select GB2312 and then I click okay and I see the characters fine!

I've spent a lot of time downloading a lot of other subs hoping it was just that file, but so far, everything is in gibberish. I went the source website and did a preview and I can see the chinese characters fine. What is going on?!

The reason why I wanted to do this is because I wanted to burn an *.avi file with the *.srt file to a dvd. I tried that and of course, the dvd had gibberish subtitles too. (used COnvertXtodvd)

Please someone help me with this. I've spent a lot while on this....

THANK YOU!

[redwudz]

It sounds like the subs are in Chinese text and you don't have that font installed. Though, unless you can read Chinese text, that won't help you any. I'm guessing you are looking for English subs?

Or I could be wrong. But English .srt subs are in plain English with timing numbers in front of them most times and should open fine in Notepad.

And welcome to our forums.

[jman98]

PCs in the USA usually don't come installed with support for any character sets other than Latin. To be able to read these files under a Windows machine (I am assuming this is what you have), try opening the Control Panel and go to Date, Time, Language and Regional Options. Then pick Regional and Language Options and pick Languages in that pop up window. Then check the box that says "Install files for East Asian languages" and click on OK If you are very lucky, the support files will automatically install. If not, you'll need to provide the installation CD so the system can get the files from it.

Now once you get this done, try to open the files. If they are still not viewable (my guess is that they will still look like gibberish), you will have to reboot your PC in Chinese. Then you should be able to see them correctly. However, you will need to know what format they are in before you try this. Maybe it's Big5 or something else. I could tell you how to reboot your PC this way, but I hesitate to do so. If you can't read Chinese, this would be a very bad idea as you may not be able to figure out how to boot it back in Latin characters. And nowhere in your post does it specifically say that you can read Chinese. For all I know you may be trying to help a friend.

SRT is plain text, but in languages like Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Greek, etc. they will be in character sets that Windows doesn't support out of the box in the USA.

[applejuiceIP]

Oh I forgot to include that when I open the srt file in Microsoft Word, there is this file conversion dialog box and I select GB2312 and then I click okay and I see the characters fine!

I'm going to edit my first post so everyone can catch that.

Also I'll try the language installation for my comp. Thank you.

Also I know a little chinese so I'll try my best. If not, I have a translator that can help me.

[handyguy]

Or you could just get english subs from subscene.com or some other web site.