How to convert .txt file back to .srt file

[lauramae08]

Hi,

I am by no means a computer whiz and a few weeks ago decided to try to convert and translate some French subtitles into English subtitles. I made a copy of the .srt file and saved it as a .txt file. I've finished translating it and now I want to save it back as an .srt file so that I can play it with the movie. Problem is, when I try to open it, it says, "Unsupported subtitle format. This subtitle files is in an unsupported format and cannot be played." Help??????? What do I do? Where did I go wrong? How do I fix this?


Technological Idiot

[mrcoolekin]

Which application are you using that you are getting this "Unsupported subtitle" message? Subtitle Workshop?

How did you edit the txt file?

Try opening up the file in notepad and resaving the file.

[lauramae08]

DIVX Player, but it does it with VLC as well. I edited it in Microsoft word. It opened originally in notepad, I think. I just copied and pasted the whole thing into Word. I'll try resaving it in notepad.

[lauramae08]

I really am genuinely sorry. I am a technological retard. This is the first time I've ever attempted something like this. I feel I may have gotten in way over my head. I tried resaving it in Notepad and opening it and it gave me the same unsupported format message.

[mrcoolekin]

Did you just do a File > Save or File > Save As...? Do a "Save As" and see what happens.

[lauramae08]

Whew!! Ok, that worked. Now I have a syncing problem. The text shows up about a second before it's supposed to. You wouldn't happen to be a genius on that subject either would you?

[AlanHK]

Now I have a syncing problem. The text shows up about a second before it's supposed to.

Get Subtitle Workshop.

Not hard to use, but what the buttons do isn't that obvious.
You really do have to read the manual.
It has a section about syncing.
But -- try "Edit/Timings/set delay" and enter the time. + for delay, - for advance.

[mrcoolekin]

Whew!! Ok, that worked. Now I have a syncing problem. The text shows up about a second before it's supposed to. You wouldn't happen to be a genius on that subject either would you?

You can use Subtitle Workshop to set a 1 second delay for the subtitles.

[lauramae08]

Do you still want me to attach the file here?

[lauramae08]

And I can't even do that properly the first time. Ugh. Sorry.

[AlanHK]

And I can't even do that properly the first time. Ugh. Sorry.

No, it's attached okay.
The file seems to be a valid SRT.

However, take care with the accented characters, they look scrambled when I use it -- this is an encoding issue, Unicode or ANSI. It may work in your player though.

[Soixante]

subtitle edit converts between lots of formats and will do it..attatched

[jagabo]

Do you still want me to attach the file here?

Your file has lines terminated only by line feeds (0x0A). You need both carriage returns and line feeds (0x0D 0x0A). Open it with Wordpad then save as "Text Document - MSDOS Format", and change the extension to SRT.

[jman98]

Do you still want me to attach the file here?

Your file has lines terminated only by line feeds (0x0A). You need both carriage returns and line feeds (0x0D 0x0A). Open it with Wordpad then save as "Text Document - MSDOS Format", and change the extension to SRT.

To put it another way, your file shows signs of being edited in Linux or on a Mac and you need to open it and save it under Windows or you may have problems.

The fact that your file lacks Windows end of line characters may mean that you are not using Windows, which limits our ability to help you (all the good subtitles tools are under Windows).

[jagabo]

your file shows signs of being edited in Linux or on a Mac

Yes, LF only terminated lines is common on *nix platforms. But Wordpad, Word, and many other Windows editors can create such files.