aegisub subtitles suddenly all question marks

[Chris Allinger]

Working in Arabic, almost done with a many, many hours subtitle project and suddenly all the characters are question marks. ???????????????????????
Other Arabic projects open just fine. What did I do wrong?

[ProWo]

Open your sub with notepad++ and change the encoding language.

[Chris Allinger]

Thank you ProWo for the help. One question: change to which encoding language? There are dozens on notepad++. I tried UTF-8 and ANSI with no change in the result.

[johns0]

Sounds like your sub got borked,did you make any backups and is there an undo option and is the sub saved?

[videobruger]

Have you looked in %appdata%\Aigisub\autoback ?

[krykmoon]

Open your sub with notepad++ and change the encoding language.

But in notepad++ do you still see the arabic characters or only question marks ?

If you see only question marks in notepad++ too.. at some stage the character encoding got messed up and so the original text is lost. If this is the case.. trying to find a backup, as videobruger suggested, is your only option.

(anyway.. why still using aegisub ? It has not been updated in many years. I suggest to you, as an alternative, KaiNote - I'm using it for some months, now, and it's really a wonderful tool.)

[ProWo]

Thank you ProWo for the help. One question: change to which encoding language? There are dozens on notepad++. I tried UTF-8 and ANSI with no change in the result.

Upload your subtitle file here, then we can have a look at it.

[Chris Allinger]

Thank you all very much for your offers of help. I have spent many many many hours on this project. It was almost done when the problem happened. I had a backup from a couple days before but it has the same problem which totally baffles me. yes, in Notepad++ it is also opens as all question marks. I will try to upload the file here if anyone can take a look at it. Thanks again!
[Attachment 58966 - Click to enlarge]

did I do it right? I selected "upload Image" from the toolbar.

[Chris Allinger]

ok, I think I found the right way to do it.

[johns0]

Only way you can recover your sub is with a backup but since that has the same issue you are out of luck.

[krykmoon]

yes, in Notepad++ it is also opens as all question marks.

Sadly.. this means the original text is forever lost due to some problems (at some stage) with character encoding got messed up.

You have to start from scratch.

I would use a most recent software than aegisub this time, like the one I suggested.. KaiNote (it's awesome!)

[Chris Allinger]

Thank you for your great help. I will just have to re-do. At least I can quit trying to fix it and move on. Thanks again. I will try KaiNote.

[johns0]

You can also try subtitle edit,been using that for years.