The VideoLAN Forums

Long time ago, when i first saw it, I liked VLC but eventually got back to BSplayer because there was no way to display external subtitles (like *.srt) without overlaying them into the film. BS and other players, have on the other side, many other bugs or missing features. I think VLC has come furthest to become a good and complete media player. If only there wasn't this subtitles issue!

Why I think overlayed subtitles are not good:
- Overlayed subtitles apparently can't get outside the video dimensions (on those black bars). In my opinion, photography in film is most important, and since a film director and the rest of crew never think about subtitles in the middle of their film when they are making it, it just ruins the compostion. With that said; it ruins the film for me. On the other hand, like or not, subtitles are essential to a film enthusiast.
- Overlayed subtitles often look very bad because their resolution is degraded to the resolution of a film. If it is a low-res film, subtitles often become almost unreadable.
- Control of subtitles display is reduced when they are overlayed. I think that BSplayer has a very good subtitle control feature. Maybe it is worth learning from there.

Don't get me wrong. I don't mean any harm. I only wish, mostly for myself, to have a VLC with proper subtitles feature.

Thank you for reading and considering.

I second your request.

I think everyone who uses subtitles would appreciate being able to put the sub-titles @ the bottom of the screen (typically in the black letterbox), rather than the bottom of the video.

Then again people have been asking for this for years. So... does anyone know of a player for win32 that can do this? I've seen uhm for OS X.

Then again people have been asking for this for years. So... does anyone know of a player for win32 that can do this? I've seen uhm for OS X.

BSplayer does this great in win32. If it only would work so good in Vista x64 systems...

I wouldn't mind seeing a position settings for the subtitles so they could be customized to display either over the video or in the black bars on the top/bottom of the video also. I would also like to be able to customize the font face, font style (outlined, heavy outline, transparent by x amount, bold, italic, etc...) and the font color. SMPlayer does have these and they work really well, however I would like to continue using VLC because the GUI in my opinion is much more to my liking.

Does anyone know of any way to adjust (i.e., correct) the synchronization of downloaded subtitles with, for example, movies which you have downloaded from a torrent? I find that very often, unless the sub-titles are 'hard-wired' into the film, that they are incorrectly synchronized - which makes it impossible to understand or enjoy the film.

Please let me have any solution to this problem!

If there is no solution, then I really suggest that the Videolan team provides, for example, some kind of 'slider' control, whereby the user could slide the sub-titles forwards or backwards in relation to the movie, until they are correctly synchronized.

(Hoping someone will tell me a solution, if there is one existing!)

You could try a subtitle editor, like Subtitle Workshop to do that.

Ctrl + h and Ctrl + j are for subtitle sync adjust.

Ctrl + h and Ctrl + j are for subtitle sync adjust.

I always get those two backwards, and end up with the subtitles having no relation at all with what is being said. Most of the time it happens with downloaded TV episodes, that lose about 15 seconds on each deleted commercial fade.

It would be nice to have a delay control more friendly than Ctrl-H / Ctrl-J.
Maybe one key for advancing the subtitles N seconds and freeze them, then you wait for the actors to say whatever is being shown on the subtitle, and then strike another key for VLC to continue to show subtitles using that delay.
It would also be nice to have the ability to save the subtitle file with the correction from the point it was made.

I tried to investigate how to write a plugin to do that, but it's all beyond my limited programming skills.

^^ In the current version (1.0.2), the shortcuts are simply g/h by default, not Ctrl-H/Ctrl+J. That reference was made 2 years ago

As for overlayed subtitles, I'm not a fan of them either, overlayed subtitles look just weird and they are hard on the eyes because they lack sharpness and contrast. Anyway, I use the font "Arial Bold" in combination with the Fat Outline effect, not a perfect solution but acceptable...

Long time ago, when i first saw it, I liked VLC but eventually got back to BSplayer because there was no way to display external subtitles (like *.srt) without overlaying them into the film. BS and other players, have on the other side, many other bugs or missing features. I think VLC has come furthest to become a good and complete media player. If only there wasn't this subtitles issue!

Why I think overlayed subtitles are not good:
- Overlayed subtitles apparently can't get outside the video dimensions (on those black bars). In my opinion, photography in film is most important, and since a film director and the rest of crew never think about subtitles in the middle of their film when they are making it, it just ruins the compostion. With that said; it ruins the film for me. On the other hand, like or not, subtitles are essential to a film enthusiast.
- Overlayed subtitles often look very bad because their resolution is degraded to the resolution of a film. If it is a low-res film, subtitles often become almost unreadable.
- Control of subtitles display is reduced when they are overlayed. I think that BSplayer has a very good subtitle control feature. Maybe it is worth learning from there.

Don't get me wrong. I don't mean any harm. I only wish, mostly for myself, to have a VLC with proper subtitles feature.

Thank you for reading and considering.

i agree
the subs overlayed the move is a shame
it's the only bad side of vlc
but it's so hard to modify the code , the let watch the movie without sub overlayed?

In the current version (1.0.2), the shortcuts are simply g/h by default, not Ctrl-H/Ctrl+J. That reference was made 2 years ago

Of course. I copied "CTRL-J/CTRL-H" even though it looked strange at the moment.

I think it should not be very difficult to write a filter (or even a separate program with access to the current time or frame number of the video being played) that read the subtitle file and show the subtitles in a separate window, totally black and on top of the video, and one could position that window wherever one choose.

+1 to subtitles outside of video area.