Open Subtitle Editor

Open Subtitle Editor is an application with a pretty self-explanatory name - it lets you edit subtitle files, in order to make line corrections and synchronize them with the corresponding movies. It supports the SRT and TXT files types.

The interface of the program is represented by a standard window with an intuitive layout, where you can load a subtitle file using only the file browser, as the drag-and-drop functionality is not included among Open Subtitle Editor's features.

If the program is unable to recognize the subtitle format and/or encoding method for a selected file, then you may specify them. The main frame shows the number, start and end display time, text and properties for each line.

Any of these options can be changed on the bottom part of the screen. As far as properties go, you can assign the Bold or Italic emphasis mode to the selected line.

You can open the corresponding video in order to make all the necessary synchronization adjustments, as long as the file type is AVI, MPG or MPEG. This option brings forth several possibilities. For example, you can preview the video in question in a built-in media player. During this time, Open Subtitle Editor automatically switches to the next corresponding line, while taking the start and end display time into consideration. Thus, you can quickly and accurately add new lines or edit existing ones.

Other options of Open Subtitle Editor let you convert the frames per second (FPS), apply a custom delay, check for overlaps and timing errors, sort subtitles by showing timing, as well as configure preview settings (e.g. add delay), among others.

Open Subtitle Editor is definitely worth taking into account as a straightforward subtitle editor with many useful options incorporated. It uses a moderate-to-high quantity of CPU and system memory, and has a good response time. No error dialogs have been shown throughout our tests, and the utility did not hang or crash. The only downside here is that Open Subtitle Editor has not been updated for a while; we would have liked to see support for additional subtitle formats, such as SUB and SUP.