Movie subtitles not working on television - Solved.

[Daffy D]

Some of my downloaded movies with sutitles which worked fine on the computer would not show the subs on the television.

With a litle trial and error discovered that the ones with long filenameas were the ones that would not work on the telly.

Sometimes the movie file in addition to the name of the movie has extra info in the filename and this for some reason confused my telly. The answer is to shorten the file to just the movie title.

For a movie file just use "Name of Movie.avi" and for subs file "Name of Movie.srt"

Remember both files must be in the same folder have the same name exept for the filetype .avi and .srt

This worked for my Samsung telly, don't know if other makes have simmilar problem.

Just thought this might be usefull to someone.

Note:- not all movie files are .avi and not all subs are .srt but the principle is the same.

Edited August 28, 2014 by Daffy D

[Suradit69]

I've had that problem with the subtitles not showing on my Samsung TV a number of times and once again the other day. Checked the files for this recent problem movie, reduced the length of the title from three words to one as well as the subtitle file and ... voila ... I had subtitles on the TV! Thanks.

I don't know if this is a related issue or the same thing. For this particular file, I noticed that the title had been written out as three entirely separate words, for example: War and Peace. In at least some files with multi-word titles, I'm pretty sure there's been a dot or _ between separate words. So: War.And.Peace or War_And_Peace.

Of course now I can't find another movie with problem subtitles to see if that was an issue with them as well or if it's just the length of the title. Anyway something to experiment with the next time.

[Daffy D]

Thanks for taking the time to post

Good to know it worked for you

[fstarbkk]

The actual Problem with filenames on a Samsung tv is not the length but the fact that the words.are.separated.by.dots.. As long as the file name of the movie and the name of the subtitle file are identical with no dots except the .extension at the end, it will work, regardless of the length of the file name.

[manarak]

To make sure the subtitles work on every TV, just combine your video file and the subtiles into a MKV file.

I use MKVtoolNix to do this.

[tutsiwarrior]

it don't work...I downloaded both the .avi and the .srt files together, shortened both of the titles to oneword.extension and put both into one folder and then clicked 'run using windows media player' and then no subtitles anywhere, not on computer or anywhere else...what media player is everyone using?

are you running off of a USB plugged directly into the TV? my TV is an older (3 yrs) Samsung and I tried a USB plugged into a DVD player with HDMI to the TV with no luck either, picture with sound only and no subs...

WMP won't run .mkv files...

[BuddhistVirus]

it don't work...I downloaded both the .avi and the .srt files together, shortened both of the titles to oneword.extension and put both into one folder and then clicked 'run using windows media player' and then no subtitles anywhere, not on computer or anywhere else...what media player is everyone using?

are you running off of a USB plugged directly into the TV? my TV is an older (3 yrs) Samsung and I tried a USB plugged into a DVD player with HDMI to the TV with no luck either, picture with sound only and no subs...

WMP won't run .mkv files...

Open srt file in notepad. Save as Unicode/UTF-8. Found out Samsung TVs can't read srt file encoded in ANSI

If file extension is .txt after saving, change to .srt

Viola!

Edit: And if playing on PC, use VLC media player. It will play almost every video and subtitle format. Default Windows Media Player won't read subtitle files

Edited September 1, 2014 by BuddhistVirus

[tutsiwarrior]

it don't work...I downloaded both the .avi and the .srt files together, shortened both of the titles to oneword.extension and put both into one folder and then clicked 'run using windows media player' and then no subtitles anywhere, not on computer or anywhere else...what media player is everyone using?

are you running off of a USB plugged directly into the TV? my TV is an older (3 yrs) Samsung and I tried a USB plugged into a DVD player with HDMI to the TV with no luck either, picture with sound only and no subs...

WMP won't run .mkv files...

Open srt file in notepad. Save as Unicode/UTF-8. Found out Samsung TVs can't read srt file encoded in ANSI

If file extension is .txt after saving, change to .srt

Viola!

Edit: And if playing on PC, use VLC media player. It will play almost every video and subtitle format. Default Windows Media Player won't read subtitle files

it works!...it works!...

nicest subtitles I've ever seen as well...

thanks a bunch...

[JSixpack]

Best thing you can do is use Filebot to give all the files proper names: http://www.filebot.net/. It will do a whole directory, including the subtitles, with ease. It'll also find subtitles if you want it to.

http://www.filebot.net/

[manarak]

it don't work...I downloaded both the .avi and the .srt files together, shortened both of the titles to oneword.extension and put both into one folder and then clicked 'run using windows media player' and then no subtitles anywhere, not on computer or anywhere else...what media player is everyone using?

are you running off of a USB plugged directly into the TV? my TV is an older (3 yrs) Samsung and I tried a USB plugged into a DVD player with HDMI to the TV with no luck either, picture with sound only and no subs...

WMP won't run .mkv files...

ditch WMP, it's very limited as to codecs and file formats.

VLC media player is the most popular today and supports nearly every file format and codec.