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Subtitles don't line up with the picture (early or late) — what do I do?

Updated

An external subtitle wasn't made for your exact video file, so mismatches are normal. First tell which kind of mismatch it is, then fix accordingly.

Two kinds of offset ​

A constant offset: from start to finish the subtitle is earlier (or later) than the sound by the same few seconds. The cause is different versions of subtitle and video:

  • the Blu-ray and TV / WEB cuts differ — the BD version may add seconds of black, drop ad-break transitions, or start with or without a cold open before the OP;
  • one version cut the OP / ED while the subtitle was made for the full one.

Growing drift: correct at the start, two or three seconds late twenty minutes in. That's frame rate — the subtitle was made for a 25 fps PAL version and the video is 23.976 fps, or the reverse; a few frames per minute add up to seconds by the end. A fixed offset can't fix this; the subtitle needs to be stretched.

There's a third: only some lines are off — the subtitle itself was timed badly; get a different one.

Adjusting in Fushi ​

The player's quick settings have Subtitle sync:

  • Slider / steps: drag, or nudge in steps of ±100 ms and the like. Subtitle early → move positive (delay); late → negative. Line up the moment a line starts with the moment the subtitle appears and you're done.
  • Auto-align: let Fushi compute an offset.
  • Waveform alignment (local videos): opens the whole audio waveform with every cue's start drawn as a line; drag sideways and put the lines on the speech peaks. Doing it by eye once beats trial and error with the slider; phones may not be able to build the waveform — use the slider there.

The offset is remembered per episode: switching episodes or reopening keeps it. Mining also cuts audio and picture with the offset applied, so cards never grab the neighbouring line.

The player's subtitle menu has two more alignment tools:

  • Align to embedded subtitles (local videos): when the video carries its own text subtitle track (even an English one), its line onsets are used as the reference to time your external subtitle. If they don't match (wrong episode, different cut) nothing changes. When anime downloads match subtitles for a video with an embedded track, they have already been aligned this way once.
  • Retime with speech model: on-device speech recognition listens to the episode and retimes every line, producing a new subtitle file — it fixes fixed offsets as well as the frame-rate drift and segment shifts below, without changing a single character of the text or its order. You need to download a speech model and pick the right speech language first, and a full episode takes a while.

Still drifting after alignment ​

Then it's the frame rate and a fixed offset won't save it. Options:

  • try Retime with speech model in the subtitle menu first — it times every line instead of relying on one offset;
  • get a subtitle on Jimaku for your video's version — entries often list both BD and WEB versions and the filename says which;
  • or get the video version that matches the subtitle;
  • to fix it yourself, use Aegisub or Subtitle Edit: "frame rate conversion" or "two-point sync" stretches the subtitle to the right length; then put it back.

Picking the right version up front saves the trouble ​

If the subtitle Fushi's anime downloads matched with "Include subtitles" doesn't fit, add one by hand: check whether the release name says BDRip or WEB-DL (reading release names) and import the matching version from Jimaku.

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