Subtitles in VLC are displayed as question marks

I can't reproduce what made it happen, but since yesterday, for all the movies I play with VLC - their subtitles (Hebrew) are displayed as question marks.

Any resolution? Way to find the source of the issue?

enter image description here

Here is an excerpt from the subtitles file (*.srt):

1
00:02:04,800 --> 00:02:06,700
...מר דופריין, תאר את

2
00:02:07,700 --> 00:02:11,100
. העימות שהיה לך עם אישתך בלילה שנרצחה

3
00:02:16,600 --> 00:02:17,400
.זה היה מאוד מריר

4
00:02:18,700 --> 00:02:22,000
,היא אמרה שהיא שמחה שידעתי
.שהיא שנאה את כל ההתגנבויות מסביב

Shimmy

Posted 2012-06-26T21:21:03.383

Reputation: 2 435

Can you check the file in an editor to see what encoding it has (e.g., BOM, Unicode, etc.)?

– Synetech – 2012-06-27T03:33:13.847

How can I check the encoding? I opened it with Notepad and I saw the above. – Shimmy – 2012-06-27T10:28:46.183

Answers

I have solved it by changing the file encoding using NotePad:

Open the srt file in notepad
File -> Save As...
Change the encoding in the combo box near the "save" button below to "Unicode"
Save the file (Replace the existing one)

And now the hebrew subtitles are displayed correctly.

enter image description here

Tal Segal

Posted 2012-06-26T21:21:03.383

Reputation: 236

The problem should arise from subtitle character set encoding.

Go to Tools > Preferences (CTRL +P) and select Subtitles & OSD from the left pane. Now change the Default Encoding to Hebrew (Windows-1255) and you're done.

Mehper C. Palavuzlar

Posted 2012-06-26T21:21:03.383

Reputation: 51 093

1Nope. didn't help – Shimmy – 2012-06-26T21:44:37.290

1Did you restart VLC? I had the same problem with Turkish letters and the above solution worked for me... – Mehper C. Palavuzlar – 2012-06-26T22:02:11.060

Yes, I did restart. Didn't help, I'm going crazy, all I wanted is to watch a movie. Now my adventure is to solve the issue and go to bed, movie will be for another time :( – Shimmy – 2012-06-26T22:06:50.150

Well, I recommend you uninstalling VLC using the free version of Revo Uninstaller, and then reinstalling it. Then change the character encoding to the above setting and try again.

– Mehper C. Palavuzlar – 2012-06-26T22:11:53.793

2OK meanwhile I'm using Media Player classic which displays the subs excellently! – Shimmy – 2012-06-26T22:26:22.900

This works great for me as well: http://i.imgur.com/cUg8b.jpg

– Der Hochstapler – 2012-06-26T22:42:05.213

I'm afraid it's a problem in my system. I have no clue on how to get to the problem tho :( – Shimmy – 2012-06-26T22:45:59.137

The below solution Worked on a Mac.

Open the .srt file with Firefox web browser (FILE --> Open File...)
Now you should see in the browser window the subtitles text with chinese characters instead of Greek
From VIEW --> Character Encoding... select GREEK ISO encoding. Now magically the text in the browser window is displayed correctly with all the Greek characters
Select ALL text from browser window and COPY --> PASTE to a simple text editor. You should see now the text in greek in the text editor application window.
Save the file as plain text (.txt) in the location that you have the original subtitles.
Rename the .txt file to .srt in order to be recognized from your media player (I use VLC). Just make sure that the whole name of your new .srt file you just created does not conflict with the previous file (you should rename your older file in order to let you rename the new file with the name you want).

That's it, now it should work and display properly the Greek subtitles.

Manos

Posted 2012-06-26T21:21:03.383

Reputation: 51

1The subtitles however are in hebrew ;p – Journeyman Geek – 2013-02-24T11:29:03.527

If there were any other subtitles in the folder move them to another location. I had the same problem and this solved it.

val

Posted 2012-06-26T21:21:03.383

Reputation: 1

It could be related to the .srt file not being Unicode as superuser (Manos)
or it could be a Region and Language Setting
Region and Language Settings issue in Windows.

Go to [Administrative] Tab > Change System Locale > "Choose wanted language"

Done!

Denja

Posted 2012-06-26T21:21:03.383

Reputation: 578