Subtitles

SMS plays soft subtitles — an external text file, laid over the video as it plays. Name the subtitle file to match your movie, drop it in the same folder, and SMS loads it automatically. From the in-player menu you can then tune the text's size, colour, alignment and position on screen.

Supported subtitle formats

SMS recognises three file extensions for subtitles and reads two underlying text formats:

In practice, SRT is the format to prefer: it is the most common subtitle format, it is easy to find and edit, and its cues carry exact times rather than frame counts, so they line up regardless of the video's frame rate. Use a .sub/.txt file when that is what you already have.

SubRip (.srt)

An SRT file is a numbered list of cues. Each cue is a sequence number, a start-and-end time line using -->, and one or more lines of text, followed by a blank line:

1
00:00:12,000 --> 00:00:15,500
This is the first subtitle.

2
00:00:16,000 --> 00:00:18,200
And this one has
two lines.

SMS also understands simple <b>, <i> and <u> tags around a line — bold, italic and underline — and shows those lines in their own colours (see Subtitle settings below).

MicroDVD-style (.sub / .txt)

The .sub/.txt reader accepts frame-based cues where the numbers in braces are the start and end frame, with a pipe | separating lines:

{300}{375}This is the first subtitle.
{400}{455}And this one has|two lines.

Adding subtitles to a video

SMS finds a subtitle automatically by name-matching: it takes the video's file name, drops the extension, and looks in the same folder for a file with the same base name and a .srt, .sub or .txt extension. If it finds one, it loads it when the video starts.

Subtitle settings

Subtitle appearance is controlled from the player's subtitle settings, reached from the in-player menu. Every option below is saved to your configuration, so once you set it to taste it sticks for future videos. While you adjust size and offset, SMS shows a live sample line so you can see the effect immediately.

Tips & troubleshooting

Character encoding

SMS reads subtitle text as either UTF-8 or a single code page:

• UTF-8 is detected automatically when the file begins with a UTF-8 byte-order mark. Saving your SRT as "UTF-8 with BOM" from a text editor is the most dependable way to get accented and non-Latin characters right.
• Files without a UTF-8 mark are interpreted through the current code page, so plain ASCII always works, and other single-byte text works when the matching code page is in use.
• For scripts that need a multi-byte font (for example CJK), turn on Subtitle MBCS and select an installed multi-byte font; otherwise those characters cannot be drawn.

If a subtitle shows boxes, wrong letters or gibberish where accented or non-Latin characters should be, it is almost always an encoding mismatch — re-save the file as UTF-8 (with BOM), or match the code page / MBCS font to the language.

Timing

• Prefer SRT for correct sync. SRT cues carry absolute times, so they line up on any video. Frame-based .sub files are tied to a frame rate and can drift if that rate does not match the movie.
• Match the release. A subtitle written for one cut or frame rate of a film will not necessarily fit another version of the same film. If lines run consistently early or late, you likely have the wrong subtitle for that particular video file.
• Watch for wrapping. Very long single lines are wrapped to fit the screen. If wrapping looks awkward, reducing the font width a little often lets a line fit on one row.

Subtitle errors

If SMS cannot make sense of the file, it shows a subtitle error naming the problem (a format or sequence issue) and the line number where it gave up, then returns you to playback. This usually points at a malformed cue — a mistyped time line, a missing sequence number, or a file that is not actually SRT/SUB text. Open the file in a plain text editor, fix the flagged area, and try again.