Fix overlapping subtitles
Fix subtitles that overlap, stack on top of each other or flash by too fast. Timing is repaired; your wording is left exactly as you wrote it.
When two cues are on screen at once, players disagree about what to do: VLC stacks them, some hardware players drop one silently, and web players tend to show whichever cue started last. The file is usually not obviously broken — it is a cue that runs a few hundred milliseconds past the start of the next one, repeated dozens of times across a track. This page repairs exactly that class of problem: overlaps, impossible durations, and cues too brief to read, with every text rule switched off so nothing rewrites your dialogue.
Worth knowing
- The text rules that the full repair pass runs — OCR letter swaps, capitalisation, quote marks, spacing — all start switched off here. Turn any of them back on with the checkboxes if you want them; the default is that only timing moves.
- Durations are repaired before separation, never after. Clamping a long cue can push its end past the next cue, so doing it in the other order would quietly re-create the overlap that was just cleared.
- A cue is never inverted to make room: if two cues genuinely have no space between them, the earlier one keeps at least a millisecond on screen instead of ending before it starts.
- The default 24ms minimum gap is the one Subtitle Edit ships. A frame at 24fps is about 42ms, so raise the gap to 42 or 84 if you are delivering to a broadcaster that specifies a gap in frames.
FAQ
Why do two subtitles show at once in VLC but not in my browser?
Because the file lets them. Overlapping cues are legal in SRT, so each player decides for itself: VLC renders both stacked, most browsers show only the newest, and some TV players drop one entirely. Removing the overlap makes every player agree.
Will this change my wording or capitalisation?
Not with the defaults on this page — every text rule is off, so the dialogue you upload is the dialogue you download. Only start times, end times and genuinely empty cues are touched.
What counts as "too short to read"?
The minimum duration field above, one second by default. Broadcast guidelines usually put the floor between 833ms (20 frames at 24fps) and 1.5 seconds; set it to match the specification you are working to, or to zero to leave short cues alone.