Fix the same subtitle delay on every episode of a season
When the subtitles for a whole series come from one source and your episodes come from another, every episode is often off by the same amount. Setting the delay in VLC or Plex works, but you have to do it again for every episode. Upload the season as a ZIP, enter the delay once, and download every file re-timed, in one ZIP. Jobs up to 3,000 lines are free in full; a season beyond that is $5, paid once.
- One shift applied to every file in the ZIP or upload
- Up to 50 uploaded files, or a ZIP with the season inside
- Subfolders in the ZIP read; hidden files and __MACOSX folders skipped
- Each episode returned as name.synced plus its extension, in one ZIP
- Frame rate conversion also works on a whole season; stretch is one file at a time
Why the player setting is not enough
VLC, Plex, Kodi and most TV apps let you adjust subtitle delay while watching. That setting usually belongs to the current playback, so the next episode starts out wrong again, and on some devices the adjustment steps are slow to reach a delay of several seconds. Over a season of ten or twenty episodes, that is a lot of repeated fiddling. Shifting the files themselves fixes the delay once for every device.
How to do it
- Measure the delay on one episode: adjust the player's subtitle delay until the words match, and note the amount. Check a second episode to confirm it is the same.
- Put the season's subtitle files in a ZIP. Folders inside are fine.
- Upload the ZIP, choose "every line is early or late by the same amount" and enter the delay in seconds, positive for later, negative for earlier.
- Check the first lines on screen, then download the ZIP.
Putting the files back
Each file comes back under its own name with .synced added, so you never overwrite your originals by accident. Media servers such as Plex, Jellyfin and Kodi match a subtitle to an episode by file name, usually the video's name followed by a language code, as in Show.S01E03.en.srt. Remove .synced from the names, or rename them to match the videos, before copying them next to the episodes. Files inside folders in the ZIP come back without the folder path, and two files with the same name are kept apart with a number.
If every episode has the same intro and the subtitles go wrong only after it, add "only lines after" with a time just after the intro. If the episodes each need a different amount, run them as separate jobs.
How the tool works, what it costs and how your files are handled is on the Fix Subtitle Sync page; prices for every tool are on the pricing page.
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Questions and answers
Can ChatGPT fix the subtitle delay for a whole season?
It can shift one short file in a chat. A season means many long files, one conversation each, with every time code retyped and no check that nothing was skipped. This tool applies the same shift to every file in code and returns them together.
What does a whole season cost?
If all the files together have up to 3,000 lines, it is free in full. Otherwise one payment of $5 covers up to 50 files or a ZIP, with up to 50,000 lines, for every episode.
Can the episodes be in different formats?
Yes. SRT, VTT, ASS, SBV and other files can sit in the same ZIP; each comes back in its own format, with SAMI and SubViewer returned as SRT.
What if only some episodes are off?
Upload only those episodes. The shift applies to every file in the job.
Can I fix a season that drifts instead of being off by a fixed amount?
If the drift comes from a frame rate difference, yes: the frame rate option works on a whole ZIP. Stretching between two checked lines is one file at a time.
How long are my files kept?
Jobs uploaded without an account are deleted after 7 days, and you can delete a job yourself at any time. No AI model reads the files.