SubRip Subtitles

SubRip is a "software program for Windows which "rips" (extracts) subtitles and their timings from video.  SubRip is also the name of the widely used and broadly compatible subtitle text file format created by this software."

SubRip files are named with an extension .srt.

Formatting

SubRip files are formatted with:

1. A numeric counter identifying each sequential subtitle
2. The time that the subtitle should appear on the screen, followed by --> and the time it should disappear
3. Subtitle text itself on one or more lines
4. A blank line containing no text, indicating the end of this subtitle

Example

1
00:00:10,500 --> 00:00:13,000
Elephant's Dream

2
00:00:15,000 --> 00:00:18,000
At the left we can see...

Download

The SubRip subtitle files can be downloaded online from a variety of sites.  My personal favorites are:

• OpenSubtitles.org - the biggest open subtitles database - http://www.opensubtitles.org/en
• SubScene - http://subscene.com/subtitles

Plex

To have Plex Media Server work with SubRip (.srt) files, simply name the srt file the same as the movie file name with a '.eng.srt' (for English) extension.  Plex will automatically pick up the Subtitle file on the next Library refresh.

For example:

Frozen.mp4
Frozen.eng.srt

Extracting

If you can't find the subtitle file online, and you have the DVD, the SubRip Windows software can actually extract the subtitles from the DVD.  Unlike Closed Captions, Subtitles are not stored as text on DVDs, but as bitmap images.  SubRip uses OCR technology to convert the images to text.  This does require work on your part.  As the OCR scanner finds new unrecognized characters it will ask you translate them.