2 different subtitle lines displayed simultaneously

[TakuSkan]

I'm really not sure which forum to post this question to, as it seems to involve video corruption, and not a problem with the subtitle file. I'm dealing with an external subrip srt file and an old AVI/XviD video encoded with MEncoder 1.0rc1-3.4.2.

I was playing a DVDrip from 5-6 years ago the other night where 2 adjacent lines of text were being displayed at the same time. After one line of text was displayed, the same line would appear above it. The bottom line would disappear while the top remained. The top would then drop down, and a new line of text would appear over it. That bottom line would then remain while a newer line would appear above it. This went on for the 1st 3 minutes of the video. The 2 files are alone in a folder, so there shouldn't be a conflict with any other unrelated file.

I'm guessing the AVI file may have been corrupted sometime in the past in the process of loading my library onto progressively newer/larger hard drives.

I first thought it might be a problem with the media player, but I have the same problem with MPC-HC, VLC, SMplayer and Potplayer. I tried switching between 4-5 video renderers in Potplayer, but that didn't solve the problem either.

I've tried everything in my very limited bag of tricks to fix the problem to no avail. I tried re-encoding the file with MeGui and Handbrake. I tried loading it in VirtualDub and saving it to a lossless AVI. And I tried having VirtualDub re-derive keyframe flags and then saving it via direct stream copy.

I'm stumped. Unless someone has a suggestion for how this might be fixed, I guess I'll just "put it back on the shelf" and live with it.

Thanks once more for all the great support here.

[manono]

I don't understand. If the subtitles are external, why are you reencoding the video? If the subs are 'burned' or 'hardcoded into the video then there's nothing you can do, no matter how many times you reencode the video. Do you see subs when opening the AVI in VDub?

If the subs are really external, then the problem is caused by overlapping times. You have to fix those. Make sure the time for one line ends before the next one begins. Have you checked that yet?

This happens only with this particular video? And did you imply you didn't used to have the problem with this AVI?

[TakuSkan]

Solved... I was really fuzzy the other night. I opened the subtitle in Subtitle Edit, and only checked the few lines at the beginning for overlapping timecodes. I didn't scroll down to the two lines that were causing the problem. That's why I thought, obviously not understanding a lot about video structures, keyframe flags and such, that something about the video was corrupted.

But as you suspected manono, it turned out to be a very messed up srt file I'd downloaded back when that I guess I just never bothered to fix. This was movie from Hong Kong, and I now find most all of the downloadable subtitles for this movie have problems.

The original (still online) jumps from 2:34 back to 1:26, and includes lines of text not even in my version of the movie. A few I just downloaded didn't include text for the 1st 20 odd spoken lines. I spent about an hour piecing together sections from 2 different versions, re-syncing some poorly timed lines in Subtitle Edit... and alls good now.

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