subtitle and video synchronization in vlc player

Sometimes, the subtitles we download from internet do not sync with the video we are playing. Either it will be little ahead or behind, resulting in a different subtitle appearing for a different picture frame.

By knowing how much is the lag between video and the subtitle, we can sync these two, to play it proper.

to know the lag, play the video, try to listen to most commonly recognizable word. Not down the time stamp at that moment. Now, you have to find out at what timestamp actually that word being played from the subtitle file. Either you open the file with a word processor and see around that time or while playing the video itself you will know what time the subtitle was/is being played.

For example, In my video, I hear a sound 'Hey Macho' that i can clearly recognize. I note that it is played at 4 min 11 sec. From the file, the subtitle 'Hey Macho' is being played at 4 min 5 sec. So the lag is around 6 seconds.

To overcome this lag, on your VLC player, go to Tools->Track synchronization

The track synchronization window looks like below:

the Subtitle track synchronization window shows 1.7 seconds value which means the subtitle will be played 1.7 second late compared to how it would have played without this synchronization.