Remove Overlapping Subtitles
Or paste subtitle text
Options
Trim moves the later cue's start forward and keeps its text, so that cue comes out shorter. Drop removes the later cue outright. Whichever you pick, the cues that moved and the cues that were removed are counted separately.
Which frame rate the timings are counted in. On the format pages this is what MicroDVD needs, because it stores timing as frame numbers. On the frame rate pages it is the rate the file was timed against — the version the subtitles were made for — and the page's second box takes the rate of the video you are going to use them with. 23.976, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 50, 59.94 and 60 are the common ones. Getting it wrong shifts the whole timeline, and on the frame rate pages it shifts it by a ratio rather than by a fixed amount.
Overlapping subtitles make a player flicker between two lines that were never meant to be on screen together. This page walks the file in time order and makes each cue start no earlier than the point where the cue before it ended, so the timeline reads as one cue at a time.
Two strategies are offered, and the difference is what happens to the cue that arrives too early. Trim, the default, keeps every cue and moves the later start forward, which makes that cue shorter; a cue that was swallowed whole by the one before it has nothing left to show and is removed. Drop keeps the earlier cue intact and removes the later one entirely, which is the better choice when a trimmed cue would read as if it had been cut off mid-sentence. However you set it, the number of cues moved and the number of cues removed are counted separately.
Cues that merely touch are left alone. A cue ending at 00:00:04,000 followed by one starting at 00:00:04,000 is correct timing, not an overlap, and rewriting it would chew through well-timed files for no reason. The file does not have to be in order either — it is sorted by start time first. Nothing is uploaded, and a whole season goes through the queue together.
Examples
Two cues sharing the screen
Input
1
00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:04,000
First.
2
00:00:03,000 --> 00:00:06,000
Second, starting early.
Output
1
00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:04,000
First.
2
00:00:04,000 --> 00:00:06,000
Second, starting early.
The later cue's start moves to where the earlier one ends. Its end does not move, so that cue comes out shorter and no text is lost.
A cue swallowed whole
Input
1
00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:05,000
First.
2
00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:03,000
Swallowed whole.
3
00:00:04,000 --> 00:00:07,000
Third.
Output
1
00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:05,000
First.
3
00:00:05,000 --> 00:00:07,000
Third.
The middle cue sits entirely inside the first one, so after its start is pushed forward there is no time left for it and it is removed. This is the only case where trimming loses content.
Dropping the late cue instead
Input
1
00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:04,000
First.
2
00:00:03,000 --> 00:00:06,000
Second, starting early.
Output
1
00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:04,000
First.
With the drop strategy the cue that starts late goes away whole. Use it when shortening a cue would leave a sentence that reads as though it had been cut off.
Frequently asked questions
Are touching cues treated as overlaps?
No. A cue that ends exactly where the next one begins is correct timing and comes out untouched. The comparison is strict — a cue only counts as overlapping when its start is before the previous cue's end, never when the two are equal.
Which of the two overlapping cues gets changed?
Always the later one. The cues are ordered by start time and each start is measured against the end of the cue before it, so the earlier cue keeps both of its boundaries whichever strategy you pick.
What is the difference between trimming and dropping?
Trimming moves the later cue's start forward and keeps its text, so that cue gets shorter. Dropping removes the later cue outright and leaves the earlier one alone. Trimming can still lose a cue: one that sits completely inside the previous cue has no time left once its start has moved.
Can a cue lose its text while overlaps are removed?
In one case only. A cue whose whole span is already covered by the cue before it has nothing left after its start moves, so it is taken out. That count is reported on its own, separately from the cues that were merely moved.
Does the file have to be sorted before I use this?
No. The file is put in start-time order before anything else happens, so out-of-order subtitles are handled the same way as tidy ones. Cues that share a start time keep the order in which they appeared in the file.
Does removing overlaps write a report I can hand to someone?
No — it writes a corrected subtitle file and tells you how many cues it moved and how many it removed. A standalone report is a different tool, and keeping the two apart means nobody mistakes a rewritten file for evidence about the original.