OpenSubtitles forum

I've used Open Subtitles for many years and I still don't know how to choose among a large set of subtitles, all targeted at the same video.
I can, of course use the checkmarks for a trusted encoder as well as the icon which shows that it may include subtitles for the hearing impaired. The names of the subtitle files typically have a lot of cryptic information appended. Should I be trying to make sense out of that information? Most usually, I just pick one and see if I can make it work, even if it means doing some timing adjustments. There must be a better approach.

I've used Open Subtitles for many years and I still don't know how to choose among a large set of subtitles, all targeted at the same video.
I can, of course use the checkmarks for a trusted encoder as well as the icon which shows that it may include subtitles for the hearing impaired. The names of the subtitle files typically have a lot of cryptic information appended. Should I be trying to make sense out of that information? Most usually, I just pick one and see if I can make it work, even if it means doing some timing adjustments. There must be a better approach.

So you don't have to download multiple subtitles until you find the right one for the movie you have.

You have to see the movie file you have.
The release name.
For example if you have Avengers.Endgame.2019.1080p.BluRay
then you have to download the .srt that is synchronized to the versions for blurays.
The same for the web-dl / webrip versions...
If none of them are synchronized with the version you have, you have to synchronize it.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=17223

Often keeping original filenames of the videos is a good idea.
If you need to edit them (*example for Plex/Video Station...) keep some of the original info in name for easier time to find the right subtitles.

Often dragging and dropping your video file into OpenSubtitles search box can search the right version in first try.
Sometimes there are multiple different released for same named video, so then you do need to test both.

I've had the same question for years and still have it unanswered.

There are many things to consider here. First of all you must find a subtitle that matches the video. This is not trivial because videos can suffer multiple transformations mainly affecting its reproduction speed so that your video is shorter than the original. This happens when you change the intended FPS of a film, for example, from 24 frames per second to 25, which is very common. The result is that subtitles go out of synchronisation and don't fit the video anymore. There is a field named "fps" but it is often incorrect or simply "0" which doesn't help you much.

Then you choose normal/hearing impaired.

And then you have different quality in language and punctuation. That depends on the author and his linguistic abilities. For that we have a rating for the subtitle but, as in the case of FPS, it is not very useful because most of the time it has less than 5 votes.

Then you have the problem of duplicates. For some films you have more than 20 different subtitles. I say "different" because they are physically different but most of the time they are logically equal, because they differ in less than 10 characters. So logically you can consider them equal.

So in practice I think you can rely on the "trusted" label. Beside that, it is a question of trial-error. Keep downloading until you find a decent one.