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SRT/VTT/ASS… → SRT

Fix subtitle encoding (Arabic, French, accents)

Repair subtitles that show ÇáÓáÇã, é or question marks instead of Arabic letters and accents, and save them as UTF-8. Nothing is uploaded, and there’s no account, watermark or limit.

  1. 1. Drop files
  2. 2. Adjust
  3. 3. Download
  • No upload. Processing happens on your device.
  • No limits. As many files as you like, free.
  • No watermark. Your files stay exactly yours.

How to fix garbled subtitles with filetidy

  1. 1

    Drop your SRT, VTT, ASS, SSA, SUB or TXT subtitle files onto the drop zone, or use “or tap to choose files” to pick them. Several files at once is fine, for example a whole season.

  2. 2

    Leave “Original encoding” on “Auto-detect”. Each file row then shows what was found, such as “Windows-1256 → UTF-8”, or “Already UTF-8” when there was nothing to convert.

  3. 3

    Click “Preview” to compare the garbled text in the “Before” column with the readable text in the “After” column. If the “After” column is still wrong, pick the encoding by hand, for example “Windows-1256 (Arabic)”.

  4. 4

    Keep “Add a BOM (UTF-8 with signature)” ticked if the subtitles are for a TV or an older Windows player, then click “Download”, or “Download all (.zip)” for a batch.

Why subtitles turn into strange symbols

A subtitle file is plain text, but the file does not say which alphabet its bytes belong to. Before UTF-8 became the norm, each language used its own Windows code page: Windows-1256 for Arabic, Windows-1252 (close to ISO-8859-1) for French and other Western languages. Most subtitles shared on older Arabic and French subtitle sites, and many files ripped from DVDs, were saved this way.

When a player guesses the wrong code page, every byte is mapped to the wrong letter. The Arabic greeting السلام عليكم stored in Windows-1256 and read as Western text becomes ÇáÓáÇã Úáíßã. A French “é” stored in Windows-1252 and read as UTF-8 becomes a black diamond with a question mark (�), or a plain “?” on some TVs.

Double encoding is the other classic: someone opened a UTF-8 file with the wrong code page and saved it again, so the damage is now inside the file. French then shows “é” and “è” instead of é and è, and Arabic shows strings like “ال”. filetidy recognises this pattern and reverses it, reporting “Garbled text repaired” on the file row.

Only the bytes of the text are re-encoded. Timings, line breaks, styling codes and the file name stay as they were, so the repaired file drops into the same folder as the video and is picked up exactly as before.

Arabic legacy encodings
Windows-1256 (most common) and ISO-8859-6
French legacy encodings
Windows-1252, ISO-8859-1, ISO-8859-15 (with the € sign)
Output
UTF-8, same file name and extension
BOM
3 bytes (EF BB BF) at the very start of the file, on by default here
Accepted files
SRT, VTT, ASS/SSA, SUB (MicroDVD text) and TXT
Typical symptoms
ÇáÓáÇã, ال, é, �, question marks or empty boxes

Other ways to do it

VLC

In VLC: tell the player which encoding to read

  1. Open Tools > Preferences (on a Mac, VLC > Preferences, called Settings in recent versions).
  2. In the simple view, open the “Subtitles / OSD” section.
  3. Set “Default encoding” to the code page of your file: the Windows-1256 entry for old Arabic files, or the Windows-1252 (Western European) entry for French ones.
  4. Click Save, then close the video and open it again so the subtitles are reloaded.

This is a single global setting: a French file will turn garbled while VLC is set to Arabic, and the other way round. A file saved as UTF-8 with a BOM displays correctly whatever this setting says, which is why converting once is the lasting fix.

Windows

On Windows: re-save the file as UTF-8 with Notepad

  1. Right-click the subtitle file and choose Open with > Notepad.
  2. Check the text. Notepad reads files that are not UTF-8 with your PC’s legacy “ANSI” code page, so an Arabic file only looks right on a PC set to Arabic for non-Unicode programs, and a French file on a Western-language PC.
  3. If the text reads correctly, choose File > Save as, set “Save as type” to “All files” and keep the .srt name.
  4. In the Encoding list next to the Save button, choose “UTF-8 with BOM” and save.

If Notepad also shows ÇáÓáÇã or é, saving will only store the garbled text in UTF-8. Use the tool on this page instead: it decodes the original bytes with the right code page whatever your Windows language is.

Mac

On Mac: convert with TextEdit’s plain text encoding settings

  1. Open TextEdit > Settings (Preferences on older macOS) and go to the Open and Save tab.
  2. Under the plain text file encoding options, set the encoding for opening files to Arabic (Windows) or Western (Windows Latin 1). If it is missing, choose Customize Encodings List and tick it.
  3. Set the encoding for saving files to Unicode (UTF-8).
  4. Open the subtitle file with File > Open, check that it reads correctly, then save it.

TextEdit writes UTF-8 without a BOM. That is fine for VLC and web players; for a TV, run the file through this page with the BOM option ticked.

UTF-8 with or without a BOM, auto-detect or manual?

UTF-8 can store Arabic, French and every other script in one file, so once a subtitle is converted it no longer depends on the language of the computer or TV that plays it. The remaining question is whether to add a BOM, a three-byte signature at the start of the file that says “this is UTF-8”.

Keep the BOM on for smart TVs (Samsung and LG models in particular), Windows Media Player, the Films & TV app, car head units and USB media players. Many of these assume an old code page unless the signature is there. Turn it off for web players, video editors and scripts: they read UTF-8 without help, and a few older tools show stray characters such as  before the first line number when a BOM is present.

Auto-detect handles the usual cases: files that are already UTF-8 or UTF-16, Arabic in Windows-1256, French in Windows-1252 or ISO-8859-1, and double-encoded text. Choose the encoding by hand for other scripts, such as Windows-1251 for Russian, Windows-1254 for Turkish or Windows-1255 for Hebrew, or when the preview still shows nonsense. The preview lists only the lines that change, so you can check the result before downloading.

Frequently asked questions

Why are my Arabic subtitles showing symbols like ÇáÓáÇã?

The file is saved in Windows-1256, the old Arabic code page, and your player or TV is reading it as Western European text. Nothing is lost: converting the file to UTF-8 turns ÇáÓáÇã back into السلام and makes it display correctly on any device.

Why do French accents show as é or a diamond with a question mark?

é means a UTF-8 “é” was read, and often re-saved, as Windows-1252; filetidy reverses that mix-up. The � symbol is the opposite case: a Windows-1252 file read as UTF-8. Both come out as normal accented letters after conversion.

Does fixing the encoding change the timing or layout of the subtitles?

No. Only the characters are re-encoded. Every timing, line break, line ending and styling code is kept, and the downloaded file has the same name and extension as the original, so your player still pairs it with the video automatically.

What is a BOM, and does my TV need it?

A BOM (byte order mark) is an invisible three-byte signature at the start of a UTF-8 file. Many Samsung and LG TVs, Windows Media Player and USB car players only treat a subtitle as UTF-8 when the BOM is there, so the option is on by default. Web players and editors don’t need it.

My subtitles show only question marks. Can they be repaired?

Open the file in a text editor. If the question marks appear only in the player, the letters are still in the file and converting fixes them. If the editor shows real “?” characters too, the letters were replaced when the file was saved by another program, and no tool can bring them back: download another copy of the subtitles.

The file is fixed but my TV still shows empty boxes. Why?

Boxes after conversion usually mean the TV’s subtitle font has no Arabic letters, not that the encoding is wrong. Make sure the BOM option was on, check that the TV’s subtitle language or character set is set to Arabic if it offers one, or use a player app that brings its own fonts.

Are my subtitle files uploaded anywhere?

No. The files are decoded and re-encoded by JavaScript running in your browser tab, and the result is created on your device. Nothing is sent to a server, there is no account, and you can fix as many files as you like for free.

Can I fix a whole season or an ASS file at once?

Yes. Drop all the files together: SRT, VTT, ASS, SSA, SUB and TXT are accepted. Each one is detected separately, so a folder mixing Arabic and French files is handled in one go, and “Download all (.zip)” saves the batch in a single archive.

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Last updated October 28, 2026

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