Tools
The Tools section holds four edits that change exactly one property of a subtitle file and leave everything else alone. They are free to use — like the YouTube Transcript screen, they sit outside the licence gate, because nothing is transcribed, no model runs and no external tool is downloaded to do the work.
What is in the section
| Shift Timing | Moves every subtitle in the file earlier or later by the same amount. |
|---|---|
| Shift a Section | Moves a range of subtitles — subtitles 340 to the end, say — without touching the rest. |
| Color | Sets the colour of the subtitle text, or strips colouring the file already carries. |
| Position | Moves subtitles to another part of the frame — top, middle, a corner. |
Each is its own screen, and all four work the same way: open one subtitle file, choose what to change, check the preview, save.
Opening a file
Click Add subtitles or drop a file anywhere on the window. One file at a time — these are single-file edits, not batch jobs; for a whole season use Edit Subtitles.
Three formats are read and written: SRT (SubRip), WebVTT and ASS/SSA (Advanced SubStation Alpha). Character encoding is detected on open, the same as everywhere else in the app, so a Windows-1252 or UTF-16 subtitle pack opens correctly and is saved back as UTF-8.
The preview, and what actually changes
Below the settings is a before-and-after table of the file. Rows the tool will change are highlighted, the new value is shown in colour and the original is struck through beneath it. A line above the table says how many of the file's subtitles change — and says Nothing changes with the current settings when the answer is none, which is also when Save is greyed out.
The tools do not re-write the parts of the file they were not asked to touch. A subtitle a tool does not change comes back byte for byte as it was, down to the way its timestamps were spelled. This matters most for ASS: the [Script Info] and [V4+ Styles] sections, every event's layer, style, name, margins and effect, karaoke timing, typesetting and Comment: lines all survive untouched. Formatting inside the text — <i>, <b>, {\pos(…)} — survives too.
Line breaks are left exactly where the file put them. The "maximum characters per line" and "split long subtitles" settings in Settings → General apply when the app writes a subtitle it produced; they deliberately do not re-flow a file you only came here to re-time.
Saving
Save overwrites the file you opened. Save as… asks for a destination and suggests name (edited).srt beside the original; after that, further saves go to the copy rather than back to the source, so you can keep adjusting without touching the original again.
The file is always written in the format it was opened in — a .ass stays an ASS file with its styles intact. If you want a different format, use Convert or the editor's export.
The settings describe the total change from the file as it was opened, not a running tally. Saving a +2 second shift and then changing the offset to +3 and saving again gives you a file shifted by 3 seconds, not 5.
When to use something else
These tools apply a change you have already decided on. If you do not know the offset — the subtitles drift, or the file was made for a different release — use Sync Subtitles in the editor instead, which listens to the audio and works the timing out for you.
To edit individual lines, retime single cues against a waveform, or fix the text itself, use Edit Subtitles.