SyncMySubsSubtitle encoding detector
Character encoding is how the letters in a file are stored as bytes, and when a player guesses it wrong you get garbled accents and symbols. Drop a subtitle file here and this tool tells you which encoding it appears to be in and whether the text decodes cleanly. If something's off, it hands you straight to the Fix Encoding tool. Nothing is uploaded.
Why encoding matters for subtitles
A subtitle file is just text, but text has to be stored as bytes, and there's more than one system for doing it. UTF-8 is the modern standard and handles every language, but plenty of older files are saved in Windows-1252, Latin-1, or a regional encoding like Shift_JIS. When a video player assumes the wrong one, accented letters and non-Latin characters come out as boxes, question marks, or strings like é and Â.
This detector reads the raw bytes and works out the encoding: a byte-order mark or valid UTF-8 is a sure thing, while a legacy file gets a best-guess label from how its bytes decode. It also flags mojibake, the specific garbling that happens when UTF-8 is misread and re-saved. It only reports; to actually convert a file to clean UTF-8, send it to the Fix Encoding tool.
FAQ
How can it tell the encoding from the file alone?
Some signs are certain: a byte-order mark names the encoding outright, and text either is or isn't valid UTF-8. When a file isn't UTF-8, the tool decodes it with a few common legacy and CJK encodings and picks the one whose bytes come out as readable text. That last step is a best guess, so it's phrased as "most likely" rather than a guarantee.
My subtitles have garbled accents. What encoding is that?
Usually the file is Windows-1252 or Latin-1 that a player has read as UTF-8, or it's UTF-8 that was read once as Windows-1252 and re-saved (classic mojibake, where é turns into é). The detector spots both and points you to the Fix Encoding tool, which re-reads the bytes correctly and saves clean UTF-8.
What's the difference between this and the Fix Encoding tool?
This tool only diagnoses: it tells you the encoding and whether the text looks right, and changes nothing. The Fix Encoding tool does the repair, letting you choose an encoding and download clean UTF-8. Use the detector to understand the problem, then hand off to the fixer to solve it.