As the key factor to obtain the best viewing experiences, the subtitle is playing an important role for a movie. What is your preferred way to play all kinds of multimedia players with subtitles? Windows Media Player, as the default media player for Windows, can easily provide various playback solutions with ease and accuracy.

However, some movies with embedded subtitles could not be played properly on Windows Media Player. Among various subtitle files, SRT files are commonly seen. Today, we are going to discuss how to use SRT file in Windows Media Player and figure out the exact reasons for the failure.

Part 1: How to Add and Play SRT File on Windows Media Player

For majority of movies, the subtitles are inserted ahead of time. In most cases, the SRT file is embedded accordingly. If you are not provided with the SRT file of the movie, then you can manually add and play SRT file on Windows Media Player. SRT file is a subtitle file saved in the SubRip subtitle file , which can be edited by any text editor. SRT files generally contain subtitle information, with the sequential number of subtitles, start and end time code, subtitle texts included, and they are commonly used in video playback, so as you can see they do not contain any video data. Instead, you can set SRT subtitle to your desired movie or video file as long as it is supported by the media player such as Windows Media Player. Next, I will show

Step 1. Download an additional subtitle program which is called DirectVobSub. This program is used to show subtitles while playing all kinds of movies. Once you have downloaded, then follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation process.
Step 2. Download the SRT file from the specific websites. Here, please make sure that the SRT file and the video file are kept in the same folder so that the subtitle could automatically appear during the playback. Then rename the SRT file with .srt extension.

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Step 3. Open Windows Media Player on the computer and go to the “Play” menu > “Lyrics, Captions and Subtitles” and click on “On if Available” option to turn on the Subtitles.

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Step 4. Restart Windows Media Player. Load the video to WMP, then the SRT subtitle would show up beneath the screen of the video automatically.

Part 2: Why Can't I Play SRT Subtitle on Windows Media Player

However, according to the user feedback, some complained that they failed to add SRT subtitles in Windows Media Player. And all common reasons are listed as below:

1. Turned subtitles, captions or lyrics off. Sometimes, users don’t notice that the subtitle has not been notified and turned correctly. As a result, the subtitle file could not be shown up immediately.
2. Videos with damaged subtitles. If the video is equipped with the damaged subtitles, the users would not watch the exact subtitle files on the media player. If you are unsure about the downloaded subtitles, you can refer to the other subtitle websites for another try.
3. Videos without subtitles at all. If you are not sure about exact reasons for the failure of SRT subtitle, then a possible reason may be that the videos don’t have any subtitles at all. In order to solve the problem, the only way to figure it out is to download the related subtitle files.
So to solve these problems, you can firstly check the Subtitles settings, though generally the Subtitles is turned on by default. If it still fails, just check whether the subtitles are damaged or whether the subtitles are available. And if the file is damaged, you are suggested to load a new .srt file.

But actually to easily and smoothly add SRT subtitles to your wanted videos, the best way for you is to choose an alternative to Windows Media Player, ensuring that SRT subtitles can always work under any circumstances as long as they are complete.

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Part 3: How to Solve SRT Playback Problem on Windows Media Player

In order to play the SRT file correctly on Windows Media Player, you can follow the steps below to set the files one more time.

Solution 1. Set the Windows Media Player again.

Once you have opened the movie on Windows Media Player, right click on the screen to select “More options” >> “Security” >> “Content” to locate the “show local captions when present” option. Please make sure the present video name and subtitle name are the same. Then you can play the SRT playback in the right way.

Solution 2. Install the decoding package.

Step 1. First install the third-party decoding package, here you can select ADVANCED Codecs (windows 10 codecs);
Step 2. Then delete:
C: msmpegadec.dll, MSMPEG2ENC.DLL, msmpeg2vdec.dll in the \ Windows \ SysWOW64 \ folder. Before deletion, you can back up these files.
Step 3. Restart Windows Media Player and load the file again. Usually this would be played properly.

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Part 4: Free Alternative for SRT Subtitle Playback

No. 1 Leawo Blu-ray Player

To get the best alternative to Windows Media Player, this Free Leawo Blu-ray Player is surely your top choice. With it, you can freely select your wanted subtitles to match the videos that you plan to play on the computer or you can load your desired subtitles from external location. With this player, you can easily play all common and uncommon files including AVI, MPEG, WMV, MP4, FLV, RMVB, MOV, Xvid, 3GP, etc. and up to 1080P HD videos in HD MP4, HD AVI, HD MOV, HD TS, etc. In addition, you can also change other audio or video settings as desired and control the playback process totally to your preference, so as to have your customized visual experience. It can even enable you to back up your Blu-ray movies by converting Blu-ray to MKV files without quality loss. And best of all, this software has a simple user interface, enabling you to enjoy a fabulous and personalized visual experience by adding your wanted subtitles and adjusting other settings.

blu-ray-player

Leawo Free Blu-ray Player 

☉ 100% free movie player for Windows & Mac users to play Ultra HD 4K, 1080P and 720P videos.

☉ Free Blu-ray/DVD player to play 4K disc, folder and ISO file, regardless of disc protection and region code.

☉ Support multiple audio decoding systems like Dolby, DTS, AAC, TrueHD, DTS-HD, etc.

☉ Adjust subtitles, video and audio during media playback.

☉ Serves as a powerful Blu-ray/DVD to MKV converter to convert Blu-ray/DVD disc, folder and ISO image to MKV with lossless quality and high speed.

No. 2 KMPlayer

KMPlayer is an all-round audio and video player from South Korea. Like Mplayer, KMPlayer (referred to as KMP) ported from the Linux platform can play almost all audio and video files on your system. KMPlayer extends KMP through various plug-ins to support endless new formats. KMPlaye's powerful plug-in function, the plug-in function inherited directly from Winamp, can directly use winamp's audio, input, visual effects plug-in, and through unique expansion capabilities.

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No. 3 Media Player Classic Home Cinema

Media Player Classic Home Cinema is a modified MOD based on the media player classic (mpc player). It is very compact and requires only a main program. The appearance is similar to WMP6.4, but its function is far beyond the latter. MPC can not only play all the formats supported by WMP, not even GIF animations, and the effect is very good. He not only retained all the functions of MPC, but also added some special services, such as: jitter test, anti-tearing, shuttle pn31, subtitle synchronization, remote control support, osd screen display, vista ready and so on. The SRT subtitle file can be easily played on this player software.

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Part 5: How to Play and Set SRT Subtitle

In order to play the SRT subtitle file, you need to download the correct SRT file from the Internet and load the file correctly. Now I will strongly recommend you to play and set SRT subtitle with Leawo Blu-ray Player. Below is the step-by-step user guide:

Step 1. Download and install Leawo Blu-ray Player on your computer.
Step 2. Load the movie file from the computer and open the installed software on the computer and then load the wanted files to the main interface.

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Step 3. After that, right click on the main interface and then specify the Subtitles option to select the SRT subtitle as the desired one. The the subtitles would show up beneath the screen.

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Most importantly, the newest version of this Leawo Blu-ray Player has been updated greatly especially in terms of subtitle-related function. In the previous versions, users can add external subtitles in style by choosing subtitle text font from teletext.ttf or arial.ttf, and edit subtitle size, style, color, character set and location with many available options out there to choose from.
Now, the latest version makes it possible to automatically load the internal subtitle by right clicking the main interface and choose the desired subtitle. More importantly, as long as the subtitle has been played once, the player will automatically load the subtitle and display it the next time when the same disc is inserted and played.