If all you are seeing is gibberish characters as subtitles in VLC, you are probably using the wrong encoding. For example this is what I get when I load a Bulgarian subtitle:

Here is how to solve this problem:

Tools / preferences / subtitles & OCD / default encoding

from there change the encoding to match the subtitle language, in my case I have to change it to Cyrillic, since Bulgarian alphabet consists of Cyrillic characters.

 

For Western European languages UTF-8 encoding is fine

You will need to reload the subtitles for changes to take effect.

There are hundreds of video converters you can find on the Internet. Some of them are paid and some are free (freeware and open source). VirtualDub is among the powerful and free video processing programs. Although by using filters you can do almost all the manipulations you can find on paid programs, in this article I just want to show how to convert videos.
First step is to download VirtualDub. Then drag and drop your video file onto VirtualDub. Select audio / full processing mode / compression / lame mp3 / 48000Hz, 128kbps /
then select video / filters / add / resize (select your preferred aspect ration – 4:3), (codec friendly sizing – multiples of 4) / then again video / compression – select x264 /
file / save as avi.












If you do not have x264 codec download and install KLite codec pack first.