Aegisub

Aegisub is a free, cross-platform open source tool for creating and modifying subtitles. Aegisub makes it quick and easy to time subtitles to audio, and features many powerful tools for styling them, including a built-in real-time video preview.

Aegisub was originally created as a tool to make typesetting, particularly in anime fansubs, a less painful experience. At the time of the start of the project, many other programs that supported the Advanced Substation Alpha format lacked (and in many cases, still lack; development on several competing programs have since been dropped for various reasons completely unrelated to Aegisub) many vital functions, or were too buggy and/or unreliable to be really useful.

Since then, Aegisub has grown into a fully fledged, highly customizable subtitle editor. It features a lot of convenient tools to help you with timing, typesetting, editing and translating subtitles, as well as a powerful scripting environment called Automation (originally mostly intended for creating karaoke effects, Automation can now be used much else, including creating macros and various other convenient tools).

Some highlights of Aegisub:

Simple and intuitive yet powerful interface for editing subtitles

Support for many formats and character sets

Powerful video mode

Visual typesetting tools

Intuitive and customizable audio timing mode

Fully scriptable through the Automation module