Did you remember to set the video and audio to "Drop Frame" under the Data Editor tab? "way out of sync", does that mean 0-20 seconds or rather 0-20 minutes?

yes...i did. i've been following doom9's guides. i double checked it after that solved someone else's problem here on the forum. and when i say "way out of sync"....i mean the subtitles show up on the screen for maybe a second tops and then go away. the next one does the same. though there isn't a pattern to it...which makes me think that the time from the .sst file is being considered somehow. almost feels like a framerate thing, but i've got everything set to 29.97.

GOT IT!!!! after a little more careful reading and tracing my steps ever so methodically....i figured it out. here's the deal... from Doom9's DVD Subtitles: ....select the right language stream and make sure all the appropriate VOB files have been checked. that was the secret. what happened was SubRip defaulted to "Autoselect all VOBs". and the VTS_01_0.IFO i was using pulled in the VIDEO_TS.VOB and the VTS_01_0.VOB along with the main movie VOBs. (the guide shows only the main movie VOBs showing up in the VOB(Sub) file list.) since they were auto selected and i didn't check them it threw off my sync. to fix my problem, i selected only the main movie VOBs and re-ripped the subs. now my subs start at the correct time. i'll double check the burned DVD tonight when i get home from work...but tests in Scenarist seemed to be positive. (NOTE: the Doom9 guide uses an older vesrion of SubRip...and now it's possible to output a Scenarist .sst file directly from SubRip with the latest version. so i guess it shouldn't be considered "the hardway" anymore.) thx for a great site Doom9 and all the great help from everyone on the forums. ~silo