subtitles ain't working..

[mmmdreg]

For a movie with its associated subtitle file, I can't seem to get the subtitles to show in mplayer or vlc.. in mplayer, nothing happens if the file is selected as the sub file, in vlc, the log shows that it automatically looks for it, finds it, but doesn't use it because of such:
main debug: using subtitle demux module "demuxsub"
demuxsub debug: opened `/Movies/theMovieImWatching.sub'
demuxsub debug: trying to autodetect file format
demuxsub debug: unknown subtitle file
main warning: failed to start subtitle demux

any ideas?

[mmmdreg]

..so noone out of the 10's of thousands here knows what I'm talking about..?

[alxths]

I've had problems running subtitles on mplayer(wouldn't work at all in vlc), where it would just crash as soon as the first subtitle was supposed to appear.. this was resolved by just restarting the computer immediately before plyaing the movie

don't know if that's any good to you, but there it is.

[jimjiminyjim]

Sure... I've had subtitle problems before, but I haven't got any solutions. If you find out more, please do share!