problem syncing subtitles with movie

I'll start by saying I'm new to the whole torrent community. I just learned about downloading torrents & I love it! I like to watch movies with subtitles, however...I can never seem to get the subtitle to sync up with the movie. I know that the avi file and the srt file both have to have the same name, other than that...i'm lost. I have both VLC media player and DIVX on my computer, which are supposed to support subtitles. Any body know how to fix this problem? I really want to download some foreign films but don't dare till I can get a handle on this issue. Oh yeah, and I should mention. I just watch the films on my computer as I don't really know how to burn anything onto a disk yet. Thanks!