If i understand you correctly, you don't talk about putting the text on the very top of the screen, but simply putting the one-line subtitles where the upper of two lines would go? AFAIK there is no such things like two lines like two slots to put things in, but the subtitles get simply positioned relative to the lower edge. If there are two lines the upper one obviously is moved towads the center to make room for the lower one. But SRT can also disply 3 or more lines. In the SRT itself there is little you can do. well you could put a second line with something really mall like a dot in every sub that only contains one line, but i guess that looks too ugly. I might be wrong, but i think vsfilter/dvobsub allow you to you set te alignment and position. Maybe it helps to achieve what you want by setting the alignment to TopCenter (instead of standard bottom center) and then move the subtitles down by setting a really large offset from the top border.