Adding subtitles to a movie

[Rich]

Instead of hardcoding subtitles to a movie I have recently found a neat little program that will play .ssa OR .srt files with the movie called DivX Subtitle Displayer 4.54.

Download here... http://www.softlandmark.com/DVDSubtitles.htm

DivX Subtitle Displayer 4.54

DivX Subtitle Displayer is a program that can make your Media Player display subtitles while playing DivX movies. It is easy to use and has many features, such as subtitle font setable, FPS changeable, movie playlist, and so on. Now support srt subtitle format ! You can change your Media Player version Now!

To convert .sub files to .srt files you can use the program Subtool, downloadable here... http://www.divx-digest.com/software/subtool.html

Some more details about adding subs, including how to add subs to the avi itself (hardcoding) can be found here... http://www.videohelp.com/srtsubsvirtual.htm

Rich

[infiniter]

Another application with quite the same features is Gabest VobSub.
It's freeware.
Puts a plugin to VirtualDub used to permanently encode subtitles.
Can also show subs with common video players like WMP which use DirectX. Supperts different formats of subs.

[infiniter]

I am a little confused. When I download a movie from through eMule, say oginoggen for example, will it commonly have the subtitles somewhere in the file? Are you saying that i can make the subtitles visible by downloading one of the programs listed in this thread?

Thanks.

That depends. If it is an AVI, the subtitles can't be "included" that way you meant. Not as a file, but hardcoded. Which means, like in TV, the subs are coded into the picture of the video.

Other formats like OGM (Ogg Movie) or MKV (Matroska Video, leaned to the Matroska puppet) provide a container movie. The file contains, like in a container, a movie, one or more audio tracks (mostly two) and may also have one or more subtitle files. There are codecs for this, so WMP or Zoomplayer can play these. The result: you can choose between the audio tracks and between the subtitle tracks.

But these movies are quite rare.

[Guest]

1. A movie can have subtitles hardcoded into it. This means that the subtitles are permanent; they can't be turned off, they can't be edited or corrected.

2. A movie can be presented as a DVD. These have subtitles included in the additional tracks; you can turn these off if you like.

3. Subtitles can be provided as separate files which contain the text of the subtitles, as well as the time at which each line is to be displayed and the duration for which the line will stay on-screen. I like this approach best. It is very easy to open these files with Notepad and edit typos, grammatical errors, etc. Turning them off altogether is not a probem at all.

You can get these subtitle files from subtitle sites like http://www.extratitles.to/, http://subtitles.images.o2.cz/, http://194.204.48.145/eng-0.php, etc. You can also get them by searching the ed2k network (use the same filename, specify a size less than 1 MB). Many release sites release the subtitles along with the movies. I wish FLM would do this more often.

There are a number of Software utilities that make the job of creating and editing subtitles very easy indeed. SubAdjust156, (DVD DIVx Tools) Subtitle_Studio.zip, and Subtitle Workshop v2.51 Multilanguage + Manual are my favourites, especially the last one.

Subtitle files for one release of a movie can be used with other releases as well, but they may need to be adjusted. eg. there are single file versions which need to be split for 2 cd versions of the same movie; a change in format between NTSC and PAL creates timing errors - the subtitles' timeline needs to be offset and stretched or shrunk to fit the movie. The utilities mentioned above do this with ease.

A number of media players support subtitle files. In addition to the ones mentioned in earlier posts, you have VLC and BSPlayer (my choice - very easy to use ). You can even use a subtitle file on your hard disk with movies on other media (eg. VCDs) - viola! you have subtitles for a movie that didn't have them earlier.

[Guest]

Copy your film into imovie. Listen to the dialogue. Hand-type in what you hear in imovie at the right spot and the program does it automatically for you. I have made transcripts like this for educational purposes because here in S.E. Asia the pirated DVDs have *horrible* subtitles, like 30% totally wrong English. It's like the Malaysian or Chinese dupers used some sort of automatic program. Just like automatic free translators on the web (say from Spanish to English) are usually remarkably inaccurate, like wise a machine Can't do what a human can.