Forced Subtitles and MP4's

[eric859]

OK, so I have WMC at home and occassionally dl a movie that has scenes in other languages. Normally, you would see english subtitles appear at that moment, but not on all of them. I found out how to download srt files containing only forced subs, but I don't know of the best way to add them to an MP4. I've tried handbrake, but after an hour of rendering the video, I'm left with an MP4 that is way bigger than the original. How do I hardcode the srt file in the mp4 and keep the same quality & file size?

I'm also open to alternate solutions.

Thanks!

[Baldrick]

Under the video tab change the bitrate or quality setting for smaller file size. Use same bitrate as the video source for same output file size. You can use mediainfoxp to identify the source bitrate.

Or use vidcoder, you can you set the target output file size directly in it.

[hello_hello]

I know nothing about WMC, but if you put the srt subtitle file in the same folder has the video, and it has the same name as the video, MPC-HC will auto-load it (you may still need to enable/disable subtitles manually via the subtitle menu). It'll do the same if the subtitles are muxed into the MP4/MKV, which they often are (My MP4Box GUI or MKVMergeGUI). That way you can view the subtitles without re-encoding. WMC doesn't support srt subtitles that way?

Having said that.... I tend to "hardcode" English subtitles for foreign language parts as then the video can be played with any player regardless of subtitle support. What x264 settings do you use when encoding? Every time you re-encode you potentially lose some quality, so the bitrate/file size being a little larger than the original isn't something I worry about (it'll minimise any quality loss). I'd probably try to prevent it from being "way bigger" though.