Batch rip SRTs from VOBs?

[Luth C]

I recently converted my family's DVD collection (200+) to digital format and put them on a central server. For the time being, they're all straight VOB rips. Well, now I need to go and rip SRT files from each of them...

I got SubRipper and learned how to use that well enough, but then I found out there's no sort of batch option, and manually doing every VOB is going to take the better part of my life, so I need another solution. However, for all I know, there isn't one. (Someone claimed to make a batch-able version of SubRipper, but unfortunately, it requires an IFO file, and all I have are recombined single-file 4GB VOBs.)

What, if any, are my options for getting SRTs for my library before I die of old age?

[Baldrick]

Try subextractor.

But I guess mosts requires the ifo to correctly identify the correct subtitle tracks.

[Luth C]

It looks like SubExtractor requires IFOs as well. If there are no other alternatives, I guess I can try compiling my own version of SubRipper. I was hoping to avoid that though.

[hech54]

This....

It looks like SubExtractor requires IFOs as well.

and this...

I recently converted my family's DVD collection (200+) to digital format and put them on a central server. For the time being, they're all straight VOB rips.

....don't make sense.

[Luth C]

Sorry if I didn't explain it well enough. Here's a more step-by-step process of what I did:

I used DVDFab to rip all our movies onto HDDs (complete with VIDEO_TS folders and all). I then used DVD2ONE to combine each movie folder into a single 4GB VOB file, and copied those huge VOBs to the server so we can watch them over the network. However, in the process of DVD2ONE-ing, all extra files, such as IFOs, were discarded. (However, I did have the foresight to include the english subtitles in the final VOB for each movie that had them.)

If I wanted to get the IFOs for the movies, I would have to re-rip the entire collection, and as that took weeks to do initially, I'm not too keen on doing that again, as you can imagine.

Does that make things more clear?

[Cornucopia]

Well, seeing as how VOBs only contain Subs in a graphic-style format (NOT in a text-style format), you'll NEVER get SRTs straight out of one, regardless of whether it's batch or not.

What comes out direct from a VOB is sometimes called "Vobsub" or "Sup" or "Sub" format (these can sometimes also mean other variant formats). You will need to take that graphic-sub format and OCR it to convert it to a text-sub format. Subresync, which is part of VobSub, can do that. Batch? I don't know...

Scott

BTW, If you're going to the trouble of saving all the VOBs from a movie (multiple GBs), how hard is it to also save the IFOs? (couple of kB or MB). Yes, they mainly have menu and navigation info in them, but they alos make re-extraction, re-encoding, re-authoring the VOBs much easier in the long run.

[Luth C]

I didn't realize I needed the IFOs at the time, since they weren't required to play back the VOBs, so I simply discarded them. In hindsight (always 20/20), it wouldn't have been any trouble at all to keep them. Alas, here we are...

I spent the morning installing and learning Delphi. I've rewritten SubRipper to extract and create SRTs from entire directories of VOBs. I expect I'll have some problems since the OCR profile from one movie to the next may not work exactly, but I think after training it with a couple of videos, it should do just fine. I've yet to do a large scale test on multiple movies, but it converted all of Star Trek: DS9 after just one episode's worth of training, so that, already, saves me tons of time.

[Baldrick]

Which subripper are you talking about? subrip? or the older dvd subripper?

And you could upload the special version you made. If it works fine then. Maybe someone else might find it useful.

[Luth C]

"SubRipper" originally from Brian @ http://www.subrip.fr.st/

Yeah, I can upload it somewhere I guess. I don't have/want a git account or anything, though, so what would be best, do you think? 7zip it, throw it up on rapid share, and post the link here?

[Baldrick]

www.mediafire.com

Or you can attach files when you post(upload files/Manage attachments). Mediafire, rapidshare and such may remove the files after some time.

[Luth C]

Changes:
- "Autoselect All VOBs" will select all VOBs in the same folder as the selected VOB
- When a VOB is processed, it will automatically "clean" and save the SRT file at {Program Root}/srt/{filename}.srt
- I may have inadvertently broken other functionality in the process of making this