damn Subtitles can't be burned ?!

[insext]

Ok, I got a movie in mp4 with subtitles in .idx and .sub... VLC only takes the .idx, but it works perfectly when I want to view the movie with subtitle added by vlc...

I now need to made an edit of this film for a VJ set (visual dj set) and I DO WANT to have the subtitles burned into the pictures, cause I DO WANT the subtitles to be displayed during the VJ set...

I've tried dozen of times... no way. I know I need to use mencoder engine for this to work but no way !!!

I've added the .idx files in the "import" section... choose the right subtitles track... etc etc... when I preview the movie with subtitles, it works !!!!! AND, after encoding, niet, nothing, nada, nitchevo, not a single dot was burned....

please help... x__x

[jman98]

Well, you can definitely do what you want to do. Can you do it on a Mac? Well...

VirtualDubMod can easily do this in Windows. We have guides here on adding permanent subtitles using VirtualDubMod. Here is a guide:
https://forum.videohelp.com/topic272736.html

I don't want you to think that I love Windows. I don't. I work as a Unix system administrator and I even have a Mac at work, but the truth is that I run Windows at home because doing complex operations on video like this are very easy in Windows and very hard on Macs.

[Case]

when I preview the movie with subtitles, it works !!!!! AND, after encoding, niet, nothing, nada, nitchevo, not a single dot was burned...

While mplayer will overlay these image based subtitles (Preview), mencoder will only burn text based subtitles into the video. This tool is currently just not capable of what you want to do.
Maybe you can find a .srt file for the same movie?

[insext]

.idx is not text based subtiles ???

[Case]

The .idx and .sub file go together. The .idx is an index file (basically a time table) which points to images from the image collection in the .sub file.

[insext]

great... X__X



pleeeaaaassseee someone can get me the .srt fiiiiiiiiiile ??!!!!

[jman98]

Nice followup Case. I forgot that SUB and IDX are bit mapped.

insext - Since you didn't tell us what the movie is, how can we get you the SRT file? Try looking here: http://subtitles.images.o2.cz/

[joshmunkey]

you could also try an OCR tool in windows to convert the bitmaps to text, though thats awfully time consuming sometimes.

[tomlee59]

you could also try an OCR tool in windows to convert the bitmaps to text, though thats awfully time consuming sometimes.

Make that "all the time." OCR does a lot of the work for you, that's true, but it is equally true that you will have to go through the output carefully and edit the inevitable and numerous mistakes it makes.

I'd recommend that as a good plan B option. Plan A would be to locate an srt version of the subs he wants. If it's a reasonably popular movie, chances are high that a suitable one can be found online. Google is your friend.

[mats.hogberg]

I really don't understand why people find OCRing subtitles (SubRip) such a chore. 10 minutes tops for a full length movie, and I can live with that the odd 1 (one) now and then is interpreted as l (Lima).

/Mats

[etruscan]

Some things aren't available to the Mac platform, it seems - like quite a number of games and OCR. There's a number of options:

1) Search the web for the .srt file, there usually is one;

2) Use Windows;

3) Watch the whole thing and write the subs down as a text file then convert the idx to the appropriate timecodes and merge it in a spreadsheet;

4) Wait for the appropriate tool to appear in the Mac from some shareware wiz; like maybe in 2010?

I'm being facetious because the lack of such software for the Mac is irritating at the least.

[BeardFan]

You can burn in idx/subs with ffmpegx, you just have to take a slight detour.

First mux the video and audio plus the subtitle into a mkv container using mkvmerge.

Then ffmpegx with this new mkv will burn in the subs with a mencoder setting when you check "VOB subtitles" in the filter tab.

[Case]

BeardFan, that is great!
Just did a test-run with good results.

[etruscan]

> Then ffmpegx with this new mkv will burn in the subs with a mencoder setting when you check "VOB subtitles" in the filter tab.

That's great but you can't fix the subs and you'd probably need to reencode with the xvid-ffmpeg setting to get standalone playability, right?

[joshmunkey]

You can burn in idx/subs with ffmpegx, you just have to take a slight detour.

First mux the video and audio plus the subtitle into a mkv container using mkvmerge.

Then ffmpegx with this new mkv will burn in the subs with a mencoder setting when you check "VOB subtitles" in the filter tab.

i've used these steps before (i get a lot of dvd ripped anime, so i'm always working with mkvmerge to strip out the english audio) but i rarely like the results when it comes to vobsub being in the mix. the font usually looks horrid (seemingly because of bad compression or some such thing of the bitmap images, but i'm no expert on the subject) and misplaced most of the time, and the fact that there's no real functioning subtitle placement system under the current mencoder settings doesn't help...

...and you'd probably need to reencode with the xvid-ffmpeg setting to get standalone playability, right?

not necessarily. my old-as-the-hills toshiba dvd player handles mencoder xvid just fine. though of course with the playstation 3 it only really seems to like ffmpeg xvid/divx, so who knows if the standards of all players have moved away from what i have...

[BeardFan]

the font usually looks horrid

Well you get the original Font Layout of the DVD, but they are slightly translucent as all of the mencoder burned subs. But as long as i can read them, it's OK for me.

For some files I had, this was the only way to make them playable on my standalone.

[insext]

okok, I found the .srt files on some websites (thanks for tips about that everybody) and burned it as well....

more, I learned a lot about ffmpegX with this topic !!! thanks everybody for caring !!

(and feel free to go on with the topic, I'll be happy to learn more ((: )

[nicgrosso]

I mux the video and audio plus the subtitle into a mkv container using mkvmerge.

The problems start on ffmpegx. I load the mkv and check "VOB subtitles" in the filter tab. Is that all I have to do?
The results are no good. When I play the avi on VLC subs are there, but image doesn't play right, just getting stucked. I can see the subs by moving across the timeline, just clicking al over it, without moving image available, only still pictures.

Thank you, Case.

[nicgrosso]

I forgot...

Forcing output fourcc to 58564944 [XVID]
Building audio filter chain for 48000Hz/2ch/s16be -> 48000Hz/0ch/s8...
Building audio filter chain for 48000Hz/2ch/s16be -> 48000Hz/2ch/s16be...
VDec: vo config request - 640 x 384 (preferred colorspace: Planar YV12)
VDec: using Planar YV12 as output csp (no 0)
Movie-Aspect is 1.67:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
SwScaler: using unscaled Planar YV12 -> Planar YV12 special converter
videocodec: libavcodec (640x384 fourcc=58564944 [XVID])
Writing AVI header...
ODML: Aspect information not (yet?) available or unspecified, not writing vprp header.
ODML: Aspect information not (yet?) available or unspecified, not writing vprp header.
Skipping frame!
Skipping frame!
Skipping frame!
Skipping frame!
Skipping frame!
Skipping frame!

...and so on.



Skipping frame!
Skipping frame!
Skipping frame!
f (99%) 142.55fps Trem: 0min 99mb A-V:-6.244 [31:128]
Skipping frame!
Skipping frame!
28]
Flushing video frames
Writing AVI index...
Fixing AVI header...
ODML: Aspect information not (yet?) available or unspecified, not writing vprp header.
Video stream: 31.909 kbit/s (3988 B/s) size: 20491818 bytes 5137.500 secs 128271 frames
Audio stream: 128.000 kbit/s (16000 B/s) size: 82208256 bytes 5138.016 secs
Encoding completed on Sat Mar 1 16:59:04 ART 2008

[D'Artagnan]

Thanks for this info, this helped me too using MAC OS X