How to convert .SSA to .SRT for with a Mac

[VidHunter]

Is there a program for the mac that allows me to convert .SSA to .SRT? For some odd reason, MKVmerge acts up when I try to add an .SSA file edited by Sears. After I convert it to .SRT, it would add to MKVmerge just fine. I was using an online converter to convert it to .SRT. The website is down. I would like a program that I can keep on my mac to do the conversion if possible since I edit alot of subtitles for videos.

Thanks in advance.

[Levina]

Jubler Just open your .ssa file and save as .srt.

[VidHunter]

Here is the thing. I tried jubler to open the .SSA file. The weird thing is that a chunk subtitle text is replaced by weird messages. When I try to save it as .SRT, the .SRT file would show those weird messages. The some of the original subtitle text is gone. The timing is also off.

[Herve]

use Miyu,
www.fluffalopefactory.com/miyu/
create a new project
import your ssa
export it to srt (and check the encoding options)

bye

[VidHunter]

When I try to import it, I can select the file. The thing is while it is trying to import that .SSA file it crashed Miyu. I tried a couple more times. Everytime I try to import it would crash Miyu. Man, I got some troublesome subs. So far the only thing that worked was that online converter, which is still offline unfortunately.

*Update* Praise the lord. It has come back online. I think ill just convert all the subs I have backed up on my HD to .SRT while the online converter is still up. Thanks for the suggestions guys. The online converter website is http://www.akira.ru/osc/index.php if anyone is interested.

[Herve]

I'm curious, could you upload you (bad) .ssa somewhere?

bye

[VidHunter]

Do you want a copy of it? I don't mind. Where can I upload so you can get a copy of it? Its only a 48k .SSA file.

I did figure out a trick to convert it to a .SRT file even though Miyu failed. I was able to open jubler but a chunk of the text was gone and some of the timing was off too. I just used Subs Factory and Sears. I would create a dummy .SRT file with Subs factory and then use Sears to appendage the file I want to the dummy .SRT file. Now I have my new .SRT file with all the text and timing I want intact.

[Herve]

Hello, no problem with your subtitle .ssa (to make directly a DVD subtitle or to convert it with Miyu)
Your subtitle is UTF-8, waht does it mean? It's the characters encoding (the way each letter is coded in the file)
Most of subtitles found on the net are "Windows" (ISO-8859-1)
My home subtitles are Mac Western (MacRoman)
this one is "native Unix" (UTF8)

open your ssa with textWrangler (a great text editor)
bottom of the window, you'll see what is its characters encoding (and its line break)
report it to Miyu during import (or report it to you prefered DVD subtitle encoder)


PS: no need to convert it to srt
PSS: I tried your web site, it opens your UTF8 ssa file and convert it to MACROMAN srt file, it's cool for english langage but it's not a solution. In Europe we have a lot of "exotic characters", the conversion will be bad (encoding of exotic characters need to be well defined to be correctly displayed)
So use TextWrangler to identify you encoding first

bye

[VidHunter]

Ah I see

So was the reason it was tripping up my programs. Thanks for the help Herve. Time to go hunt down TextWrangler.