DVD's with closed captions to MP4's with subtitles

[sebrame]

I'm about to start a project where I need to rip the closed captions from DVD's, which I can easily do with ccExtractor, then transcode the videos on the DVD to MP4's with the ripped captions added as subtitles. My current workflow is this...

1 - Rip the CC's from the DVD's with ccExtractor to Subrip format(.srt)

2 - Convert the SRT's to Quicktime Text structure so that they can be inserted into the videos via Quicktime Pro.

3 - Save from Quicktime Pro as self contained movies with subtitles inserted.

4 - Batch transcode to MP4's with Sorenson Squeeze.

My hang-up is Step 2. If I only had a few short videos I can do this manually by editing the text in the SRT files, but I'm looking at several thousand DVD's...some of which are almost 50 minutes long. Is there an app that will convert SRT files to something that can be used by Quicktime Pro?

Thanks a lot for any advice.
Steve

[Baldrick]

Are we talking soft/switchable or hard/permanent subs in the mp4 video?

[usually_quiet]

Subtitle Workshop can batch convert SRT to Quick Time Text (see its "Tools" menu), though I haven't tried it for that.

You may already be an expert (by comparison), since I have only converted CCs to subtitles a few times, but for what it's worth, I recall there were complications caused by positioning of text to indicate speakers, colored text, and special characters, so I had to do some manual editing. I don't know that there's a way to avoid that entirely and still have a good result.

[ccguy]

My hang-up is Step 2. If I only had a few short videos I can do this manually by editing the text in the SRT files, but I'm looking at several thousand DVD's...some of which are almost 50 minutes long. Is there an app that will convert SRT files to something that can be used by Quicktime Pro?

Since you are using ccextractor for the .srt generation and its source code is available, why don't use add the necesary code to produce whatever format you need right from ccextractor?

It's not difficult (ccextractor's code is still a bit messy but it's improving). The file 608.cpp has the code that exports to .srt, .sami, etc. There's a function called "write_current_screen_to_srt" or something like that. It's a trivial function because by the time that function get called the MPEG decoder and the closed caption decoder have already done their part - so you get an array of characters and colors that is very easy to export to whatever format is convenient.

Some people could benefit from or improve your work later

[sebrame]

Hmmm...I went to DeVry back in the 90's, studied COBOL, Basic and C++. Any knowledge I had of those languages was totally expended on my final exams. If you'd given me the exams again in the parking lot at my car immediately after I'd just taken them, I would have failed.

Having said that....I might be able to find a friend that actually retained that knowledge to work on it.

As far as the 'hard/soft' captions question...I would imagine hard..since once you transcode to MP4 all functionality of being able to switch them on or off is lost.

[sebrame]

Bingo!

I found that the Belle Nuit Subtitler will convert an SRT file into a Quicktime Text file that will work directly in Quicktime Pro.