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  1. How to add permanent letterboxed subtitles to a video with Virtualdub & SRTtoSSA Convertor.
    61-15-17-13-01
    Soooo ........ this is my first guide, or at least my first guide in years and years. Be gentle?

    What I would like to show you is how to add permanent AND letterboxed subtitles (meaning in the black part and not IN the picture itsell) to a video using
    Virtualdub (so NOT VirtualdubMOD), SRT to SSA and Avery Lee's (= dude who made VirtualDub) own subtitle filter.

    I apologize if this has been done before, but I looked around, and I didn't find something which shows letterboxing (but that's prolly mainly me) OR uses precisely these tools. Imho, this is a superior method, but everyone's got an A.....-hole too, so .....

    I also apologize if I get things wrong, for example I don't really know if this is actually called letterboxing. I have always believed that to be true, break it to me gently if I'm wrong ....
    To be honest, me personally, I don't believe in hard-subbing. It's really annoying if you can't play with the subtitles, switch em off and on etc. Especially if the permanently added, hard-coded subtitles are out of sync!

    But, sometimes I do use it, where switchable subs aren't directly possible like Youtube. And then, this method would result in a video like this one:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMngpHcDEdo
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMtqZl8ANqs
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPIfvRb9jq8

    And yes, "permanently added subtitles", "hard-coded subtitles", "hard-subbed videos" and "embedded subtitles", these are all the same thing.

    Para empezar!

    Software needed:

    1. Virtualdub http://www.virtualdub.org/
    2. SRT-to-SSA Converter http://www.divx-digest.com/software/srt2ssa.html
    it has a help file which will be under C:/Program Files/(bla bla ... whatever crap subpath you choose)/srt2ssa/Help/ConversorE.htm
    3. Avery Lee's own subtitle filter found here:
    http://www.virtualdub.org/virtualdub_filters.html
    as is Vdub itself, of course.

    The method is largely this:

    1. adding the subtitler filter to Virtualdub
    2. convert your .srt sub to a .ssa format.
    3. using both the resize filter and the subtitle filter in Virtualdub to ...
    4. ... add the .ssa subtitle to the video and cropping the resized video.
    5. Saving the file.

    background info (you can skip this)
    A FILTER in video editing speak is what they call a conversion thing. for example they have this resize "Filter", which means that it is a method of changing the size of the picture of the video, so it won't measure 40 inches by 30 inches but rather, 16 by 9 inches (and what men tell women is 10 inches is a whole other story entirely, and the primary reason women are so bad at math! ^-^ )


    ad. 1. adding the subtitler filter to Virtualdub
    Download the filter from http://www.virtualdub.org/virtualdub_filters.html then unpack, unzip them.
    Avery Lee
    says:
    Filters can also be automatically loaded at startup if you copy the .vdf file into a plugins subdirectory under the VirtualDub program directory.
    IMHO, it's better to do this than to load them every time. To be perfectly honest, I don't even know how to do that. My own VirtualDub program directory is in C:\Programs\VideoPrograms\VirtualDub\plugins\, no doubt yours is in C:\Program Files\VirtualDub\plugins\.
    I have a lot of installed apps, so I have to order them by function, so there.

    ad. 2. convert your .srt sub to a .ssa format.
    I do this with a dedicated (specialized) converter, called SRT to SSA Converter
    Get it here www.divx-digest.com/software/srt2ssa.html or google it.
    See below pic. It's best to keep all values in the fields the same as below. Just add the .SRT-file in the Input file box-field, leave the Output box-field empty, and the program itself will generate the .SSA-file in the Output file box-field, when you press the big Convert-button at the bottom.
    (Be aware, if you redo this by pressing the Convert-button twice, this will overwrite an already made file without asking. To avoid these unwanted overwrites, just change the name in the Output file box-field.)

    Issues:
    1.
    Sometimes it will give you some error warning. This means that the SRT-file is not formatted correctly, has spaces in the wrong places, etc. It will tell you in which line the error is. Then it will tell you that the job is done, but don't be fooled by that. Only if you DON'T see a error box, OR if it says the error is in the LAST line, it will be really okay.
    You can ignore last line errors, cos it's mostly tags from the translators, or subtitling peeps.

    2. Make sure the SRT-file doesn't have empty lines at the end of the file. I had this once, and it cost me three hours to figure out why it never finished converting (started a HDD spin) and why it kept crashing my Vdub ...
    I mean, use whatever program you like to do this conversion, I like this one because it's by far the fastest converter of this kind, and you can adjust a lot of settings, including colour etc.

    step
    3. using both the resize filter and the subtitle filter in Virtualdub
    step
    3A-of-H. Add the first filter with Ctrl-F, or from the Video-menu


    If the Filter option is greyed out, check the ''Full processing mode'', like it's done in the picture. (You will have to choose a compression codec, with Ctrl-P etc.) This will call up the
    Filters box, click on the Add...-button.


    step 3B-of-H. In the resulting Add Filter box, select the resize filter, click OK


    (OMG! you're using filters! you're such a pro and really cool! Step back and do a little dance, pat yourself on the shoulders, cos if you don't do it, who else will?)
    step 3C-of-H. Now, the goal here is to add two (2) black borders of 40 pixel high, both top and bottom. In this example, the video is 624x352 or 624 pixels wide and 352 pixels high, and we wanna make it 624x432. Adjust the settings in the first section, called Size options, to just the same as what the settings are in the picture. (The width x height values YOU see will probably be different, since they are the width x height values for YOUR video. They should be the same ones you can see when you choose File|File Information, under Frame Size)

    Then, in the
    Framing options-section, click the radio-button for the option ''Letterbox/crop to size''. In the height box (big red circle) increase the value of the BLUE circle with 80. The values in the WIDTH boxes should remain the same. Then click OK



    step
    3D-of-H. You will be back in the Filters box, and you will see that in the output column, the height value is indeed 80 higher as opposed to the height value in the input column. In this example, 352 vs 432. Now, click on the Add...-button again.


    step
    3E-of-H. In the resulting Add Filters box, select the Subtitler -filter and click OK.


    step
    3F-of-H. In the Subtitler: Configuration-box, click on the normal browse button [...] on the right side, locate the .ssa subtitle file you made in step 1, click OK and you will see something like this:

    Hit OK.

    This will have this
    preliminary (= in between) result:


    step
    3G-of-H. Now we're gonna crop the video (=cut off some pieces of off the width and height, but here we only do heights), select the Subtitler -filter by clicking it just once, then click the Cropping ....-button.


    In the
    Filter input cropping-box, only change Y1-offset from 0 to 40. This will remove the top black border, which you don't really need.


    step
    3H-of-H. You can check the results here, by looking at the changing values for height. They should increase with 80 pixels and then decrease with 40 pixels. In this example, from 352 pixelsup to 432 pixels, then back down to 392 pixels. The width stays the same, in my example: 624 pixels.


    The resulting video will look like this: The aspect ratio of the picture size
    (=framesize) is not altered, but there's an added underborder of exactly 40 pixels, with the hardcoded subtitles in it.


    This is the end of the guide. See below for extras and tips

    Tip 1. Let's say you FQQQ up your subtitles, and you wanna change them. You can so, So, SOOOO do that!
    a. All you have to do is to edit your subs, let's say take out all the deaf crap, or the italics and shit like that.
    b. Then, convert the .SRT-subtitle again into a .SSA-subtitle like under step 2
    c. LOAD it again, so repeat BOTH step 3E and 3F


    Tip 2. If you want to have a video where there are TWO black areas on the top and the bottom then skip cropping-step
    3G.
    Last edited by KneeRow; 27th Jun 2017 at 16:28. Reason: I really itched between mah legs .... AGAIN?
    Looking for subtitles of: Hk tt0997023, Lime tt0269480, La cl sur la porte tt0077348. tt=iMDb.com Found Desideria tt0081724 subtitle! :-)
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  2. Originally Posted by ********
    But, sometimes I do use it, where switchable subs aren't directly possible like Youtube.
    Nice guide. But switchable subs are directly possible and easy to set up for YouTube.
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  3. thanks. how do you set it up then, on youtube? And don't you have to have some pay account to do that?
    Looking for subtitles of: Hk tt0997023, Lime tt0269480, La cl sur la porte tt0077348. tt=iMDb.com Found Desideria tt0081724 subtitle! :-)
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  4. Anyone can do it. You make them in SRT (or the text-based SUB) format, and then after the video is uploaded there's a button to push to upload the subs. After that they're switchable:

    http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=100079
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  5. Wow, we live and we learn. Well, we live anyways .......
    Looking for subtitles of: Hk tt0997023, Lime tt0269480, La cl sur la porte tt0077348. tt=iMDb.com Found Desideria tt0081724 subtitle! :-)
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  6. Banned
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    You are in breach of the forum rules and are being issued with a formal warning. No more any video spam thanks. / Moderator Baldrick
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  7. Many thanks dear Knee, your guide in still very usefull, i will use it to play subbed movies in Vdub,

    But what really i need is to cut off pieces from subbed movies w/o loose sync, any idea ?_?
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  8. Originally Posted by movmasty
    Many thanks dear Knee, your guide in still very usefull, i will use it to play subbed movies in Vdub,

    But what really i need is to cut off pieces from subbed movies w/o loose sync, any idea ?_?
    Wow, many thanks, have you voted yet?

    What do you mean by cutting off pieces? Please be more specific.
    Looking for subtitles of: Hk tt0997023, Lime tt0269480, La cl sur la porte tt0077348. tt=iMDb.com Found Desideria tt0081724 subtitle! :-)
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  9. J just did.

    What i mean...if i cut e.g. titles, the movie isnt still syncronized with subs
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  10. That still isn't specific. Cut how? What titles? try to be even MORE specific
    Looking for subtitles of: Hk tt0997023, Lime tt0269480, La cl sur la porte tt0077348. tt=iMDb.com Found Desideria tt0081724 subtitle! :-)
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  11. Okay, I think I know what you mean by cut. You mean that you want to remove or delete a scene from the middle of the video, right?

    It might be obvious (or not) that you should hard-sub the movie FIRST and THEN remove or delete (=cut) whatever scenes you want. Then you have no sync issues whatsoever.

    What's more, that last part shouldn't take any time at all, if you set the Video mode to Direct stream copy.

    The first part should of course be done in Full processing mode, otherwise no filters are possible.

    What you could ALSO do is take note of exactly how much time the deleted scene in mins, seconds and milli seconds. And then you split the SRT file in two, and shift the time of the second part DOWN with that precise amount (With progs like SubtitCreator or SubtitWokshop). If this method is too difficult for you to understand, or you don't get this, i can give you an example.
    But this is more work and it takes longer.
    Looking for subtitles of: Hk tt0997023, Lime tt0269480, La cl sur la porte tt0077348. tt=iMDb.com Found Desideria tt0081724 subtitle! :-)
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  12. Member
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    Hi ********,

    I like your guide very helpful.

    You seemed to konw a bit about virtual dub I thought I might ask you for some advice.

    Say I have a video and I want to hard encode subtitles from different languages into it and output a video for each language. Can virtual dub do this?
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  13. Of course Vdub can do that, this guide is the one that shows you how. And yes, you would have to make a video for each language. So, if you have 3 languages, Cornwallish, Belfastish and Dublinish, then you'd end up with 3 videos. Or what do you mean?
    Looking for subtitles of: Hk tt0997023, Lime tt0269480, La cl sur la porte tt0077348. tt=iMDb.com Found Desideria tt0081724 subtitle! :-)
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  14. Member Christina_210's Avatar
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    TYVM for the help. Unfortunately I recieved a "Line 9" error during the SRTtoSSA. It did say job completed but like you said, all was not ok. Only 8k of the sub actually converted no doubt dooming the rest of my job. One question though. At what point during the process does the video get added into the project ?
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  15. nice guide, really works like a charm.
    after tons of Internet downloads, i was breaking my head to put sub into avi.
    as it worked for me, i hv voted as under:
    "Yes, it was even a fun read, and it's BETTER than other methods. Lotsa pictures, yummie!"
    Thanks!
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    Lots of thanks for this comprehensive tutorial.

    But I still have one question or two. As you mentioned above there might be problems converting SRT-->SSA, I faced some problems which I guess it's because of the subtitle language. It's Persian and I tried to delete last line and save it in UTF-8 encoding. So it converted with no error and I opened the new file and there was no problem.

    So I followed your instructions (I guess I did!) and for saving the file used "Save as AVI" -HotKey F7- and chose a directory and waited for to be done, but after almost half an hour, 38% of conversion, the file has grown as big as 48 GBs! I don't know where I went wrong, but it was getting bigger and bigger so that I had to stop it.

    Unfortunately the subtitles were in strange characters like: "������ęĽďĀ..." and the video speed had lags and with momentary stops.

    Any help would be appreciated, thanks in advance.
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  17. Member pirej's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by princilll View Post
    ..."Save as AVI" -HotKey F7- and chose a directory and waited for to be done, but after almost half an hour, 38% of conversion, the file has grown as big as 48 GBs...

    Unfortunately the subtitles were in strange characters like: "������ęĽďĀ..." and the video speed had lags and with momentary stops.
    You forgot to choose a compression codec for the avi.. that's the reason for the "48GBs"
    And i guess you probably used a wrong font for the subtitle.
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  18. Member
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    Thanks friend. This combination of softwares is a nice one, and for sure the result should be cool too. I tried almost over 10 different softwares for video conversion + embedding subtitle in the video, but I couldn't get any good result for my second need (Persian subtitles).

    This is not for sure a kind of advertisements for the softwares which helped me finally, but they were much better for amateurs:

    The one suggested by dear Baldrick, "Freemake Video Converter". The only problem is the small size of subs on the converted video... It actually varies by the output file resolution. Means if you have a nice LCD, you can have a file with acceptable size and good quality; but just for subtitle I had problems for watching on old CRT sets like mine.

    The other one is "ConvertX2DVD", in which there was a little bit problem watching the converted DVD file + Subtitles on the PC, but fortunately on the DVD Player it was okay. Quality's good though.
    Forget about problems!

    Btw, thank you for nice fast response; will remember them on future conversions. Thanks.
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  19. Originally Posted by Christina_210 View Post
    TYVM for the help. Unfortunately I recieved a "Line 9" error during the SRTtoSSA. It did say job completed but like you said, all was not ok. Only 8k of the sub actually converted no doubt dooming the rest of my job. One question though. At what point during the process does the video get added into the project ?
    If you get an error in line 9, it's prolly not well formatted, usually there's a space where it shouldn't be, or a "->" instead of a "-->" or a ; when it should be a :

    Or, maybe the font is effed up? there is also this thing about utf-8 or whatever but i don't get that.

    Just make sure it is formatted like the other lines, and it should work.
    if it still don't work, just paste line 9 in here and I'll have a look.


    Vdub doesn't work with "projects". It just takes the video and alters it. I guess it stuffs it all into memory at some point, but it doesn't save anything onto disk, AFAIK. maybe it does, idk.
    avery lee has a whole explanation about how his program works, which i completely fail to understand. OK, ok, i get some of it, but i can't really be bothered, innit?


    PS
    you kinda look like this
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MENIP7j2tKk
    Looking for subtitles of: Hk tt0997023, Lime tt0269480, La cl sur la porte tt0077348. tt=iMDb.com Found Desideria tt0081724 subtitle! :-)
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  20. Originally Posted by princilll View Post
    Lots of thanks for this comprehensive tutorial.

    but after almost half an hour, 38% of conversion, the file has grown as big as 48 GBs! I don't know where I went wrong, but it was getting bigger and bigger so that I had to stop it.
    classic mistake ... one which i make everyday, i just forget to turn the compression on.... under Video, first click Full processing, then click Video again, then Compression, then choose a compression thing.


    Unfortunately the subtitles were in strange characters like: "������ęĽďĀ..." and the video speed had lags and with momentary stops.

    Any help would be appreciated, thanks in advance.
    "strange characters like: "���" this has to do with the UTF-8 encoding. you have to store the .srt file or the .ssa file in a different encoding (i don't think it has anything to do with fonts). I do that with Textpad, perhaps there are other ways to do that.
    Looking for subtitles of: Hk tt0997023, Lime tt0269480, La cl sur la porte tt0077348. tt=iMDb.com Found Desideria tt0081724 subtitle! :-)
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  21. Hi,
    I would like to burn subs on a video file. I followed this guide (sans cropping which I do not need), in preview virtualdub show subs on screen, but when I order it to "Save as avi" the resulting avi file has no subs. What am I not doing right?
    Also, as the subs are in a Slavic language, in conversion from srt to ssa the diacritics get screwed up. Any suggestions as to how to solve that?

    Thanks in advance for all your help and advice.
    Last edited by ipr; 13th Feb 2013 at 14:19.
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