AVI to iPhone with subtitles burned in

voiceinabox · Member Joined: 19 Apr 2008 Location: Belgium

Hi there,

I'm sorry to spoil your time if I'm coming up with a documented issue (but I just didn't find it)

I have a hard time achieving a seamingly simple task: from a perfectly working .avi file with two soundtracks: french and english, and coming with a .idx and a .sub file in french (well perfectly working in VLC at least), I want to get a file in MP4/h264 working fine on my iPhone with the english soundtrack and the french subtitles burned in.

As the iPhone preset in ffmpgX 0.0.9y does not allow to load subtitles (?) I tried to convert first into a format allowing burning in subtitles and then converting form there to iPhone. But that doesn't work either. I converted the sub file into a .srt file with Sub2srt, but that doesn't help.

Thanks for any idea...

Case · Explorer Joined: 04 Feb 2004 Location: Middle Earth

Perian allows ffmpegX (when using Decode with QuickTime) to burn .srt subtitles onto the video, if the filename matches.

SERBIAN · Member Joined: 18 Sep 2003 Location: Serbia

Install latest Perian, make sure you have valid .srt subtitle and name it same as .avi...Open .avi in QuickTime PRO and .srt subtitles will be automatically loaded...Choose Export and export it to iPhone...Subtitles will be burned onto video track...You need QuickTime PRO though for above to work but its easiest, most compatible and best quality method...
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terryj · Posted: Apr 20, 2008 09:39

far easier:
1. Play the video in VLC with subs on.

2. hijack the video while playing using iShowU to DV Stream.

3. take the dv stream, which will have the subs burned in, and
drag drop it into Visual Hub's iPhone window. Click ok,
VH makes your file, and your done.

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Case · Explorer Joined: 04 Feb 2004 Location: Middle Earth

terryj · Posted: Apr 20, 2008 15:52

Brother Case, I meant easier in time, not cost.
The OP I believe wanted a way to get it done, not a cost ( ie. CHEAP)
solution?

1. His/her avi worked perfectly in VLC, he could select and play subs,
and view the file.

2. While he/she played the file, he/she could have "hijacked" it
and made a DV Stream copy of the file.

He/she then takes that and drag/drops it into Visual Hub, and overnight
it makes his compatible -burned in subs -iPhone file.

No having to worry about why the subs won't load in ffmpegx....
No having to worry about running the subs through TitleLab or
whater have you to make a .srt file.

He/She plays it, he/she hijacks it, he/she gets a file in the morning.

What's not easy about that?

As for Quality, it's an .avi. Unless it is an DV-AVI, which the OP
did not say, it has already
taken a quality hit in being encoded into it's backbone codec
( h.264, xvid, etc)......

And your way, not to nitpick, says they go first from AVI to a Quicktime .Mov
(not a self-contained, but transcoded into a new Quicktime file),
and then they have to encode new QT file to iPhone file type in ffmpegx?
( If I am reading you correctly?)
That would be four steps, still with transcoding (IIRUC)?
Mine is only 3.......
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Case · Explorer Joined: 04 Feb 2004 Location: Middle Earth

voiceinabox · Member Joined: 19 Apr 2008 Location: Belgium

Well first of all many thanks for your replies and sorry to gat back on this so late...

It seems from reading the posts here and there that QT in its last version screw the subtitles completely, EVEN with Perian installed (and frankly if it did work one day, according to what I did read, I never managed to get ANY subs in QT (7.4.5) with Perian (1.1) installed, and yes I reinstalled QT 7.3.1 and Perian 1.0 with zero results. At his best, QT shows a greyed 'subtitles OFF' menu item. that's with .srt, .sub, anything.

About the money: I paid QT Pro, I paid VisualHUb, and I tried Handbrake, VLC, ffmpgx (eeuh yes I 'still' have to pay the shareware fee for those...)

Nothing works.

Now I have this IshowU route (thanks Terryj) which I'll try, but shouldn't be a simple straightforward solution to put my avi with subtitles on my iPhone or DVD player? Frankly? my english is not that bad but my children in front of english speaking movies without subtitles...that can't be.

Ultimate solution: waiting for the last season of xxxxx to be available (about Christmas time probably)

terryj · Posted: Apr 28, 2008 08:53

your correct in saying that things should be more
"Straightforward solutions."

Unfortunately, since we are talking about essentially
Apple ( who thinks like a narcissistic left brain most times)
and third party tools/features/ideas ( which are very right brain),
you can't always get "simple straightforward"
and thus have to figure out workarounds.

In having to deal with Apple directly at least once a week,
( my latest fiasco is about to make the NYC school system
wireless problem look like a bad joke), you often get from
Apple the " it's not our fault it's whoever made what you want
done not compatible with our stuff" answer.

In the case of subtitles, things did work at one time or another
( my home machine is stuck at QT 7.4.1 right now because
subs in .mkvs work fine under that) but in Apple's left brain
wisdom of trying to improve Quicktime, they often break its
prior functionality.

To expedite this, the iShowU work around, while a bit more time
and work than straightforward, gets the job done.

I would recommend that you go to Apple's Discussion board,
search for Quicktime, under that sub-header, click the send feedback
link, and tell them to fix Subtitles in Quicktime. I sure did.
enough people do so, they'll get the message.
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rumplestiltskin · Member Joined: 15 Jun 2003 Location: United States

Jubler will convert the .sub to a .srt in one step.

Then if you put the .srt into the same folder as the movie, QT will automatically see the subtitle file and display it in the movie. At that point ffmpegX or MPEG Streamclip or ViddyUp will automatically grab the subtitles and embed them when you convert the vid to H264 (one step).