Adding Subtitles to Your Home Movies Using VDub and SSA

Introduction. Although there are a lot of guides on how to add subtitles downloaded from a site, I have not seen any guides on how to add subtitles for your own productions (read: Home Movie). This is my first dip into the "shark tank" of submitting a guide for your use and honest
criticism, and I hope you find it useful.

Tools Required:
Virtual Dub
Subtitler filter -- Add to the Virtual Dub Plugin directory.
Sub Station Alpha
1. Grab a pad of lined paper and pencil. Divide the page into two small columns on the left and a large column on the right.

2. Start watching your home movie. When you spot the place
for the first subtitle,



write down the time in the first column, and how long it should last in the
second column. In the last column, write the subtitle itself, or a short
phrase that will instantly remind you what the subtitle is.

Example:

Start Time:................Duration:..................Te xt:

0:17:22.154...............:06.00.................. ....Loretta M.
.................................................. .............."Rejoice Greatly!"
.................................................. ..............The Messiah
.................................................. ..............Handel
0:55:37.27 ................:07.00......................Letizi a I.
.................................................. ..............Concerto for Violin
.................................................. ..............First Movement
.................................................. ..............Mozart

Repeat this procedure until you have gone through your movie.

3. Launch Sub Station Alpha. Ensure the grey button labeled "D" (for dialogue) is depressed.

4. Type in the appropiate Start Time (1), skip the End Time, and enter the Duration (2). Tab to the large white box and type your first subtitle (3).



Notice "\n" is used as a line break. Hit Return. The program updates the End Time automatically. When you have loaded all your subtitles, save the file as an .ssa file. Leave Sub Station Alpha open.

5. Now open Virtual Dub and load your video. Select Video-->Filters. Select Add, and when the filters menu opens, select Subtitler. Load the .ssa file (1), select option "\q2" (2)and select Show Preview(3). Use the slider (4) to find your first subtitle.



6. If the font is too small, too large, wrong color, etc. return to Sub Station Alpha. Open Style-->Define....Select Default or open a New style and change the font attributes. If you have to change the text or add/delete a line break, remember to hit Return before saving, or the chanfge will not take place.



Save again and repeat 5tep 5. If the video is correct, close Sub Station Alpha and save the file or frameserve to
your encoder.



Thanks to Baldrick, BJ_M, and MJPollard for their great help! Thanks guys!

Please click here. The site is in Spanish, but they do have version 4.08.

I am fine. Thanks. I am glad you like it.

My pleasure. Hoom, hoom. (What did I just say?)

Very nice! Just what I've been looking for for quite a while. One nit-pick, though: you might want to mention that the SSA subtitle filter will have to be downloaded from the VirtualDub site, as it's not included in the distribution (at least, it wasn't in mine). Heck, it wasn't obvious to me; I had to play a hunch.

Originally Posted by MLPollard

One nit-pick, though: you might want to mention that the SSA subtitle filter will have to be downloaded from the VirtualDub site, as it's not included in the distribution (at least, it wasn't in mine). Heck, it wasn't obvious to me; I had to play a hunch.

That was no nit pick, it was big mistake I made. Thanks for pointing that out. I acknowledged yours, Baldrick's, and BJ_Ms help in my re-edit. Thanks!

Hello All,
I d like to say thank you for the guide it works well. I do however have a question, I have a DivX that I want to add an .ssa file to, do I have to create a new DivX with the added ssa or can i load it into Tmpg directly somehow?
Im guessing this is called frameserving. Thus far I have actually had to resave the original divx as a new divx (which takes approx 3 hours on my old clunker PC) then go to TMPG to encode.


thanks
Tony

You are right, if youu frameserve your DivX video with its subtitles from Virtual Dub, you can go right into encoding with TMPGEnc. Click here for guide.

Could you email me the subtitles?

If they require certain settings to work, I can simply tell you what they need to be, that's all.

Okay, I got you subtitles and they displayed okay in my version of Virtual dub, and I sent you screen captures. I noticed I did have to adjust VDub to its maximum size when viewing the the new video. tell me what you found out.

My pleasure!

Here you can either save the file as an AVI, or frameserve it to TMPGEnc Plus, to save it as an MPEG or other format.

Could you email the ssa file to me? Use the email address in my profile.

Originally Posted by Tommyknocker

Could you email the ssa file to me? Use the email address in my profile.

Unfortunately, I found nothing wrong with your file, as you can see:



Have you also tried the TextSub filter in VobSub?

Sure, if the file isn't too big to send.