Putting subtitles on my DivX DVD

[Callahan]

I have spent over a week looking for information on this subject and am starting to pull my hair out. With so many apps and a whole host of guides each telling you something different I am left totally confused. Here is what I have and what I want to do:
* I have a hardware DVD player (Philips DVP-5960).
* I have a selection of my movies that I have turned into DivX movies. Everything works fine, I
now want to add OPTIONAL subtitles to the DivX files.

My questions:
1). Which format do the subtitles need to be in? .srt? .sub? .sup? Everyone says something
different. I have no intention of playing the movies on my PC, just the hardware DVD
player.
2). Which programs do I need to use to acheive the required formats? The chances are good
that I already have them on my computer as I have followed every guide I can find and
installed each of the required apps.
3). I have put the .srt file (with the same name as the avi) into the same folder and played it on
my DVD player and got no subtitles when pressing the subtitle button on the remote.
4). Is OCR the best way to go when ripping subtitles? Are there any simpler/more reliable
methods? If so, what are the apps to use and the processes involved? I have created
subtitle files using VobSub and used Media Player Classic to view them and despite the sync
being completely out (I can fix this myself when the time comes) they did show up. However
they showing up very grainy and pixelated. Any suggestions here?
5). If you encode subtitles while encoding the DivX, are the subtitles are permanently
embedded in the movie with no option to switch them off?
6). And as a 'shot in the dark', if anyone has a Philips DVP5960 and have created DivX movies
with subtitles could you a). tell me if it worked well and b). tell me which format you used
for the subtitles.

Thanks very much for any advice you can offer.

[celtic_druid]

1) For DivX files the subs should be embedded x-subs. If you were to use avi as a container instead (ok the divx media format is basically avi) then srt would be your best bet.
2) For xsub muxing, basically divxmux, either via a GUI's or cli. For srt's, just burn as data.
3) What encoding were the subs using? Possible that the player simply doesn't support external subs, but that seems unlikely.
4) OCR is the only way to go from bitmap to text.
5) If you encode subtitles into the video, then of course you can't turn them off. They are part of the image.
6) I don't have one, but to get Ultra Certification it MUST support xsubs.

xsubs are bitmap based by the way, so you should be able to go from VOBSub's to xsubs without OCR. You just can't pick the font.

[Callahan]

Thanks Celtic_Druid, it's nice to get some solid answers instead of wandering around in the dark. To answer your question to my question 3 .......
I used the latest version of Subrip to create the srt files. My DVD player is DivX and DivX Ultra certified.

Last question then. If I go with muxing the subs with the DivX avi, what would you recommend to be the best way to do it?
I was thinking VobSub though VirtualDub or using DivXMux GUI to tie them together after the DivX file has been created. If you could kock out some pros and cons of each that would be great.

Thanks again.

[handyguy]

6) I have one as do the people who wrote in
https://www.videohelp.com/dvdplayers

.sub or .srt work great in this player. I dont know why yours don't display, probably because they are too big of a SRT file or your file name was too long. In case they are over 150kb (?) you could convert to .sub/idx.

[celtic_druid]

If it were 150kb as text it would be massive as bitmaps. SubRip can output multiple character encodings. What I meant is that most players I don't think will playback UTF-8/unicode encoded textsubs.

[Callahan]

Well, I tried it again last night and still nothing. Something did cross my mind though. Does the movie name and subtitle need to be a string? For example, I have my DivX'ed movie - The Ring.avi and The Ring.srt in the same folder and I get no subtitles. Is the space the problem? I know I could just try this and find out for myself but why make another table coster if you guys already know....

Cheers.

[politiken]

SEARCH/READ THE MANUAL !!!!!

Extract from online maual (DVD Player DVP5960/51)
at http://www.p4c.philips.com/cgi-bin/dcbint/cpindex.pl?ctn=DVP5960/51&scy=&slg=ENG&searchtxt=dvp5960

Load a DivX disc.
- Playback will start automatically. If not press PLAY/PAUSE 2;.

Pressing SUBTITLE on the remote control will turn on or off the subtitle.

If multilingual subtitles are embedded the DivX disc, pressing SUBTITLE will
change the subtitle language during playback.

Helpful Hints:
– Subtitle files with the following filename extensions (.srt, .smi, .sub, .ssa, .ass) are supported but do not appear on the file navigation menu.
– The subtitle filename have to be the same as the filename of the movie.

regards
Pol

[Callahan]

Already searched and read the manual!

Pressing the subtitle button just causes a small 'No access' icon to be displayed in the top corner. I will try using an underscore to make the movie name a string instead of seperate words and let you know how it goes.

Thanks again for everyones help/suggestions.