SUBJECT: Extracting Reliable Subtitles from DVD, anyone know best way? :-)

[SaraGlade]

Hello, I am desperately trying to find the right solution -- either free or for-pay software.

I would like to be able to create a properly formed data file like a .txt file, with subtitles and timecode tracks.

The *best* software I have found so far, is actually this freeware program called SubRIP.

Found here,
http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/subtitle_tools/subrip.cfm

The problem I have with it, which I guess I must live with as nothing else on the planet seems to come even close to the goodness vs. bad of this program...., it is is very hard to use in terms of using the OCR 'recognition'. What I mean by hard is, to use SubRIP, it becomes very unclear and unforgiving to get it trained right to read the subtitles. You're almost always left with a error prone output... and given I am trying to do this to many DVD's it is almost impossible.

Does anyone know of a procedure, or a better piece of software, which will meet my goals of extracting a reliable subtitle file from any DVD? Any clues or suggestions for commercial software that might do a better job with auto-recognition would be immensely appreciated.

Have the best day!

Best wishes, Sara Glade.

[Baldrick]

Moving you to our Subtitle forum.

You can also use dvdsubedit to convert dvd subtitles to srt text subtitles, it does it automatic but you have to manually correct the srt text file because the OCR is not perfect. See https://forum.videohelp.com/topic267416.html

[jmuse99]

I too want to run ocr over subtitles to create an editable text file, but I have a Mac. I thought ffmpegX could do this, but I can't find the right tool? Any suggestions?

j

[jman98]

I too want to run ocr over subtitles to create an editable text file, but I have a Mac. I thought ffmpegX could do this, but I can't find the right tool? Any suggestions?

j

You may need to ask this question in our Mac forum if you don't get an answer here after a couple of days. I have a Mac at work and I'm somewhat ambivalent about it. I think Windows sucks and there are things I like on the Mac, but to be blunt, almost everybody (including me) here uses Windows because we have a lot of choices for video tools. On Macs, the big downside is that you usually have one tool or at most two for anything video related and if doesn't work for you, you are out of luck. On Windows, if one tool doesn't work for us, we can just find another to use.

[BobT]

If the DVD has Closed Captions (CC) you may want to consider extracting them and then reauthoring the DVD contents. You can extract CC with the program CCextractor.exe. Its a command line program but very easy to use. Then use Subtitle Workshop to clean up the CC. You can then use either GUI for DVD Author or DVD Flick to make a DVD.