Subtitles For RTL languages such as Urdu, Arabic and Hebrew

[noumaan204]

I am completely new to video editing world. I have a DVD movie with subtitles in english, french, someotherlanguages. I burnt the DVD on my HDD. I wanted to add Urdu subtitles and then burn it as a new DVD. I checked the forum thorughly downloaded many software such as subtitle creator, subtitle workshop, ifo edit, and many more. I have tried the Baldrick's guide:
https://forum.videohelp.com/topic338721.html

Unfortunately I am completely unable to do anything.

I want to write subtitles as I watch the movie, that is pause the movie, translate the line, and then save it. I would also like to know how could I watch if the subtitles appear in correct form. I guess we need utf-8 encoding for Urdu language subtitles. Can any one help me how I can do this?

I was using windows movie maker and I am surprised that it adds subtitles beautifully on the movie which i can then convert and burn on DVD. But the problem is that using this way the viewers wont be able to turn off subtitles.

Any help would be very much appreciated.

[noumaan204]

After another attempt on Baldrick's guide to adding new subtitles to an existing dvd, I have successfully added Urdu subtitles.

Now the problem is that:
1. The subtitles do not appear when the DVD folder is played with Nero Vision.
2. Subtitles appear (and they look quite beautiful too) when the same folder is played with VLC.

How do I know that these subtitles would appear on any popular standalone DVD player?

[Midzuki]

Test your newborn VIDEO_TS folder on Media Player Classic.
Even better, record it on a RW disk and test it on a real DVD player.
And don't forget to send Nero Vision to the nearest incinerator.

[noumaan204]

Since I am writing Urdu in unicode text format, when I save my srt files and reopen them in subtitle editor they are converted into ANSI and display question marks instead of Urdu text. like this

???? ????? ?????

I looked around and it seems like you can not save an srt file with utf-8 or unicode. I tried to save the file using notepad and changed encodings but then subtitle editor didn't recognize them and showed error Error reading subtitle number 1.|[i](Input string was not in a correct format.).

However, if I create a new subtitle text file and save it as sup without saving it as srt then the generated sup file works perfectly well with DVD authoring. But I can not work this way as it means that I will have to work out the entire movie in one go without saving.

Does any one know how people edit their Unicode subtitles?

[jman98]

Since I am writing Urdu in unicode text format, when I save my srt files and reopen them in subtitle editor they are converted into ANSI and display question marks instead of Urdu text. like this

???? ????? ?????

I looked around and it seems like you can not save an srt file with utf-8 or unicode. I tried to save the file using notepad and changed encodings but then subtitle editor didn't recognize them and showed error Error reading subtitle number 1.|[i](Input string was not in a correct format.).

However, if I create a new subtitle text file and save it as sup without saving it as srt then the generated sup file works perfectly well with DVD authoring. But I can not work this way as it means that I will have to work out the entire movie in one go without saving.

Does any one know how people edit their Unicode subtitles?

I'm not surprised. I don't think there are any current ways to do subtitles in Unicode. I've worked with Cyrillic subtitles a little and with changing some settings on my PC to use a Cyrillic character set for "non-Unicode programs" (It's a setting in the Control Panel in Windows for Language Options), I was able to get everything except Unicode to work.

[noumaan204]

Jman but there must be someway. I also use ubuntu linux and there I have a program called Subtitle Editor which allows me to save and edit srt files with unicode encodings. But that program doesn't have an option to save srt files as vobsubs or sups.

Its been four days now that I am looking for some solution and it is like no body knows how to work with create subtitles in unicode and then convert and encode them.

[Midzuki]

https://forum.videohelp.com/topic342038.html#1785806

&&

[noumaan204]

Midzuki: I have already found the solution to work with unicode subtitle files using aegisub I can now create subtitles in unicode. Now the problem is how to create a SUP of ass file I get from aegisub.

then you suggest that I used MaestroSBT to generate .SST and import the pictures to authoring application (what authoring application). I am sorry, I don't want to sound rude or ignorant but I guess it is too advance for a beginner like me.

Actually I already have DVDs with subtitles in english, french, etc. Now I just want to add Urdu subtitles so that users can switch between subtitles and even turn them off if they want. I want this DVD to be playable in most standalone players. Using aegisub and Virtualdub I can create an avi file with subtitles but these subtitles are permenant.