iPod(H264) & Subtitles - Wow, it works

[rumplestiltskin]

I wish I could remember in which of the ffmpegX threads I read this but someone claimed that having a ".srt" subtitle file in the same folder as the video with both having the same name (mymovie.avi and mymovie.srt) would result in QT Player displaying the subtitles automatically in the movie. I tested this and it worked.

That same individual also claimed that using ffmpegX to convert that video to H264(iPod) and, in the Options tab, making sure the "Decode with QuickTime" checkbox was checked, would result in the subtitles being embedded in the transcoded video. Again, this proved to be true.

This saves me the intermediate step of using the DivX mencoder setting to embed the subtitles and then transcoding again to H264(iPod).

The only downside is that ffmpegX doesn't let me alter the position and size of the subtitles if I do this embedding directly from the separate subtitles to the H264(iPod) video. But it's a small price to pay for the savings in time and possibly quality.

I felt this was an important enough feature to post this thread and remind others who are not yet aware. A big thank you to the person who posted this originally; sorry I can't remember who you are to give attribution where it's due.

[Case]

I wish I could remember in which of the ffmpegX threads I read this

It was a Mac thread, topic 346612.

Wow, it works

It is Perian that adds this functionality. Kinda important detail...

The only downside is that ffmpegX doesn't let me alter the position and size of the subtitles if I do this embedding directly from the separate subtitles to the H264(iPod) video.

But you can, with QuickTime Pro. If you load the AVI in QuickTime Player, then the subtitle track appears as a second video track in Movie Properties. You can then scale that layer to alter the size and rearrange the offset. Save as .mov and convert that.