Display 3 subtitles at the same time on DVD

[Woogy]

After over 4 years of using this site and occasionally reading in the forums, I need something that I can't find in here

I found only one post on the exact subject but I did not find an answer in there(actually 2 posts by the same person): Display 2 subs at once

What I need is in the title "Display 3 subtitles at the same time on DVD", but as Background is useful to prevent waisting someone's time, here it is: I am in a language course(Korean). I want to watch some TV series with my friends in a nice room with projector. That room have only limited DVD player, no option to use computer. I want to create DVD that will allow to display either only the Korean subs, or the Korean subs with English(at the top) and Chinese (on the side)
All subtitles files are srt files, but one of them is with different timing.

I'm looking for a method to do it. I'm pretty sure that I can do it with VirtualDub, but this will give me only Hard subs. Is there a way to create some "transparent subs stream" that can be used as subtitles? Is there any other way?

I admit that I don't fully understand yet how the SUP is built and composed to the DVD, the existing tools are too good But I'm willing to study and even to look into source code if needed for the solution.

(I just noticed I didn't use by myself the main key word that I used to search: "overlay")

I will appreciate any help, I hope it can be done with free tools.

[Midzuki]

What you want to achieve can be done with properly-written .SSA files and MaestroSBT.

http://au.geocities.com/rashojin_mizuki/Main_One/ssa-specs.pdf

HTH.

[Woogy]

Thank you for your answer.
I saw in the specification of SSA some relevant options, maybe Angle will allow me to position subtitles on the side.
I found that I can sort 2 files info one SSA file. I can't sort 3 files into one file if I don't have where to put the 3rd one. The problem is that even if this "angel" will work it will work on everything in the file so I will not be able to combine all 3 files into one SSA file. If I will try to put one up and 2 down, it may work.

I haven't manage to MaestroSBT to work for me yet, I probably need to read more about it. Yet, I don't see how I can use it to combine more than one SSA files into the same stream of subtitles overlaying each other.

The sorting trick was simple:
1. make 2 SSA files,
2. Take one of them and replace the default position 0 with top position, I used "40" in here:

Dialogue: Marked=0,0:00:19.82,0:00:21.61,Default,NTP,0000,0000,0040,!Effect,Hey, hello?

(replace all worked well: "0000,0000,0040,!Effect"->"0000,0000,0040,!Effect")
3. Put both subtitles section in one file.
4. Sort the file and put the result in a new file with the header of one of the original SSA files.

(probably there is some subtitles program that can do this automatically)

One problem is that VOBSUB doesn't show the result correctly(subs are jumping up-down), so either it's worthless, or maybe MaestroSBT or another program, does a better job.
----
I will appreciate any additional ideas.

[Midzuki]

Well, there are two well-known programs for dealing with .SSA and/or .ASS files ---
SubStation Alpha itself, and Aegisub. However I do not know them very well ---
I tried each of them only once, and I didn't like them ----, therefore I don't know
whether they could be helpfful in this particular case. Whenever I need to create
an SSA for feeding MaestroSBT, I pick a humble .srt file and use Subtitle Workshop
for generating an elementary SSA equivalent, --- then I open this latter in TextPad/
/Notepad/WordPad and manually do all the necessary tweaks.
Speaking in general, to work on subtitles is a chore.
I'm afraid a very-long sequence of copy-and-pastes awaits you.

[borax]

You can try to convert the files into the binary sup format and combine the sup files in one single sup with all subtitles. My supviewer program can combine two sup files into one. You can use it twice to add a third one...

Start with the Chinese (on the side) subtitles as supviewer only supports a vertical displacement for the secondary subtitles.