Hardcoding Thai subtitles

[vincenator]

Folks
I have spent a week trying to hardcode Thai subtitles into my mkv videos trying virtually every program recommended on the internet, even trialed one that'll cost ya.
So far no program will hardcode thai characters into the mkv file. I have tried Handbrake with ssa inserted into mkv via mkvmerge, xvid4psp, avidemux, mkv2vob, maestroSBT (to create the bitmap file to layer over), Ripbot264, Xilisoft Video Converter Ultimate, virtual...something or another and others.
What I am getting ranges from gibberish, or just a line where the text should be to absolutely nothing burnt/hardcoded.

The best I can do for now is converting mkv to avi and hardcoding the thai subs with AVIRecomp.

Before anyone says anything along the lines of, why am I trying to hardcode the subs? My media player (Dune Max) doesn't support Thai subtitles [not impressed since the Dune BD Prime its predecessor does support Thai subtitles!].
I hope that HDI will get around to putting in the language support sooner than later, but until then my wife still wants to be able to watch the movies with Thai subtitles. THEREFORE hardcoding is necessary.

Anyone out there had any success hardcoding Thai or other less than common language character sets?
I know that some of the above listed programs appear to enable Thai character sets, but from a lot of trials I am yet to get any success.

Even if there is no help, hopefully this might help someone out there struggling with this same problem.

Cheers

[jman98]

I think the basic problem is that subtitle programs are almost always not Unicode aware. What this means is that you have to go into the Control Panel -> Regional and Language Settings -> Advanced and where is says something like "Choose a language for non-Unicode programs" you would have to choose Thai. Then you may have to reboot. If you are VERY lucky, that MIGHT make various subtitle programs able to understand and work with your subtitles.

The downside - this may change all English language displays on your PC to Thai. So you will need to be able to read Thai or your wife will have to help you. It may mess up some of your programs - files could be renamed to Thai names, some programs may not work. But if you or she are really comfortable on PCs and are OK with Thai doing this might help you.

[vincenator]

Apologies in regards to Ripbot264. I uninstalled then reinstalled ffdshow and in the configuration I ensured that Thai was set as the charset for subtitles.
Ran it overnight and bingo it works.
The re-encode did mean that the file size was reduced from 4.37GB to 2.68GB, but not overly worried about that.

Cheers

[manono]

The re-encode did mean that the file size was reduced from 4.37GB to 2.68GB, but not overly worried about that.

Reencoding by itself doesn't lower the filesize/bitrate. You didn't set the correct bitrate if you wanted a video the same size as the original.