Hardcode subtitle without quality loss

[ben45]

Hello
I have some x264 movies with 800kbs bitrate.
Is there any way i can add hardcoded subtitle to them without quality loss?

[pandy]

No.

[jagabo]

Yes, with a lossless codec. But the file size will balloon up 50x.

[abolibibelot]

Why is it required to hardcode the subtitles ? Isn't it enough to mux them in MKV with MKVMerge and select the “default” switch ?
If the purpose is to upload the file to a video sharing platform with the subtitles active it probably won't work (I tried that with YouTube, didn't work), but for most other purposes it should play fine.

[Krispy Kritter]

Some hardware based playback devices do not support embedded subtitles.

[abolibibelot]

Some hardware based playback devices do not support embedded subtitles.

But is this the case for “ben45” and his particular playback device or method ? I was hoping he/she would elaborate a bit on that aspect, so it could be determined if hardcoding the subtitles is required or not.

By the way, I recently discovered Avisynth Virtual File System (used that to pre-filter some video footage before loading it in a NLE software, namely Magix Video Deluxe, worked surprisingly well on my ~2009 PC with Win XP and 3.2Go of available RAM) : could there be a way to use that and stream a virtual losless video with hardcoded subtitles to a playback device connected to the computer ? What kind of network connection could withstand the bandwidth of uncompressed video ? That way is wouldn't require a lengthy conversion (the virtual file is created right away) and would be lossless without requiring any extra storage. (I have no interest in doing this myself, but it would be a potential solution for the OP.)

[_Al_]

I was testing what you described, using serviio at the end. Basically I want live stream from Sony Vegas editing software timeline watching it on big screen in other room, before actual rendering and there was that uncompressed, too much data problem, too much data for players to handle at the end or bandwidth limit. I used frame server from Vegas to Avisynth, Virtual file system and serviio. So when there is a time I wanted to look into transcoding it on the fly by serviio, some text file needs to be changed as I gathered on the first glance.

But to watch subtitles like that and setting this up only for that is perhaps too much.

[abolibibelot]

In what resolution did you stream this ? (The movies mentioned in the first post must have a low resolution with a bitrate of 800kbps, 480p at most.) Maybe reducing the resolution by half (or more) in the Avisynth script would keep the bitrate within the capacities of the connection, with the output still watchable enough to appreciate the quality and notice the potential editing issues to take care of ? I don't have much experience in that sort of things (private networking, streaming, etc.), but with gigabit ethernet, wouldn't there be plenty of bandwidth even for 1080p uncompressed ? (Of course with a low grade Wi-Fi, not so much...)

Yes it may be overkill for the (probable) purpose of ”ben45” (if only because 800kbps is hardly a high quality to begin with), but it's an interesting experiment nonetheless.

[_Al_]

I was streaming fullHD but uncompressed stream is too much, receiving devices were 100Mbit (WDTV Live or some Android using Kodi) , but I think it is doable if DNLA server transcodes it live to some friendly data rate. I get back to it one of those days. To downscale it in Avisynth is a way too I guess or to temporarily change resolution in Vegas project, because frame server serves project properties..