Adding subtitles to DVD without compressing video

[r0pe]

Hi,

what I want to do: I ripped a DVD9 on my Mac into the VIDEO_TS format. Now I built a .srt subtitle file I'd like to add to that dvd, without changing anything about the audio or video format.

The video consists of several .VOB files, that's why I need to choose the complete VIDEO_TS folder. Doing that, ffmpegX tells me, I need to "select a preset using mencoder or mpeg2enc engines."

When I chose DVD mpeg2enc it automatically converts from 8800kbps to 4000kbps.

Starting encoding it tells me: "Automatically enabling 'mplayer decode' to handle VIDEO_TS input ....", which hardsubs the subtitles.

That leaves me with a low quality DVD4 with burned-in subtitles.

Maybe ffmpegX is the wrong program for my needs?

[Baldrick]

You must reconvert with ffmpegx, see https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/282290-Adding-selectable-subtitles-to-an-existing-d...+subtitles+dvd

I haven't seen any other simple method for this on mac. Maybe if you find a way to demux and remux with dvdsp.

[Ai Haibara]

You can use MakeMKV to repackage (no re-encoding) the DVD rip into an MKV, and then add your subtitle with the Mac version of mkvtoolnix. MakeMKV will also add the existing subtitles on the DVD, though, I believe, but you should be able to remove those streams from the MKV when you add the SRT subtitles with mkvtoolnix (just deselect the streams you don't want).

[Case]

1/ Rip the feature for which you have the new subtitles into a single file MPG, keeping quality as-is.
2/ Re-author e.g. using ffmpegX>Tools>Author, add the subtitle file.
Any previous subtitle streams will not be preserved using this method. No re-encoding of video or audio will occur.

[r0pe]

Thank you for all your answers.

1/ Rip the feature for which you have the new subtitles into a single file MPG, keeping quality as-is.
2/ Re-author e.g. using ffmpegX>Tools>Author, add the subtitle file.
Any previous subtitle streams will not be preserved using this method. No re-encoding of video or audio will occur.

After ripping the VIDEO_TS with MPEG Streamclip I get an .MPEG file. ffmpegX->Tools>Author says "unrecognized format". After renaming it to .mpg it starts authoring

INFO: default video format is NTSC
INFO: Opened iconv descriptor. *UTF-8* <= *ISO-8859-1*
INFO: Detected subtitle file format: subviewer
INFO: Read 1132 subtitles
INFO: Unicode font: 242 glyphs.
STAT: 0:00:28.510
....

after that it says: "WARN: Skipping sector, waiting for first VOBU..."

I already installed Quicktime MPEG-2 Playback Component into Library/Quicktime/...

Did I anything wrong? I opened the first VOB-file with MPEG Streamclip, let it open the following files, fixed time code breaks, and chose "Save as...", which gets me the .MPEG file. -> unrecognized format for ffmpegX

[Case]

After ripping the VIDEO_TS with MPEG Streamclip I get an .MPEG file. ffmpegX->Tools>Author says "unrecognized format". After renaming it to .mpg it starts authoring

Yes, the version of dvdauthor in ffmpegX is picky about the suffix. Renaming was indeed the thing to do. Well done.

INFO: default video format is NTSC
INFO: Opened iconv descriptor. *UTF-8* <= *ISO-8859-1*
INFO: Detected subtitle file format: subviewer
INFO: Read 1132 subtitles
INFO: Unicode font: 242 glyphs.
STAT: 0:00:28.510
....

after that it says: "WARN: Skipping sector, waiting for first VOBU..."

Not sure. I'll see if I can replicate this.
Can you supply your .srt file?

I already installed Quicktime MPEG-2 Playback Component into Library/Quicktime/...

The component is not in use at the moment where you get the error. (It is used for decoding, so MPEG Streamclip can show MPEG-2 video and ffmpegX can convert from MPEG-2 through QuickTime.)

Did I anything wrong? I opened the first VOB-file with MPEG Streamclip, let it open the following files, fixed time code breaks, and chose "Save as...", which gets me the .MPEG file. -> unrecognized format for ffmpegX

Seem right to me.

[r0pe]

I checked my srt-file with Acute's Home Subtitle Checker. It fixed some formatting errors. After that I retried authoring with ffmpegX, getting the same error.

INFO: default video format is NTSC
INFO: Opened iconv descriptor. *UTF-8* <= *ISO-8859-1*
INFO: Detected subtitle file format: subviewer
INFO: Read 1132 subtitles
INFO: Unicode font: 242 glyphs.
STAT: 0:00:28.510
STAT: 0:00:35.640
STAT: 0:00:41.960
STAT: 0:02:19.310
STAT: 0:03:22.360
STAT: 0:04:44.390
STAT: 0:04:46.360
STAT: 0:04:50.040
STAT: 0:04:51.510
STAT: 0:04:55.920
STAT: 0:04:57.720
STAT: 0:05:03.600
STAT: 0:05:09.310
STAT: 0:05:15.120
STAT: 0:05:22.830
STAT: 0:08:00.560
STAT: 0:08:03.830
STAT: 0:08:08.480
STAT: 0:08:11.000
STAT: 0:08:13.480
STAT: 0:08:16.190
STAT: 0:08:18.430
STAT: 0:08:23.120
STAT: 0:08:25.390
STAT: 0:11:46.200
STAT: 0:11:50.000
STAT: 0:12:07.600
STAT: 0:12:09.320
STAT: 0:12:44.790
STAT: 0:12:47.120
STAT: 0:12:55.000
STAT: 0:12:57.960
STAT: 0:13:00.030
STAT: 0:13:04.200
STAT: 0:13:11.000
STAT: 0:13:12.750
STAT: 0:13:14.120
STAT: 0:13:17.750
STAT: 0:13:24.550
STAT: 0:13:27.480
STAT: 0:13:29.870
STAT: 0:13:32.240
STAT: 0:13:34.270
STAT: 0:13:35.910
STAT: 0:13:40.030
STAT: 0:13:42.360
STAT: 0:13:45.440
STAT: 0:13:47.630
STAT: 0:13:51.200
STAT: 0:13:53.000
STAT: 0:13:57.270
STAT: 0:14:07.030
STAT: 0:14:09.440
STAT: 0:14:16.360
STAT: 0:14:21.200
STAT: 0:14:24.120
STAT: 0:14:25.320
STAT: 0:14:28.960
STAT: 0:14:30.720
STAT: 0:14:32.790
STAT: 0:14:38.480
STAT: 0:14:48.080
STAT: 0:14:50.910
STAT: 0:14:52.910
STAT: 0:14:54.870
STAT: 0:14:56.670
STAT: 0:14:59.360
STAT: 0:15:01.720
STAT: 0:15:04.630
STAT: 0:15:31.910
STAT: 0:15:35.600
STAT: 0:15:45.480
STAT: 0:15:49.200
STAT: 0:15:52.000
STAT: 0:15:58.000
STAT: 0:16:02.080
STAT: 0:16:04.150
STAT: 0:16:11.150
STAT: 0:16:15.000
STAT: 0:16:17.080
STAT: 0:16:20.150
STAT: 0:16:23.670
STAT: 0:16:28.120
STAT: 0:16:30.440
STAT: 0:16:33.910
STAT: 0:16:40.270
STAT: 0:16:42.510
STAT: 0:16:47.790
STAT: 0:16:51.120
STAT: 0:16:53.910
STAT: 0:16:58.000
STAT: 0:17:01.840
STAT: 0:17:07.240
STAT: 0:17:11.400
STAT: 0:17:14.400
STAT: 0:17:17.590
STAT: 0:17:19.510
STAT: 0:17:26.160
STAT: 0:17:30.400
STAT: 0:17:33.070
STAT: 0:17:36.000
STAT: 0:17:41.480
STAT: 0:17:45.240
STAT: 0:17:46.960
STAT: 0:17:49.680
STAT: 0:17:52.790
STAT: 0:17:56.550
STAT: 0:18:01.480
STAT: 0:18:05.960
STAT: 0:18:12.070
STAT: 0:18:15.240
STAT: 0:18:18.160
...

and after that

INFO: Found EOF in .sub file.
INFO: 1132 subtitles added, 0 subtitles skipped, stream: 32, offset: 1.00
INFO: Text Subtitle Statistics:
INFO: - Processed 1132 subtitles.
INFO: - The longest display line had 44 characters.
INFO: - The maximum number of displayed lines was 3.
INFO: - The normal display height of the font Arial.ttf was 25.
INFO: - The bottom display height of the font Arial.ttf was 34.
INFO: - The biggest subtitle box had 3394 bytes.
INFO: default video format is NTSC
STAT: Picking VTS 01
STAT: Processing /Users/webmaster/Desktop/demuxed/HarusJourney/VTS_01_1.mpg.s.mpg...
WARN: Skipping sector, waiting for first VOBU...
WARN: Skipping sector, waiting for first VOBU...
WARN: Skipping sector, waiting for first VOBU...

with the WARN: ... going on forever.

Looking into the target folder, it creates an VTS_01_1.mpg.s.mpg file the same size as the source .mpg file and a folder "VTS_01_mpg.DVD with subfolders AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS, the latter containing and empty VTS_01_1.VOB

I attached the .srt file