Subtitles are inside an avi file... Can I extract them?

[aleph-null]

I have some avi files that display subtitles when playing in windows media player. DirectVobSub loads in the system tray and displays the subtitles as if they were separate .ssa files.

The rub is, they're not separate files... they appear to be somehow inside the avi files themselves. If I use tmpgenc to convert them to vcd, the subtitles do not carry over. Also, I can turn them on and off during playback.

Is there a way to get these subtitles permanently on the vcds? Normally I use the subtitler filter in virtualdub, but without .ssa files I'm stuck.

Anyone?

Someone on this thread seems to have the same problem:

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=205663

Is this just something no one knows the answer to?

Thanks in advance.

[kyemeng]

If you are using VirtualDub Mod, can you see the subtitle stream under Streams-Stream List. If you can try to demux it to a seperate file.

[aleph-null]

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately the subtitle stream does not show up in VirtualDubMod or in VirtualDub. The only stream it shows is the audio stream. This is the same thing the user in the other thread I referenced in my first post is experiencing.

[Morford]

The VobSub suite includes a utility called SubMux, which allows you to multiplex a subtitle stream into an AVI file. The file maintains its .AVI extension, but the subtitles are switchable via DirectVobSub. I just did a quick test with some files I had lying around, and found that subtitles muxed this way are not recognized as a separate stream by VirtualDubMod, and thus cannot be extracted that way.
I was able to recover the subtitle file by opening the full AVI in a hex editor (I use Hex Workshop), searching for a couple words from the subs, selecting the SSA script, and saving the selection as an SSA file. This extracted file has the same CRC as the original SSA file I used.
You should be able to get your subtitles this way. If anyone's come up with a better way to extract them, I for one would be interested in hearing it.

EDIT: Also posted to the thread you referenced above.