Easy way to remove certain elements from DVD-subtitles?

[suggersen]

I'm looking for the easiest way to remove those elements in the subtitles of a DVD-movie, made for the "hearing impaired".

Some of the most common ones are the text within the [brackets] and within the notes (when someone sings).

It would be really nice if I could avoid MANUALLY removing those elements, but have some program (maybe made for the purpose) do the job for me instead

Of the more complicated stuff, it would be nice too, if it was possible to make all text be situated at the SAME spot. Some subtitles for the hearing impaired are situated on the person that is talking in the movie.


Thanks in advance.

[SaSi]

Unfortunatelly, what you are asking for is somwhat difficult to achieve automatically. Not that it's not possible, but perhaps nobody thought about it and then sat down to write a program.

Apart from ripping the DVD into pieces and manually removing things before re-authoring it, there may be an other alternative.

Subpictures for the hearing impaired are sometimes - not always - specially marked. Perhaps your DVD player has an option to enable or disable them. If so, then the player will automatically skip over these.

Long shot, but a possibility.

[suggersen]

Thanks for your answer.
Actually I was kind of surprised, because I thought it was easily possible.

Let me try see if I have got this rigth ... I will now describe the process, as if one would have to do it manually (plz correct me if I'm wrong).

1. First one would have to rip the DVD to harddisk.

2. Then have some program "extract" the subtitles into an editable text-format.

3. Then run a custom made script that removes certain characters (and characters within those certain characters).

4. And finally have some program "merge" the edited subtitles back into the dvd.


Now this way may not even be possible, but if its possible that way, I would say it would be pretty easy for all steps. Except I would have to know what program that could "extract" the subs and "merge" them again.

I hope this makes sense.

And thx again for the reply.

[SaSi]

Actually, I was about to suggest exactly what you describe, before thinking again for something easier...

The steps you described - and the tools to use, are:

1. Rip the DVD on HD completely (you need to have it in writable storage for step 2). Use DVDDecrypter.

2. Demux the movie into video and audio (typically .m2v and .ac3 files).

3. If the sum of video and audio is more than 4.36Gb, you will need to re-encode the video.
-> Option 1: use Tmpgenc or MainConcept that accept .m2v files for input and re-encode (best quality)
-> Option 2: Use Rejug, ReMpeg or equivalent to drop the size (lower quality).
-> Option 3: Go back to step 1 and replace it with DVDShrink or DVD2One to rip and shrink the movie into 4.36 Gb. This avoids the re-encoding and you continue to step 2 skipping step 3 ( )

4. Use SubRip to rip the subpictures. Select .srt format for output. You will need to train the program into OCR-ing the letters, but it's not a big issue by itself. (mastering Subrip in total is more time consuming).

(At this step, you have a subtitle file in .srt format (ASCII), the video and audio files ready for authoring.

5. Edit the .srt file to remove unwanted subpictures (use Notepad but using Subtitle Workshop 2.0 can be invaluable).

6. Use DVDLabPro (or Tmpgenc DVD Author - I think it supports .srt subtitles). Import the video, audio and subpictures and author.

7. Burn to DVDRW first or test with a s/w DVD player to ensure everything is working ok. I promise you it won't on your first try!!!

Now, if this isn't complicated and time consuming (even when you master each of the tools and know exactly what you are doing, it's more than 4-5 hours effort.

If you try that, you will gain experience worthwhile for any other venture...

[suggersen]

Thanks a lot for the detailed answer, really appreciated! and you were perfectly right, it was one hell of a complicated time-consuming non-working (first tries) process - I will try again in a few days, when i'm cooled off

Thanks.