Subtitles in an iPod-ready file

[haruki]

Okay, here's the deal. I'm trying to convert an episode of an anime I own on DVD (so it's all kosher and such) to an iPod compatible format to watch on my new iPod video. I ripped the episode from the DVD with MacTheRipper, and subsequently found out ffmpegX won't put any subs into an iPod H.264 file, so I settled on iPod MPEG-4. I struggled with D-Subtitler to get the subs extracted to an SRT file, and set that up in ffmpegX to be added to the video. Only problem is, after encoding, the subs aren't there at all! They haven't been burned in, despite the SRT file being selected, having selected a font and all that sort of thing... Am I missing something? Doing something wrong? Is there any way to get subtitles burned into an iPod-ready video file? Guidance is most appreciated.

[rumplestiltskin]

You'll have to add in the subtitles in ffmpegX while you convert to XviD using mencoder. Leave the size and bitrate as is for this task. You can tell if the subs will be added if you can change the location number from 80 to (for example) 90 and then preview the results. Once the subs are embedded, run -that- file through using the iPod H264 setting. I use 650kb, 320 x 240 (or less that 240 if it's other than 4:3). Set Qmin to 3 and qMax to 30. I also use a keyframe interval of 20. You might want to use "Decode with QuickTime" if you end up with crap video (I use that setting all the time and, hence, never have that problem). I get great quality that even works well with the AV cable to my 25" TV. Note that using subs in the iPod may make them too small to read (on the internal screen) so you may want to use a larger font size (I use 3 instead of 1). Note also that the current version of mencoder (for ffmpegX 9uR2) always makes the subs very small (can't change 'em). So I substitute an older version of mencoder (the one from the 9s ffmpegX version works fine) for the "embedding subs" procedure, and then swap it out for the proper version for the iPod transcode. I do quit and relaunch ffmpegX after the mencoder swaps (just in case).