Authoring a DVD using an avi file with .srt subtitles

[nickydee]

Hello there. I'm trying out ffmpegx and want to create a subtitled DVD that I can play on a standalone player. The avi movie I have comes with an .srt file. It all works fine playing it in VLC.

I don't really mind if the subtitles are burnt straight onto the film or just selectable with subtitles on/off.

http://www.ffmpegx.com/dvd_sub.html seems to show me exactly what to do.

I select "DVD ffmpeg" or "DVD mpeg2enc" in the Summary tab (does it matter which I choose?) and then go to the Filters tab and choose my .srt file in the Load Subs bit.

My main question is am I supposed to check the VOB Subtitles box or not? Forgive me - I'm new to all this.

Whether I check it or not, clicking on the Preview button in the bottom right fires up MPlayer, which plays the film but without the subtitles. I'm assuming this is a bad sign. I don't want to wait for hours for the thing to encode before finding out it hasn't worked.

I took the spaces out of the .srt file name, becuase I read here that that can cause problems. Still no luck with the Preview.

Thanks for any advice you can offer.

[rumplestiltskin]

You're correct that the subtitles should appear when you "Preview". If they do not, the resulting mpeg2 file will also not have the subs embedded.

Check that the entire pathname to the source video and subtitle file does not contain any strange characters; just use a-z and 0-9 and ".". Let us know what happens.

[nickydee]

Thanks. Ah - some of the folders in the path did have spaces. Have taken them out (there are no strange characters, just a-z).

[Tries again....]

Nope, no joy with Preview. And I'm still not sure if I'm supposed to be checking the VOB subtitles box or not. Have tried it both checked and unchecked. Have also tried switching between DVD ffmpeg and DVD mpeg2enc, and between "Decode with mplayer" and "Decode with Quicktime". Any idea which is best? Probably lost track of all the permutations!

[rumplestiltskin]

Have you looked into the "srt" file to see what it contains? It should be readable text. Advise, please.

[nickydee]

Yeah, the srt file is fine, I think.

If I open it in TextEdit it's all in the format

1
00:00:18,659 --> 00:00:23,659
line of dialogue

As I say, I can turn the subtitles on when I play the film in VLC.

So I let the thing run through the encoding process anyway. When I did it on the DVD mpeg2enc preset, it stopped before it ended. Apparently mplayer crashed:

[...]
**ERROR: [mpeg2enc] Could not read YUV4MPEG2 header: system error (failed read/write)!
New_Face failed. Maybe the font path is wrong.
subtitle font: load_sub_face failed.
MPlayer interrupted by signal 13 in module: flip_page
- MPlayer crashed. This shouldn't happen.
It can be a bug in the MPlayer code _or_ in your drivers _or_ in your
Uninit audio filters...
[libaf] Removing filter dummy
[libaf] Removing filter format
uninit audio: mp3lib
uninit video: ffmpeg
's MPlayer's fault, please read
DOCS/HTML/en/bugreports.html and follow the instructions there. We can't and
won't help unless you provide this information when reporting a possible bug.
wait, encoding to mp2 audio with mp2enc...
INFO: Opened WAV file, freq = 48000 Hz, channels = 2, bits = 16
INFO: format = 0x1, audio length = 65536 bytes
INFO: slots/frame = 672
INFO: frac SpF=0.000, tot bitrate=224 kbps, s freq=48.0 kHz
INFO: System is big endian
INFO: Avg slots/frame = inf; b/smp = inf; br = inf kbps
INFO: Encoding with psychoacoustic model 2 is finished
INFO: The MPEG encoded output file name is "/Volumes/LaCie/Video/ShowMeLoveDVD/ShowMeLove.mpa"
INFO: [mplex] mplex version 1.9.0 (2.2.7 $Date: 2006/02/01 22:23:01 $)
**ERROR: [mplex] Unable to open file /Volumes/LaCie/Video/ShowMeLoveDVD/ShowMeLove.mpv for reading.


So then I tried it again with the DVD ffmpeg preset and it completed. But unlike what it says at http://www.ffmpegx.com/dvd_sub.html , I am not left with two folders named AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS. All I have are three files called filmname.mpg, filmname.mpg.s.mpg , and filmname.xml. The second one is 0K in size.

If I play the mpg file in VLC, it works, but of course there are no subtitles.

[major]

You may try to use the "Author" tool to mux your MPG file to a SRT file and get a VIDEO_TS folder as a result. Keep track of the process output (blue "i" button) in case of errors.

[bordoni]

You have to wait until the word "finished" is presented in the progress window. When it presents "100%" doesn't mean it's over. And the preview button that shows the movie with subtitles is the one located under the "filters" tab, not the "summary" tab one.