MKV to AVI conversion with subtitles

[Silvane]

I have some Sailor Moon episodes that are in MKV format. I have used the following guides to try to get this done:

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/archive/t241422.html
I got this down pat! However had some troubles with subtitles that were being extracted. (Continued futher in this message)

https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=272736
I had troubles using this method since I couldn't get Vobsub 2.23 to install correctly. It kept freezing once it said it was installed but it wasn't working correctly. Anytime I tried to "Add the TextSub filter" it would just come up blank even though I had the subtitles in an SRT file.

https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=316471
I tried this method and it worked well but the subtiles I had extracted before had text before the actual lines of the show. It said this "1,,Style1,Comment,0000,0000,0000,," and for each line it would change the # at the very beginning accordingly.

I tried using a different subtitle extracting program but I either couldn't get them to work properly without errors or I couldn't figure it out.

Is there a way to get the subtitles to extract without the "coding" I keep seeing appearing before the line. I have many episodes I would like to convert to watch but I don't want to have to edit each subtitles for each episode. Plus it would be hard to read the subtiles with the code infront of each line. Plus all this converting and adding subtitles takes FOREVER anyways.

Any advice on what to do next to get this subtitles showing up correctly?

[Baldrick]

I would try alltoavi.

[Silvane]

OMG! You are my hero now! Fiddled with the program the first try and I got it to work. The subtitles are a bit on the small side but I can deal with that. I can read it and that's all that counts. With all the converting I'll have to do for these this makes it easy in one step!

Thanks a bunch! You rock!

EDIT:
I noticed the file size while converting with alltoavi is quite large. Is there an easy way to decrease the file size without loosing much quality or the subtitles?

[celtic_druid]

Re-encoding with a lossy encoder means a loss in quality, plus subtitles are hard to compress and you may be moving from a more efficient codec to a less efficient one.

[Baldrick]

Can't you specify the output file size in alltoavi? I haven't tested the latest beta versions.

[Silvane]

I can specify an output file but if I put in say 200 MB it will still come out like 300+ MB. I haven't fiddled around with it much... so hopefully I can get it to a decent size. Just trying to save myself some hard drive space and less disks to burn when I burn the files to a DVD to get them off my computer.

[Shilar]

The easiest thing to do is: unmux the MKV to its individual video/audio/sub, then use Total Video Converter. The newest one supports hardcoding subs, and little, if any, quality is lost. It says it can convert MKV directly, but I had tons of trouble the last time I tried (the guy used a faulty AegiSub). It's why, imo, mkv is not as great as everyone makes it. I tend to prefer MP4 and AVI: easier to burn/record/convert.

[Shilar]

Matter of fact now I am having trouble now with mkv. Either the mkv won't convert, or worse, will convert without subs. *sigh* It doesn't even work with AlltoAVI. The problem lies with the Subs living on Track 0 or 3 (which fools even converters with MKV support) instead of Track 2. This is why I dislike mkv, where mp4 is a lot better, bit smaller, and imo better quality, plus very compatible with everything that converts.