Subtitle Size in Vicoder and Handbrake

[mhhack]

Hi,

It's a bit of a mystery to me. Vicoder and Handbrake don't seem to have any built-in choices for the size of srt subtitles, and I'm not sure how to make this happen. It's also a mystery that some SRT subtitles end up larger than others. What determines the size? Anyone have any ideas?

Martin HAck

[awgie]

Just a few months ago, I had exactly the same frustration you are having now. So I will share with you what I have learned since then.

The resolution of the source and destination videos determine how big the .SRT subs will be in relation to the picture size. There is no provision to change it manually.

If you want to have more control over the size of your subs, as well as fonts, colours, positioning, etc., use AegiSub and import your .SRT file. You can open your source video right in AegiSub to see exactly what the subs will look like over top of it, and play with the font sizes, etc. to get what you want. Use its style manager to create a handful of different looks that you use frequently. Once you're happy with it, save it as AegiSub's .ASS format. Then combine the .ASS subs with the video file in an .MKV container using MKVToolNix. Then in VidCoder just select that subtitle stream instead of importing an .SRT file.

There's only a very small learning curve if you've never used AegiSub. I've only been using it for about 3 months, and I could do it in my sleep now (and in fact, sometimes I do). Made me really wish I had started using it years ago.