Is there a way to hard code subtitles without them losing quality?

[Felow]

Obsolete

[manono]

Maybe if you explained how you're doing it? I haven't experienced that myself. But subtitles added to video degrade the quality of the video. It has to do with the static subs against the moving background. At the very least, you'll get a lot of noise around the subs. But you seem to be experiencing something worse than that.

[Selur]

Quality loss shouldn't be that big unless the re-compression (which is probably not lossless) has some problems with some kind of artifacts in the source video.
-> I agree, you should share more details on how you add your subs.

@manono:

At the very least, you'll get a lot of noise around the subs.

Why?

[Felow]

Maybe if you explained how you're doing it? I haven't experienced that myself. But subtitles added to video degrade the quality of the video. It has to do with the static subs against the moving background. At the very least, you'll get a lot of noise around the subs. But you seem to be experiencing something worse than that.

I'm hardcoding them with handbrake. Here's a comparison between the soft subs and hard subs: https://imgur.com/a/IfmwVCt do you see how much the quality degrades? I'm encoding to HEVC CRF 18 Preset Slow

[Felow]

Quality loss shouldn't be that big unless the re-compression (which is probably not lossless) has some problems with some kind of artifacts in the source video.
-> I agree, you should share more details on how you add your subs.

@manono:

At the very least, you'll get a lot of noise around the subs.

Why?

I shared more details please refer to my answer to manono.

[poisondeathray]

No, because your subs are being scaled up (along with the video) on playback

You might get better results with a better playback scaler , or hardcode an upscaled version with a better scaler, or don't hardcode

[Felow]

No, because your subs are being scaled up (along with the video) on playback

You might get better results with a better playback scaler , or hardcode an upscaled version with a better scaler, or don't hardcode

How do you do that?.

[Selur]

1. I don't see 'a lof of noise around the subs' which is what manono wrote.

2. Your soft subs are larger and have a different color.
You might want to use a different tool which uses Avisynth or Vapoursynth and gives you more control over the subtitle rendering in case handbrake doesn't offer this.
(sorry, no clue since I don't use handbrake)
Tools like MeGui and StaxRip come to mind. (may be even some ffmpeg gui in case it gives control over the rendering of the subtitles)


Cu Selur

[Felow]

No, because your subs are being scaled up (along with the video) on playback

You might get better results with a better playback scaler , or hardcode an upscaled version with a better scaler, or don't hardcode

Also when I open the subtitles with notepad it says ScriptType:

WrapStyle: 0
ScaledBorderAndShadow: yes
YCbCr Matrix: TV.601
PlayResX: 720
PlayResY: 480

And that's the resolution of the video so I don't understand the quality loss.

I tried to change the resolution of the subs to 1920x1080 but after hardcoding they still lose quality.

[Felow]

1. I don't see 'a lof of noise around the subs' which is what manono wrote.

2. Your soft subs are larger and have a different color.
You might want to use a different tool which uses Avisynth or Vapoursynth and gives you more control over the subtitle rendering in case handbrake doesn't offer this.
(sorry, no clue since I don't use handbrake)
Tools like MeGui and StaxRip come to mind. (may be even some ffmpeg gui in case it gives control over the rendering of the subtitles)


Cu Selur

The subs are the same resolution of the video 720x480

They're the same subs just in one video they're hardcoded and in the other, they're not.

I will look up the programs you mentioned but unless they're simple to use I'd rather stay with handbrake.

[Selur]

I will look up the programs you mentioned but unless they're simple to use I'd rather stay with handbrake.

They are not as simple as handbrake since they offer more options.

The point is that the 'engine' adding the soft subtitles isn't the same that adds the hardcoded subtitles.
When using text based subtitles different filters/engines and settings can change a lot.
+ when not playing the video at it's native resolution the used scaler also influences how the hardcoded subtitles look like, the soft coded subtitles are coded separately and get 'overlayed' and often use another scaler.

Cu Selur

[manono]

... do you see how much the quality degrades?

No. About all I see is that the subs have been stretched out horizontally. Apparently, in that bottom picture they were put on before the video was resized.

The subs are the same resolution of the video 720x480

But neither of those pictures is 720x480.

As for the noise, you can't tell anything from a picture. You'd need the video moving behind the hard subs.

I don't (and won't) use Handbrake either.

[Felow]

... do you see how much the quality degrades?

No. About all I see is that the subs have been stretched out horizontally. Apparently, in that bottom picture they were put on before the video was resized.

The subs are the same resolution of the video 720x480

But neither of those pictures is 720x480.

As for the noise, you can't tell anything from a picture. You'd need the video moving behind the hard subs.

I don't (and won't) use Handbrake either.

The native resolution is 720x480 but my video player (vlc) fits the video to screen.

[Felow]

I will look up the programs you mentioned but unless they're simple to use I'd rather stay with handbrake.

They are not as simple as handbrake since they offer more options.

The point is that the 'engine' adding the soft subtitles isn't the same that adds the hardcoded subtitles.
When using text based subtitles different filters/engines and settings can change a lot.
+ when not playing the video at it's native resolution the used scaler also influences how the hardcoded subtitles look like, the soft coded subtitles are coded separately and get 'overlayed' and often use another scaler.

Cu Selur

Since there is no easy way to hardcode the subtitles with better quality then I'll just give up.

Thanks for the help.

[poisondeathray]

This has less to do with lossy compression or CRF (unless you go very high, or very low quality)

Soft subs are generally applied after the video scaling (it partially depends on what video player, what subtitle renderer), so they generally look razor sharp at any resolution. Even on a 8K display. ie. They are not "rasterized". The subs themselves are infinitely scalable without quality loss. It's analogous to a vector image in graphics

But when you hard sub, the hard coded subs are upscaled along with the SD video, so they have jaggy edges and low quality . If you look at your image the background building has jaggies too from the poor scaling. The only way to improve this is to use better scaling methods, or hardcode an upscaled version, so the hardsub is "baked" at a higher resolution

[Felow]

This has less to do with lossy compression or CRF (unless you go very high, or very low quality)

Soft subs are generally applied after the video scaling (it partially depends on what video player, what subtitle renderer), so they generally look razor sharp at any resolution. Even on a 8K display. ie. They are not "rasterized". The subs themselves are infinitely scalable without quality loss. It's analogous to a vector image in graphics

But when you hard sub, the hard coded subs are upscaled along with the SD video, so they have jaggy edges and low quality . If you look at your image the background building has jaggies too from the poor scaling. The only way to improve this is to use better scaling methods, or hardcode an upscaled version, so the hardsub is "baked" at a higher resolution

I understand but how do you do that? the subs are in an ass file so whatever it is better scaling methods or upscaled version as long as it's simple to do then it's fine.

[poisondeathray]

I understand but how do you do that? the subs are in an ass file so whatever it is better scaling methods or upscaled version as long as it's simple to do then it's fine.

1) If you use a better playback scaling method, it will look "less bad." Maybe one of the madvr algorithms . The benefit is the background video will look better too. But the subs themselves will never look as good as when applied at the native playback resolution, because you're still scaling the rasterized low resolution subs vs. applying hardcoded sub at say 1920x1080

2) There are many threads and guides on "how to upscale". Many options to choose from. If you get stuck, ask for help

You can use slower high scaling methods too if you wanted to. Or maybe for anime you could use waifu2x, or anime4k or one of the GAN "AI" based methods

Or maybe you don't care. The upscaling algorithm does not affect the hardcoded sub directly, because the hardcoded subs will be applied at 1920x1080. Upscaling beforehand is only for the video.

The negatives of upscaling video - it's slower, requires higher bitrate for certain level of quality

[Felow]

I understand but how do you do that? the subs are in an ass file so whatever it is better scaling methods or upscaled version as long as it's simple to do then it's fine.

1) If you use a better playback scaling method, it will look "less bad." Maybe one of the madvr algorithms . The benefit is the background video will look better too. But the subs themselves will never look as good as when applied at the native playback resolution, because you're still scaling the rasterized low resolution subs vs. applying hardcoded sub at say 1920x1080

2) There are many threads and guides on "how to upscale". Many options to choose from. If you get stuck, ask for help

You can use slower high scaling methods too if you wanted to. Or maybe for anime you could use waifu2x, or anime4k or one of the GAN "AI" based methods

Or maybe you don't care. The upscaling algorithm does not affect the hardcoded sub directly, because the hardcoded subs will be applied at 1920x1080. Upscaling beforehand is only for the video.

The negatives of upscaling video - it's slower, requires higher bitrate for certain level of quality

Ahh now I understand what you're talking about I was thinking you were saying to upscale the subtitles so that when they are hard-coded into a low res video they would look better! Upscaling the videos would increase the size and decreasing the size is one of the reasons I'm encoding in the first place.
I will just live with low res subs thank you and everyone for the help.

[netmask56]

If your media player is VLC I can't see any reason why you need to hard code ie burn in the subs to the image. Simply wrapping the video and subs in an MKV container and marking the the subs default and forced, VLC will automatically show them. You may have other reasons but that's the way I do it.

[lingyi]

@Felow

To satisfy my curiosity, why do you want/need to hardcode the subs? As stated in all the posts about the subs, you'll never get a good quality as softsubs as well as will lower the quality of the whole video because you have to reencode.

I'm assuming it's because of a limitation of the player you're using to playback the video.

[netmask56]

@Felow

To satisfy my curiosity, why do you want/need to hardcode the subs? As stated in all the posts about the subs, you'll never get a good quality as softsubs as well as will lower the quality of the whole video because you have to reencode.

I'm assuming it's because of a limitation of the player you're using to playback the video.

In post number #13 he says he is using VLC - so there shouldn't be any issues.

[Felow]

@Felow

To satisfy my curiosity, why do you want/need to hardcode the subs? As stated in all the posts about the subs, you'll never get a good quality as softsubs as well as will lower the quality of the whole video because you have to reencode.

I'm assuming it's because of a limitation of the player you're using to playback the video.

It's because of two reasons.

My tv doesn't play subs that aren't hardcoded and the second reason is that I merge videos together so subs that aren't hardcoded won't be displayed.