Can *hardcoded* subs be extracted & exported, by any known software ?

[Seeker47]

Automatically or passively, that is.
My initial, uninformed guess would be 'NO'.
This may be an OCR type of issue ?

[Slipping off-topic for an instant, the message traffic here at VH has slowed down considerably . . . .]

[johns0]

SubRip can extract subs from burned in subs in avi files,not sure about others.

[VoodooFX]

InpaintDelogo to extract sub images then Subtitle Edit to OCR.

[Seeker47]

Thanks for your replies.
Have to check as to whether the immediate cases were .Avi. (Though more likely to be MKV.)

[VoodooFX]

Video file format doesn't matter.
SubRip route is pretty unproductive for this task.

[Seeker47]

Video file format doesn't matter.
SubRip route is pretty unproductive for this task.

Yes, I did not get very far when attempting to use it for this, but just chalked that up to learning curve issues. In the immediate example, I had just wanted to understand some dialog at the end of a French movie, where the (white) hardcoded subs got washed out against some white sky background. What I did to try and finesse this -- as a quicker, more practical matter -- was to convert the MKV to AVI, using Wonderfox HD Factory Converter. (That part was as a lead-in to trying SubRip, per the post suggestion above in favor of AVI format.) When I then played the end of the movie in VLC, there was as a by-product just enough alteration of the subs appearance as to let them be readable. So I found out what I needed to find out.

When you hit a roadblock like this, there is usually some means to get around it -- if not always directly through it.

[TeNSoR]

You can try VideosubFinder

[Seeker47]

You can try VideosubFinder

Thanks. I'll take a look at that.

[TeNSoR]

You can try VideosubFinder

Thanks. I'll take a look at that.

You're welcome and this is a good tutorial shows how to use it.
Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cd36qODmYF8&t=214s