Set Back Subtitle Times

[ejp]

i have a subtitle file. and when i embed them into my video, they don't correspond. the reason is because in the video, the first 40+ seconds are cut off.

so does anyone know how to set back ALL the times, in the subtitle file, a given amount of time?

[sterno]

What kind of subtitle file do you have? If it's in SSA format you can use Sub Station Alpha to shift all the times at once. If you have it in subrip (srt) format you can use subrip to adjust the times.

[ejp]

sterno...

thanks alot. i had a .srt file, and i DLed SubRip. i think i know what to do.

but i have another problem. the first set of the .srt file goes like this...

1
00:00:49,262 --> 00:00:53,756
Text Here.

what if i want something to before this? how would i go about that? i've already tried doing this...

0
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000
Text Here.

but if i do that, then SubRip won't open it. maybe you know of another program?

thanks.

[ejp]

sterno...

nevermind. i found some other tool to do it. didn't take long to find something. i just went to http://www.divx-digest.com/software/index4.html#subtitles . i used something called SuDiX. worked pretty good .. just in case anyone else wants to know.

[sterno]

If the text of the subtitles is embedded in the .srt file, you can convert it to SSA (Sub Station Alpha) format with subrip. Then download SSA and open the file. You can do pretty much anything subtitle-related within SSA, including add/remove/edit subs and make time adjustments. SSA is more or less the standard tool/format - things like the VirtualDub and avisynth subtitle filters use it natively. MaestroSBT can convert SSA files to a number of other formats, so you might want to download that too. Both programs should be listed on vcdhelp's tools section or doom9.net's downloads.

One word of caution: when you first open SSA, all the menus and options and so forth may be a little daunting. But if you just play with the program for a few minutes you'll realize that it's pretty easy to use, it just has lots of capabilities.

[ejp]

thanks alot sterno.. i really appreciate it. somehow, i finally got what i wanted. i have another problem though... it should probably have its own post, but i'll ask you first.

i've embedded the subs to the video. i've recompressed it as avi. and sometimes the text looks blurred, and "messed up" .. like below.

http://www.angelfire.com/realm2/ejp/subs.txt

is there anyway to "clean" this up?

[sterno]

I don't know about that, I really haven't done a whole lot with permanent subs. A little blurring is to be expected, the text will suffer the same compression artifacts as the rest of the image. But that graphic looks strange, I'm not sure if that's just really bad artifacting or if there's another problem. If you have enough disk space you could try saving a clip in some lossless or uncompressed format and see if it's still that way.

[ejp]

sterno...

i went back, and did what you suggested. and it turns out that you were right. i saved it as uncompressed avi, and there was no blurring. i made a typo in my last post. i saved the previous one as DivX, and that gave me the blurring. but i'm not about to go and save the whole movie, uncompressed. any more suggestions? maybe better DivX compression settings?

thanks.

[theDruid]

Hi ejp,

I haven't tried this at all - I don't really use DivX and avi's much, I go straight from DVD->MPG->VCD usually, but I have done a few subtitled movies.

What you might try is compressing your movie first (without the subtitles) so that you then have a DivX avi of your film. Then run it through VirtualDub again adding the subtitles as a filter, but not compressing a second time. (maybe outputting as uncompressed avi as you did in your test before).

If this works (and I have a feeling it won't!) you'd have the movie compressed sufficiently, but your subtitles wouldn't go through the DivX mangle, and should look good.

Only problem is, I suspect VistulDub decodes the DivX input, and will output a low quality but very 'big' uncompressed avi.

It might be worth a try though - if the size and quality of the DivX avi are not interfered with, and the titles are just added by vDub, you should get a really good result.

Let us know how you get on!

mcdruid.

[ejp]

theDruid...

i didn't rip this DVD personally. i DLed it. it's already DivX-compressed. i've been looking all over the place for a copy of it WITH subtitles, since it's a foreign film. but i had no luck, so i'm trying to do it myself.

so anyway, i already have the DivX copy of it. then you want me to add the subtitles to it, save it, but leaving it in UNCOMPRESSED. so now i will have 2 copies of this movie. the 1st is the original DivX *without* the subtitles. the 2nd will be an UNCOMPRESSED copy *with* subtitles.

how will this give me a sufficiently compressed movie *with* subtitles? am i missing something?

by the way, my test run (the uncompressed version) was only an encode of only a minute-long clip. the output size was 800+ MB. i don't think this will fit onto my HDD, since i only have 20 more GB to work with. i can't delete anything else. and even if i did, my HDD isn't big enough. and i'm not about to go out to get another HDD just for this one movie.

[theDruid]

Hi ejp,

no - i misunderstood you. If you were encoding the DivX yourself (from a rip or a capture) I was just trying to work out a way of not running the subtitles through the encoding - which seems to be what is messing them up.

If your problem is how to add them to an avi which is already DivX (and which comes out of vDub uncompressed as a huge avi file) then my thoughts won't help you at all. Sorry!

I don't know how you want to watch your movie, but you could try frameserving (with vDub with the subtitles added as a filter) it into TMPGenc and encoding it to an MPG - then burning to VCD?

The rips that I have done this way (adding subtitles) have come out really nice and clear.

cheers,

mcdruid.

[ejp]

theDruid...

yes, i've already thought about frameserving. i might have to resort to that if that's my only choice. but i wanted to have it in DivX, just in case i might use it in the future.

anyone else have any ideas?

[sterno]

I don't do DivX stuff, so I can't really get in to the best encoder settings. I do know that a higher bitrate/quality setting should reduce the compression artifacts. You'll have to do some testing to find out how high you need to go, and then decide if the size of the movie is small enough for you.

[ejp]

sterno...

i've used DivX for all of my avi re-encodes, specifically DivX Low-Motion. Yes, i'm still using DivX Low-Motion because (1) the settings are very basic, and (2) the original video was in DivX format already.

anyway, i keyframed the output to every 10 seconds (default), 100 Cripness (default), and 6000 Bitrate (max). now, with the idea that the higher the Bitrate, the better the output would be.

by the way, i've recompressed the uncompressed avi. and it came out clean, which should be understandable.

oh, and another thing is that when i only compress a really short part of it, like a few seconds, then the subtitles don't become blurred.

has anyone else had this problem of "blurry" subtitles?

[ejp]

sterno...

i changed the codec to DivX High-Motion, and it worked ... for the most part. the problem is, the video looks very pixelated. you know, the blocks. macroblocks, i think they're called. i guess that's why they say that DivX Low-Motion is better than High-Motion.

as you can see from my screenshot in my previous post, i increased the height of the video, which added the black bars. this way, i can put the subtitles in there. maybe i can encode the subtitles seperately, then "add" them to the bottom of the video, and then add the top black bar. it's possible; maybe there's a filter that can do this.

anyone who can help, please post.