How to create soft subtitles in .m4v file container

[fender]

I have searched this forum for an answer but I don't understand what I am reading ...
I have a bunch of ripped DVDs and now I want to convert those DVDs into .m4v files with Handbrake.
As I understand it is possible to create soft subtitles (that can be turned off and on) in Plex for example.
I don't what the subtitles "burnt into" the movie.
But how do I do that???

[s55]

0.9.3 only supports burned-in subs.

You'll need to look at the development snapshot (see forum announcement) for these kind of features.

[Jonukas]

Here's what I do (unfortunately it involves Windows):

1. Use SubRip 1.5 (http://zuggy.wz.cz/) to get the subtitles out of the DVD files and in to a .srt file. It's not perfect and it takes time to learn how to use it, but it's worth it. I haven't found anything better/easier. If someone knows something better, I'm all ears.
2. It's a good idea to proofread/correct the .srt file in a text editor afterwards.
3. Use Subler (http://code.google.com/p/subler/) to add it to your .m4v file.
4. Enjoy!

[eddyg]

m4v's only support textual soft subs, and DVDs only have picture subs (also known as VOBSUBs). So you need to somehow convert the pictures into text for HB to use (as an aside MKV supports VOBSUBs).

If you are in region 1 (NTSC) *and* if you want English subs then you could also use the Closed Captions that are on the DVD as text.

You can either download the textual subtitle files as .srt files online, or can use an OCR tool to convert the ones from the DVD into text. As the other poster explained.

Once you have the subs as an srt file you can add them to the m4v either during encoding directly within HandBrake using a new version of HB (latest snapshot will do it) or add them later using Subler.

Note that you will often (always) have to align the subs with the video by adding a time offset (HB is useful in this regard since you can use a preview encode to get it right).

A gotcha if you download subs is to ensure that you use the subtitles that came from the movie with the same framerate, PAL movies run quicker than NTSC ones, and so the subtitles will get out of sync pretty quickly.

Cheers, Ed.

[nick_harambee]

i can't get the latest build of 0.9.4 to preview soft subtitles. i can only do a test encode of a section of a movie and then determine from that whether i need to offset to the srt subtitles. is there a way of previewing soft subtitles as you suggest?

thanks

nick

[JohnAStebbins]

Closed captions should work with live preview, but imported SRTs will not. The way previews are generated is to jump forward through the movie in equal sized chunks. When we land in a position to read the next preview, there is no way to know what time offset we have landed on. The timestamps in the video are of no help because timestamp discontinuities are allowed and we won't know if we have crossed any. So there is no way to synchronize the timestamps in the SRT file with those in the video.

[nick_harambee]

ok, so the only way to add softsubtitles with time offset checking/adjustment is to use another application after encoding with Handbrake. Can Subler do the time offset or will I have to look for a non-free alternative, such as iSubtitle?

[JohnAStebbins]

I don't know about subler. But the way I've been doing time offset adjustment is to either find the shortest chapter and encode it. Then play back and guess the adjustment. Or if the video has no chapters, encode a little bit of the video and cancel when I have enough to look at the result and make an adjustment. I have a special custom preset that uses ffmpeg as the encoder in order to make the sample encodes as fast as possible.

[TedJ]

If you need an external app for adjusting the timing on external SRT subtitle files you should take a look at Jubler, which allows timing adjustments with live preview using mplayer. Once your subtitles are correctly synced, it's simple to mux them into your encode using subler.

[davidw89]

I use Subler, works great but annoying as for batch adding subtitles (you know like more than 100 files)