A Couple Questions about Handbrake, Please Help

[5p1d3r]

So I have been using handbrake and loving it. I have a deaf brother and also want to have good files for the future if I ever get an Apple TV. So here are my questions.

1. I'm using the universal preset. I want a file that will work on ipod touch as well as apple tv with the highest sound and video quality possible and a file at least under 2 gb. Playing around with some settings it seems that universal 1.3gb file looks the same as a 2gb file any suggestions? Should I just stay with universal?

2. I've been doing reading on the subtitle option for my deaf brother. I want to make the files for me and him, so I want ONLY Soft Subtitles. Reading I believe that I can use closed captioning with mp4 and i got that to work, but a lot of my dvds dont say closed captioning in the subtitle tab and say english bitmap. Now I read that I can use English bitmap (which is what I want) but i hear that you can only put it on a mkv file. And mkv isnt supported in itunes.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, to basically sum it up i want the best quality file that can be up to 2 gb, and i want to have soft subtiles for every movie.

[ccjensen]

my suggestion would be to rip the movies using the universal preset with NO subtitles. Then afterwards go to a site like opensubtitles.org and download CC subtitles for the movie you just transcoded. Using Subler (http://code.google.com/p/subler/) you can then add the subtitles as soft-subtitles.
*disclamer* I don't own an appletv

[joedy]

use closed captioning with mp4 and i got that to work, but a lot of my dvds dont say closed captioning in the subtitle tab and say english bitmap

Welcome to the world of frustration that deaf users experience.

More and more DVDs are released with "Subtitles For The Deaf And Hard-Of-Hearing" and not with captions. While at first glance, they appear to be the same, they are actually not.

Subtitles are just the printed screenplay text, timed to show at the proper time.

Captions are not only the text, but are also auditory information as well. For example, in a scary movie a caption might display, "Suspenseful Music" and then "Sounds of door opening." Subtitles would show nothing during this scene since there is no dialogue.

As you can imagine, the viewing experience between Subtitles and Captions are different for deaf audiences.

I suspect that studios are creating subtitles due to cheaper cost. Since there's less literal information shown in subtitles, it follows that the labor to produce them would be less.

Your only options are (as you listed) using a MKV container, importing the CC files from another source, or encoding two versions of the files: one with the subs burned in and one without the subs at all.

-joedy

[Deleted User 11865]

There's another option: use Windows and OCR software (e.g. SubRip) to convert the subtitles for the hearing impaired to text-based formats such as SRT and then use HandBrake to passthrough the SRT file.

In my experience, it's neither easy nor fast though.