Hard and Soft Subtitles Guide

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GregiBoy
Veteran User
Posts: 908
Joined: Sat Feb 12, 2011 9:23 pm

Re: Hard and Soft Subtitles Guide

Post by GregiBoy »

External program. Freebie, google it.
lanaius
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun May 05, 2013 8:44 pm

Re: Hard and Soft Subtitles Guide

Post by lanaius »

I have a movie I am trying to put srt subs on. I used subrip to OCR the VobSubs into the srt because I was having trouble finding a timing-appropriate file online. Everything went fine with that procedure and everything works fine during encoding. The SRT was embedded properly and VLC recognizes the sub stream and can play the text just fine. The only issue is that there is a delay that is introduced as the movie goes on, ending up being approximately 6 seconds long at the end of the film (1.5 hrs long).

The catch is that when I verify the actual timecodes in the SRT they are correct and when, in VLC, I tell it to load my SRT file and ignore the embedded subs there is no time-dependent delay of the subtitles. With this verified, that means that for some reason Handbrake is introducing a time-dependent retiming of the subtitles. This persists with no change in latency regardless of what I tell handbrake the video framerate is (as a test) and framerate is the only source of timing error I can think of that will change as the movie goes on.

Has anyone noticed this before and come up with any solutions?

Thanks and Regards.
Deleted User 11865

Re: Hard and Soft Subtitles Guide

Post by Deleted User 11865 »

1) please start a dedicated topic for this issue

2) provide the encode log in that topic

3) maybe upload the SRT file somewhere? it can't hurt
Phototaker
Experienced
Posts: 92
Joined: Mon Jun 29, 2009 2:08 am

Re: Hard and Soft Subtitles Guide

Post by Phototaker »

I have a video file that was recorded off the TV. Mediainfo tells me that the file in addition to having a video & audio streams I have an additional file listed as First Text Stream - English.Teletex subtitle. Is there any way to use this file & get it into by MKV file?

Thanks in advance
Deleted User 11865

Re: Hard and Soft Subtitles Guide

Post by Deleted User 11865 »

We don't support Teletext subtitles, so you can't do anything with that track using HandBrake I'm afraid.
ZiCAMANHD
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Aug 14, 2013 8:09 pm

Re: Hard and Soft Subtitles Guide

Post by ZiCAMANHD »

Hi guys, im triyng to make hardsubs (Burned in) using handbrake over a month, but no lucky...

i have the SSA/SRT sub, but the Example in the first page was of a old version, theres a chance to make hardsubs (burned in) using the actual handbrake version?

please, help!
Smithcraft
Veteran User
Posts: 2697
Joined: Thu Jan 22, 2009 8:04 pm

Re: Hard and Soft Subtitles Guide

Post by Smithcraft »

Handbrake does not burn in SRT subtitles.

SC
DaveSimonH
Posts: 11
Joined: Sun Mar 21, 2010 3:07 pm

Re: Hard and Soft Subtitles Guide

Post by DaveSimonH »

Sorry, I know some of the image links are broken in the original post. Some completely broken and others can be fixed by changing their urls from;
http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/3861/hardsubs01.jpg
to
http://imageshack.us/a/img130/3861/hardsubs01.jpg
etc.

But I can't seem to edit the post, I keep getting the error message;
It was not possible to determine the dimensions of the image.
It was not possible to determine the dimensions of the image.
Maybe a MOD could help me out? I've reuploaded all the broken images to imageshack, here's a list of the images and where they go in the guide;

Hard Subtitles
1.
http://imageshack.us/a/img266/4231/336z.jpg

2.
http://imageshack.us/a/img547/9540/o6rn.jpg

4.(2nd image)
http://imageshack.us/a/img43/6149/ghom.jpg


Soft Subtitles
1. (3rd image)
http://imageshack.us/a/img850/5867/2xim.jpg

5.
http://imageshack.us/a/img22/4996/hgvm.jpg

7.
http://imageshack.us/a/img703/5951/vqwo.jpg

9.
http://imageshack.us/a/img708/6645/b0rn.jpg
DaveSimonH
Posts: 11
Joined: Sun Mar 21, 2010 3:07 pm

Re: Hard and Soft Subtitles Guide

Post by DaveSimonH »

Now all the image links are broken (imageshack has went downhill fast).
But I finally managed to edit the original post, so I've swapped in some imgur links.
texasgrillchef
Posts: 9
Joined: Mon Oct 06, 2014 9:36 pm

Re: Hard and Soft Subtitles Guide

Post by texasgrillchef »

I have found a much much easier way to HARDCODE subtitles. None of my home entertainment equipment allow for soft subtitles to be used without causeing great hassle and time consuming work on my part.

Since I always have subtitles/closed captioning turned on. Hardcoding isn't an issue for me.

This is how I do it: Which is much faster and quicker than the method above.

1. I use AnyDVD HD from Slysoft.com They have a free version, and a lifetime paid version. They update the program and the "keys" to unencrypt DVD's and Blu-rays on a monthly basis, Sometimes even more frequent. Using this program I have it "RIP" to a DVD/Blu-ray folder. No special settings need to be done. Although it has some usefull features that will remove various "nags" and prohibted user operations as well as removing region coding.

2. Run Handbrake. Click on "Source", click on "open folder", find the folder for your DVD and go to the "Video_TS" folder double click that and then "Select Folder" Then let handbrake scan the folder.

3. One done, click on the "Subtitles" tab under source click on the subtitle language... On most American USA DVD's it will show "1 English (VobSub) Then click on the check mark for "Burn In"

Thats all you need to do... works everytime for me. I don't have to do any OCR corrections, or anything else. Thats it. Done.
The only drawbacks I find to this, are that you can't change the colour, font, and background shading of the subtitles. But for me I don't really care about that. 95% of the time it is Yellow text on a black background in typical Helvitica or Arial type font.

TGC
DaveSimonH
Posts: 11
Joined: Sun Mar 21, 2010 3:07 pm

Re: Hard and Soft Subtitles Guide

Post by DaveSimonH »

Basically the same as my Hard Subs guide, but using AnyDVD. Granted some newer DVDs may not rip in DVD Decrypter as its pretty old now, and obviously won't work for DVDs.
If DVD Decrypter doesn't work on a disc, I've found DVDFab8 seems able to rip any DVDs I throw at it. It also has a trial, but once its up you can still rip DVDs to iso etc. Not sure about blu-rays, I've only personally had a blu-ray drive for a couple of months.

I'd be happy enough also recommending AnyDVD, but the "free" version is a 21 day trial, and after that it's 60 Euros (or regional equivalent) for updates for 2 years, they don't offer lifetime updates anymore. It's unfortunate they don't offer lifetime updates anymore
Phototaker
Experienced
Posts: 92
Joined: Mon Jun 29, 2009 2:08 am

Re: Hard and Soft Subtitles Guide

Post by Phototaker »

Once you have your Blu-ray ripped & its going to have the subtitles burnt in what bitrate do you use & what is the likely file size? I have sometimes been asked to do the same thing but burn it to a 25gb single layer Blu-ray disc & many videos exceed that 25GB size. I don't know how to calculate the Handbrake bit rate that will give me a files that is just under 25GB.
DaveSimonH
Posts: 11
Joined: Sun Mar 21, 2010 3:07 pm

Re: Hard and Soft Subtitles Guide

Post by DaveSimonH »

Phototaker wrote:Once you have your Blu-ray ripped & its going to have the subtitles burnt in what bitrate do you use & what is the likely file size? I have sometimes been asked to do the same thing but burn it to a 25gb single layer Blu-ray disc & many videos exceed that 25GB size. I don't know how to calculate the Handbrake bit rate that will give me a files that is just under 25GB.
It's difficult to get a fixed figure of the final file size, but you can estimate it by doing a 5-10min sample clip, and then using that to calculate what the final size will be.
F1Tim
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Oct 10, 2014 1:01 pm

Re: Hard and Soft Subtitles Guide

Post by F1Tim »

Try this:

http://users.telenet.be/F1Tim/Bitrate-Convertor.xlsx

I created this Excel file to estimate required video-bitrate. You have to enter things like movie duration, max target size (or max percentage of Original file size) and audio-bitrate: green fields. At the lower-right of the tree, you find my estimate. Works great for me for Dvd's. Given a movie of 1h24m30s, fixed 160kbps audio, and max allowed file size of 1250 MB, I end up with estimate video bitrate of 1903 kbps...
F1Tim
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Oct 10, 2014 1:01 pm

Re: Hard and Soft Subtitles Guide

Post by F1Tim »

Remark: when i do auto-crop, I sometimes see that subtitles show up about in the middle of the screen, slightly squeezed (vertically). I think this is because of the auto-crop feature. It also happens only when the Original movie has horizontal black beams (so smaller than 16:9). So for that kind of movies, I just set crops to zero...
truckmann
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Dec 06, 2014 9:12 pm

Re: Hard and Soft Subtitles Guide

Post by truckmann »

New guy here...
I notice with the latest release that when I set for subtitles to be automatically added it is automatically turning on the Burn-In option on one of them. Is there a way to get it not to do this? I don't want them to be burnt in, but I like to have them there just in case I need them. I realize I can just go shut that option off every time so I'm just wondering if there is an option I can set somewhere so that I don't have to remember to shut that off every time?
User avatar
s55
HandBrake Team
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Joined: Sun Dec 24, 2006 1:05 pm

Re: Hard and Soft Subtitles Guide

Post by s55 »

burn-in is only turned on, when the output file doesn't support that type of subtitle. i.e MP4 files have limited subtitle support.

You can't override it.
madmaxed
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Jan 04, 2013 12:39 pm

Re: Hard and Soft Subtitles Guide

Post by madmaxed »

Speaking of burn in, I just started adding subtitles to my encodes and switched to the latest handbrake release 0.10. I am encoding to mp4 both DVD and Blu-rays for use in plex. My DVDs conversions are working great. I get the track I want, turn off burn in, and all is good. I can select to view or not view the subtitles in both plex and VLC. However, with the blu-ray conversions, even though I uncheck burn-in the subtitles are being burned into the final file and can't be turned off in the players.

I have checked the logs and sure enough even though I uncheck Burn-in, Blu-ray conversions are getting burned in subtitles instead of pass-through as I see in my DVD logs.

Any insight would be appreciated.

P.S. I'm trying to figure out pastebin so I can put some logs up.
DVD Log
http://pastebin.com/8fEFX7K3
Blu ray log
http://pastebin.com/MGTKjgYG
Woodstock
Veteran User
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Re: Hard and Soft Subtitles Guide

Post by Woodstock »

PGS subtitles from Bluray cannot be included in MP4 files - not compatible. The only way to do them is to burn them in.

Switching to MKV files fixes this, so long as the player supports PGS subtitles in MKV files, and not all do. VLC does, but there is no guarantee that anything reading from plex will, without testing.
NoEyeDeer
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Jan 19, 2015 5:19 pm

Re: Hard and Soft Subtitles Guide

Post by NoEyeDeer »

I'm having a few problems with the default subtitle settings, I can get the settings I want but have to adjust manually for each video - any suggestions for a way to allow batch encoding would be great.

I want to encode with all subtitles from the source file included but not burned in, but every time I add a video the last subtitle track listed has 'burn in' ticked by default, so I have to deselect manually. I've tried adding a video after deselecting for one video but get the same behaviour - is there a way to change this default setting please? (or even disable burn in entirely as I never use it).

Thanks in advance.

Edit: just noticed a thread below about default settings so removed my second query to keep on topic.
mouriana
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Mar 07, 2015 9:04 am

Re: Hard and Soft Subtitles Guide

Post by mouriana »

First, I want to say thanks to Woodstock and Madmaxed, I've been struggling with this for a while and you seem to give me the exact info I needed (though it wasn't the info I wanted. :P ).

Then I want to go over what I'm doing and what I've figured out, because if looking around the FAQ and forums has taught me anything, it's that I really don't know what I'm doing and I would like to make sure I've exhausted the possibilities.

I'm a casual ripper, we don't own a ton of movies and I don't download them, we just want to rip what we have to play on Plex. I rip both blu-rays and DVDs. I use MakeMKV for the initial rip and it generally does quite a good job, and Plex can read the PGS (Closed Caption) files with the resulting MKV. Then I use handbrake to make the MKV into a smaller MP4 file, but I've never been able to get closed captioning to work properly with the MP4 and now I understand why. I would LOVE to find a smaller format (like MP4) that will allow some form of soft subtitle, because I don't want to buy another huge hard drive to fit all my movies in MKV format to preserve the CCs. Why not burn them all in? Because we generally watch them on the big TV screen, and if I watch them I often like to turn on CC (because I'm hard of hearing), but my husband HATES closed captions so if he's watching he likes to have them off. If we are watching a movie together we just fight about it, but that's not a matter to be discussed here. :P But if I understand you correctly, Woodstock, if we don't use MKV, it's all or nothing on the subtitles if we're ripping from a blu-ray?
richk678
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Mar 07, 2015 2:55 pm

Re: Hard and Soft Subtitles Guide

Post by richk678 »

I'm having the same behavior as NoEyeDeer...I would like to include all English subtitles in the output .mp4 file, but it defaults the last set to "burn-in."

Seems to have shown up with the 0.10 version.

Any idea how to change the default behavior?
Woodstock
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Re: Hard and Soft Subtitles Guide

Post by Woodstock »

In 0.10.x, on the subtitle menu, you can click on "Switch to Defaults" to get to the screen where you can edit subtitle preferences. The same is available on the Audio menu.
richk678
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Mar 07, 2015 2:55 pm

Re: Hard and Soft Subtitles Guide

Post by richk678 »

Hmmm, you can set your preferred language in the "switch to defaults" screen, but not whether the selected subtitle is burned in or not.

I have English as my chosen language...which I feel should select to include all English subtitles, but not burn in any of them. Does that make sense?
Deleted User 11865

Re: Hard and Soft Subtitles Guide

Post by Deleted User 11865 »

Depending on your choice of container, some subtitles simply cannot be passed through… that's the case for e.g. Blu-ray PGS subtitles and the MP4 container.
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