how to get subtitles that are not on DVD

[student]

hello all,
ok what i mean is that i want to convert the lord of the rings dvd into SVCD but the dvd i got here(australia PAL)does not have spanish subtitles on it and off course no spanish Audio. How can i put spanish subs on my SVCD? Also is there any way to put spanish track also? I hate the dvd we get here 90% of them only have english audio and some other useless subs that are not used in Aus at all. Please help asap. iwill be very greatfull.
thanks in Advance.

[UltimateDBZ]

There's no way for you to get Spanish audio, and it's unlikely you'll be able to get spanish subs. You might do a search for a subtitle translator or the like, but as I've never heard of such a thing, it's unlikely that one exists. You'll lose the automation of DVD2SVCD if you do get your own subs though, and you'll have to do all (or most) of the steps manually.

[student]

Hi UltimateDBZ,
Thanks for the instant reply. I have just dounloaded spanish subs one in microDVD format and the other in subrip format from a site but Iam not quite sure how to incorporate them with my SVCD. I can do manual work if I have some instructions?
Thanks.

[UltimateDBZ]

Not my area of expertise ;) We'll need a subs expert, and somebody who really knows how dvd2svcd ticks in order to incorporate these new subs, and then proceed with the remaining conversion steps.

[student]

Any subs experts out there please help.

[Patjen]

This will only work if the timecodes in your subrip file correspond to your version of the movie, but let's give it a try.

First you need to convert the srt file to SSA format. Sub2SSA is a great tool for this purpose.

Now when you've got the converted SSA file, you can edit it with notepad and I would change the font to size 14 (can also be done in sub2ssa immediately).

Now check if there are any <i> and </i> codes in the SSA file. These are pieces of the subtitles that a player that supports subrip files will show in italic but I've found out that this will not work when using the filter to get them into your SVCD.

So what I mean is basically, what you see in the SSA file will be what you'll see on the screen. So remove the <i> codes...
(possible there are some for underline too but I don't know that code).

Now you need to have vobsub installed...this installation will provide you with a textsub.vdf filter that you may copy into your /dvd2svcd/avisynth folder for convenience (I also put the SSA in this folder).

Now start configuring DVD2SVCD like you normally would and disable "rip subtitles" since we will be adding them in a different way.


Under the tab "frameserver" you activate "edit when dvd2avi is done" and also since you're not sure the srt file you downloaded will be synchronous to your DVD, I would suggest choosing only a couple of chapters for test purposes (normal CBR speeds up this test also instead of choosing VBR multipass)...This way you'll quickly know if your downloaded subs are suited for your conversion.

Now, when dvd2svcd starts and DVD2AVI stops, a window will pop up and you need to edit the avs script . Add the following 2 lines at the bottom:

LoadPlugin("C:\dvdutils\DVD2SVCD109b3\Avisynth\textsub.vdf")
TextSub("C:\dvdutils\DVD2SVCD109b3\Avisynth\jaybob.ssa")

ofcourse, you need to fill in your own pathnames to dvd2svcd and filename of the ssa

Click ok and it should do the trick.

After the conversion is done, check the mpg with powerdvd (or mount your images with daemon whatever) and check if the subs are on track.
Also, it can happen pieces of the subtitles are cut off at the left and right bounderies of the screen on your tv. In that case, just choose a smaller font in the SSA file until your satisfied.

I did this with the movie "Jay and Silent Bob" since I was unable to get the subs on screen and it worked great. I even found the subs to much sharper but it takes some more patience and manual work.

When your satiesfied with the test, start a multipass encode and enjoy !


wheew, lots of typing...

(Thanks to titvs who brought up this solution earlier somewhere in this forum in the thread "DivX to SVCD and subtitles" posted by Alexis
)

Succes !

[student]

thanks Patjen,
I give it a go now. I have just logged on today , so sorry could not answer you before. i'll post the results here as soon as I finished.
Thanks again.

[student]

ok this didnt work for me. May be I didnt have the proper subs downloaded and also this will permanent subs but I also want to have english subs that are allready on DVD. Is there a place to download subs for this movie? and can i put those subs with english subs as selectable subs? which kind of subs I should be looking for to download? Anyone else got some other ways of doing this. Should i post this thread to the Subs forum?
Anyone please help. really appreciate it. Any experts plase.
Thanks.

[titvs]

Hello

I've worked a lot with subs and i think i can help you :)
You can download subtitle files from http://dvd.box.sk
For you to have selectable subtitles in your SVCD you need to generate the BMP's for both languages. Ok, let's see if i can put this simple:

NOTE: this steps consider that you already have converted your DVD into svcd and have the MPG file on your HD (to do this simple use DVD2SVCD and select no subs nor images). I'm not sure bbMPEG can split MPG files with mutiplexed subtitle streams. If it cant, you will need to split in 2 you original scripts and adjust the times acordingly. Check for a pro with bbMPEG ;)

1. Download the subtitle scripts from the site i gave you. Since you also want the english subs you can extract them from the DVD using SubRip and remember to save the script (see if SubRip can save the script in SubMux format) and the BMP's ;). You will need them.

2. Since you are generating the BMP's that are not on the DVD, you only need to do this for the spanish subs script.
I strongly recomend you to convert the script to Substation Alpha using SUB2SSA because SSA is a very powerfull sub editor and you can change or add subtitle styles, change position, etc. You can download it at: http://www.eswat.demon.co.uk/substation.html
If your sub scripts are framerate dependent (like those for MicroDVD), when using SUB2SSA, be sure to select the framerate you want the converted subtitles to be. That is, if your script is NTSC and you want the conversion to be in PAL simply select 25 from the drop down.

3. Now, lets move on to Substation Alpha. Open you converted script in SSA. You should add a style to change the subtitles font and size. I use Arial Narrow, bold, at 32 points. Where you define the style, make sure you increase the Vertical Margin or your subs will be displayed at the edge of your screen. I use 65 for PAL. If you are NTSC i think you need to experiment with this value.
Apply the styles you want to your subs and save your work.

4. Now its time for MaestroSBT :p
Open up your SSA script in Maestro and press the Set Files button. Press Browse next to the output script and in the Save As Type pulldown menu select SubMux (*.sub). Press Save. I recommend to save this file in a directory because the generated BMP's will also be generated here.
Press the Rendering Button. Make sure you select Windows BMP 4 bits (uncompressed!!) in the File Formats group. In the Output resolution select 480x480 or 480x578 depending on your system. Also make sure you DE-select the "Dont clip bitmaps" option. Press OK
Press the Timing button. Select your framerate of your movie in the FPS in and FPS Out dopr down menus. Press OK.
You can then press Edit & Preview button to check the subtitles position on screen and change the Vertical Margin in Substation Alpha if needed (you will have to redo this step :p).
If everything is OK press Generate.

5. Final step: sub multiplexing with WinSubMux
Open up WinSubMux and indicate the location of your Input MPEG file (source).
Give a path for the output (multiplexed) MPEG file. Activate Stream #0 and Stream #1 and in each filed specify the location of your SUB files (generated by SubRip - the stream extracted from the DVD; and Maestro SBT - the stream rendered from the script you downloaded).
You can preview the subs in the Preview tab. If everything is fine press Multiplex button.

And thats it :p You can now split the file or record it to CD using VCD Imager, Nero, etc.

I hope this helps. I did this a couple of times with DivX conversions but now i'm using permanent subs. Its less time consuming :p See why i evolved to permanent subs Patjen? ;)

Regards

Titvs

[Patjen]

Well titvs, I too always used permanent subs but I recently had two dvd's that were giving me troubles and were not displaying the subs.
Each time a subtitle was shown, the movie frame blacked out and I could see only the text. I came upon your suggestion using the vobsub or rather textsub filter and that worked for these 2 movies.

I did not say I would be using this method all the time from now on.. :-)

But it's a nice trick in case permanent subs simply won't work...

On the other hand, I got the impression that the subtitles seemed crisper and cleaner to read but offcourse they don't look really natural. But hey, at least we can understand the complete dialogs hehe.

titvs, would you maybe know why some of these movies show the subs after extraction as bitmaps of such pixel size that they take up the entire screen ?

Greetz,

[student]

Thanks titvs,
I will give your method a try during the weekend(when I have time from work and Uni) and post my results here. But can you please do me another favour. Can you please give me some instructions to work with submux instead of winsubmux. Because since the new vertion of dvd2svcd uses new winsubmux instead of submux I dint get subs so I changed the dvd2svcd config file to use submux instead and it worked.I dont know the reason but winsubmux dont work for me. But I dont know the proper commands for submux because dvd2svcd automates it. i will be really thankfull.
Thanks again.

Thanks Patjen for giving me initial details and also letting me know how to convert to diff formats.

[titvs]

@Patjen

Well, I really dont know :) Maybe it's got to do with the authoring program used in the mastering of the DVD. I know that Scenarist requires the bmp's to be the same frame size of the movie.
Try to extract the subs with SubRip and see if the bitmaps are the same size of the movie frames.
And yes, it's a good alternative for movies with particular subtitle streams. And i've encountered several. DVD2SVCD author can confirm that since i'm always complaining :D (have you fixed the TAXI 2 issue D2S? ;))

@Student

Hmm, well, i always used WinSubMux :p So, i really dont know the command line parameters for submux. Try to do a Google search and maybe you'll find something related or even a GUI.
You can see if DVD2SVCD leaves the command line it used to execute submux in it's LOG file. If so, try using it.

Regards,

Titvs