Fansubbing a DVD?

[Accident]

Bought DVD, has no English subs on it which is dissapointing.

Want to rip it, load the .IFO/VOBs etc into something

Add a new subtitle track, (at least one anyway)

Then burn it to DVDR.

So I want to change the original DVD contents as little as possible, would rather not have to demux the whole thing, or re-do all the menus etc.

It has a subtitle track for the hard of hearing so perhaps translating that is an easier step then adding a whole new one?

Anyone recommend which tools to use? Someone said IFOEdit, another Pro Station (can it open an existing .ifo?)

Any feedback is appreciated.

Acc

[Accident]

Right, SubRip did the OCR trick and saved it our as a .srp or .txt file, this could quite easily be translated in any text editor.

Outstanding things to solve:

A) Would like to view these subs with the movie with relative ease, so I can check them, and fix them up

B) Merge them into the original .VOBs again, and press a DVDR, run DVD2SVCD, knot etc etc.


With A it sounded like I could just convert them to .sub and play in MicroDVD, this however don't seem to work. They convert okay, using either SubAdjust, or MicroDVDs own converter. Only way I can pick them is using the "QuickINI" mode, pick the first .VOB file, then the subtitle, it's happy about it, starts playing but no subs show up (not even in fullscreen). Not particularly impressed with this played in general but I dont know of any others that can in theory play a HD DVD (.iso mounted with Daemon Tools) and seperate subtitle file.


No idea about B yet.

Accident

[Accident]

Seems to me like a lot of people want to do this, and I would imagine that more need for it will come.

A lot of anime and other movies now come on DVD, and if I went out and bought the original, and fansubbed it, I would want the exactl same thing again, with subs on dvdr, even though you could still do the usual rips from it as well.

Naturally I don't want to rebuild any menus and so on, someone suggested Maestro but I dont know if it can read an existing .IFO. Can any of the authouring software?

Accident

[Schultz]

Originally posted by Accident

A) Would like to view these subs with the movie with relative ease, so I can check them, and fix them up


I think you can use DVDSubber from http://www.dvdsubber.com to play your VOB's off your harddrive with an external subtitle track to test it.. And actually i just came up with this idea but I don't know if it will work at all or not because i don't know how exactly the program works..

You can check out this programs which allows you to add subtitles to a dvd during playback from a device and the DVD Player don't know anything else.
http://www.roundelay.net/dvdsynth/prerelease.html

what i was pondering if you can do this and add the subtitles and then try and use a DVD Ripper and maybe the streams you have will contain the subs you need.. Just a LONG shot.. It probably won't work but just a theory..

[Accident]

Yeah dvdsubber has been recommended to me, got it up and running but can't confirm that the subtitles are there yet (working over vnc from work).

There is a VOBse or similar names program, that will replace a subtitle within a VOB with a new which sounds neat, but I would rather not strip out something useful (and they are, compared to the size they take) so I will have to re-author the .VOBs. The question is to find a software that lets me open an already existing DVD to author, as I don't want to go through and re-create the menus..

If worse come to worse I can code it, but I want to make sure it hasn't been done before as I hate to waste my spare time :)

Accident

[Schultz]

I don't think DVDSynth replaces a subtitle stream i think it adds to it.. But not sure about that since i haven't tested it at all.

And does dvdsubber not show up at all or just the subs? i don't know what mode dvdsubber shows it in but i don't think VNC can send overlays.. but then again don't hold me to that.. not really sure..

[Accident]

Yeah, actually that DVDSYnth is probably a fine solution for the playback/testing of subtitles should dvdsubber not work.

And no vnc can't show overlays, but you can start a media player (grabs the overlay) and just move it to the side, then start whatever player you want (wont get the overlay since mediaplayer has it) and you can click in the window to refresh/get snapshots. Not ideal but hey :)

Accident

[Schultz]

Hey what ever works.. ;o) but DVDSubber might need the overlay to show subtitles who knows.. though hopefully it will work when you are actually at the computer.

[Accident]

Ok, lesse now. DVDsubber didn't seem to want to display any subtitles, not entirely sure why.

DVDSynch would probably most people best bet, however, I mounted the .ISO of a dvd with Daemon Tools. The docs say you can not use it with a virtual device, but it certainly lets me, I can then import the .dvdsub file (converted from .ssa) and it even plays the movie (In powerDVD) but alas, no subtitles appear at all. Shame, seems nice otherwise.

I did manage to get MicroDVD to show subtitles in the end, it seems it is rediculously sensitive to the subtitle text file. All sorts of "no blank lines" and "they have to be exactly incremented by one" and so on. Sheesh. Subtitles are roughly out by 4 minutes, and just trying to adjust it, but there appears to be a bug in SubAdjust where it just makes for bunch of subs at 0,0,0, even though I subtract with a number less than the first subtitles starting time.

Accident

[Schultz]

You might wanna try SubResync for editing your sub files it does support MDVD sub files. And so far its been stable for me when i do changes to all my sub files that i have..

[Accident]

Ok SubResync seems to be a util part of VobSub. Loads it fine, but I don't seem to be able to adjust it by the -3:50 that I need to. It's just a text file so it wont take me more than a few minutes to write some code to do this.

Accident

[Accident]

Even though MicroDVD seems to be the only player that shows subs, there is weirdness there too. I brought down the first sub from 4min 50s to be at 50s, and the first subtitle appears, when playing the movie, 10 minutes from the end of the film.

Oh well...

Maybe I'll look at how to generate the proper subs and getting them into the .VOBs agains.

Acc

[Accident]

Most amusing, tried "mplayer" which seriously just works, and I should have tried it much sooner. However I discover something that could be affecting things...

The movie starts to play and subs appear where they should, but suddenly the timer/counter gets to about 03:18 and resets. Then of course all the subs are incorrect! Seems to be something inherent with the .VOBs themselves. (And its near the start sof VOB1, not when it changes VOBs).

Peculiar.

Acc

[Schultz]

Hum have you tried MPC from Gabest? It supports everything that Vobsub does and i don't think it resets on the vobid changes.. but who knows that could be a problem with the DirectShow filter giving the time to the player.

[Accident]

Basically got DVDSubber to work, its rather good for timing etc. Not very good player (no brightness control and all that). VOBs 2-5 just work from the original subs ripped.

VOB1 is a mess, had to re-sync the subs 4-5 times during it.

Perhaps the easiest is just to replace the original subs in the VIB with that binary patcher program I stumbled across... if only I remember where I saw it..

Acc

[Dr_JRE]

I have a similar problem to Accident's. I have a DVD5 that has horribly translated english subs.
I've read the guides concerning subtitles and DVD authoring and came across a possible solution, that has a problem.
Reading the "DVD authoring an IFOedit".
I gather, you take the audio stream (.ac3), video stream (.m2v) and substream (.sup) and use IFOedit to make a DVDR.
My question comes down to the substream (.sup) file:
is there a way to either:
1) convert the edited subrip file (.sub .srt .txt) to a substream (.sup)
2) edit the substream itself
3) somehow 'inject' the corrected .srt into the .sup

[rui]

That is a good question. I too have that problem.
I tried to import into Maestro the sub file, but no good.
Does anyone know a way to convert a sub file to a STL, SON or SCR type (the ones Maestro can import)?

[rui]

Ok, solution. :)

By reading these interesting threads http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=27108 and http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=27322 , by using the LoadPlugin("Path\to\textsub.vdf") and TextSub("path\to\subtitlefile.ssa"), and AddBorders(0,valuetop,0,valuebottom), the subs get merged in the black borders of the DVD (if it is 16/9).
So, when converting to CCE, i convert the AVI and join the subs at the same time, but not in the main picture but in the black borders below the movie.
So i don't have to import into Maestro any sub file :)

[Dr_JRE]

A good solution, but not exactly what i'm looking for.
I have a DVD5 from Hong Kong and all I want to do is edit the grammar/spelling of the english subs.
I want no downsampling, no conversion to SVDC/VCD, no sub size changes, sub color changes, or sub timing changes.
I want the exact same DVD only with edited english subs.
The release of SubToSup could have been a solution, but I'm unable to edit the grammar/spelling of the VobSub-exrtracted .sub or .idx file.

[WPELLE]

I'm also looking for a sollution to this problem. Been trying to find a program that would add my edited subs back into the .vobs but no avail.

[frinkofox]

I am trying to do the same here - though no luck again

I think it's time the Doom9.org writes a guide on how
to add additional subtitles to the vob files..:)

[[Woofie]]

I found this page : http://www.geocities.com/saorne/

This will let you update the subtitles inside a vob. It will not let you add a language and it is pre alpha version. It seems the author has stopped developing the program.

A real shame, because it has/had real potential...

[lonedriftr]

I'm doing the same thing with a hong kong dvd, the only problem with the Saorne program is timing. The DVD i'm working with doesn't have proper timing with either english or chinese subtitle track, so I have to retime the entire dvd.

I haven't tested my method, but what I think will work is with a program you can get off doom9, MaestroSBT. It's under the full software page under subtitles... "Converts subtitles from SSA scripts to formats readable by DVD Maestro, Scenarist,I-Author and submux. Renders the bitmaps."

I don't have a full guide since I lack a DVD burner, but here's my idea. I think my method will be to rip the full DVD to my drive, time the whole dvd to a ssa file, convert the ssa file with MaestroSBT, and reauthor the DVD with Spruce's DVDMaestro. The only problems I forsee is proper menu placement and all those extras. I figure this is where IfoEdit will come into play.

However, I guess the Saorne program is what you're looking for if the subtitle timing is correct. If not I think MaestroSBT is what you're looking for once you fansub it and will lead you in the right direction. Let me know if this helps.

[[Woofie]]

in reply to lonedriftr:

that's possible ofcourse. But you will have to encode the movie to make the vobs again, which possibly leads to decreased quality. With the program you can get at the link i posted, there's no need to encode as it updates the vob's itself.

Unfortunatly the program is far from complete. I tested it and it does work, it updates the vobs with altered bitmaps.

If only this program could add subtitle streams and import bitmaps by timecodes; it would be the perfect solution.

- - -

Cool, you updated your post as i was typing this one :P

If the saorne program had only come with some source, it had been possible to improve it.

[Chibi Jasmin]

Look here, maybe it helps: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=45206