permanent SSA subs

[nightwolf]

I have encoded my movie in avi format and my subs in ssa. Is there a way to add permanent ssa subs to the avi without having to re-encode it?

[wiflye81]

it's possible but you have to use ogm or mkv as container, transmuxing it's very fast.

[unmei]

@wiflye81 : that's "soft subtitles" (you can turn them on and off). And you can do it to AVI too i think (the program is called AVI-mux or similar, but i never did it and its probably a good idea to use a newer container: that way you already suspect it could use "advanced features" :))

To get "hard burned" subtitles (no turning off) there is no other way than re-encoding.

[wiflye81]

ok, I misunderstand nightwolf.

[Liisachan]

If you use Huffyuv, you can hardsub SSA without (practically) recompressing
(1) Rip DVD into Huffyuv (lossless)
(2) Hard sub Huffyuv as compressing into Xvid etc.

Ohterwise: hardsubbing is double-lossy (recompressing what is already compressed) and not recommended for many reasons, tho hardsubbing has its forte too.

to hardsub SSA...
* Use textsub.vdf + VirtualDub / VirtualDubMod
NOTE: In this case bsically you can use: AVI / OGM / MKV,
but if you d like to use Vorbis/AAC/AC3 as audio, then MKV is it...
If you use AVI, you have to use MP3, and you cannot have Chapters etc.

FYI: to softsub SSA...
* If you want to use AVI, then use Submux (NOTE: Audio should be CBR MP3) (not recommended because it s not x-platform)
* If you want to use MKV, use MKVmerger0.6.0(+mmg) or MatroskaMuxer+GraphEdit
* If you want to use OGM, wait for a while... OGM doesnot support Soft SSA now but probably it will in the future


MOV can softsub too, I heard--but i dont know how

[unmei]

just wanted to add you can use VBLE codec instead of HuffYUV to stay all the way in YV12,
plus VBLE compresses to ca 30% smaller files (YV12 itself is already less data than YUY2, which HuffYUV uses) is still lossles (if your processing chain is pure YV12) and on my system it's also a little faster than HuffYUV (but not a important amount, maybe 5% :)

When i first tested VBLE about a year ago, it didnt work and i forgot about. but recently someone on this forum pointed me at it again and since then i have never used huffYUV again :)