MKV & Subtitle changes?

[benten2000]

I've just completed my first HQ anime Divx encode which has turned out very well, the subtitles have been converted to SRT format which will be muxed into a final MKV when completed.

What I would like to know is, can these subs be altered (font, colour, position) while still remaining soft or is this only possible when they are hard subs that are placed directly onto the encoded footage?

Cheers for the help people.

[unmei]

While SRT has theoretically positioning and a html-like tag to set font color, this format is not really specified anywhere and you risk that players/filters will not understand these things.

As you are already muxing into MKV, why don't you use the SSA format for subtitles? SSA is fully supported in MKV and it can do all what you want and these things are specified properly there. You can use Subrip or many other subtitle editors to convert from SRT to SSA. After you converted to SSA, i recommend you define styles for the different text appearances you want - this way you only have to assign a style to a line, not putting all the formatting on every line.

[Liisachan]

Welcome to the weird world ;) If you'd like to use the same customized font, color, etc. for all the subs in your anime, this method should be one of the easiest:

(1) Custom-install VobSub_2.23.exe so that "VobSub for DirectShow" will not be installed but the "Utilities" will be installed. (Important: Do not install "VobSub for DirectShow" here.)

(2) Go to \Program Files\Gabest\VobSub and run subresync.exe, and open your SRT.

(3) Hit [Edit...], select the font, primary (=face) color, outline color, back (=shadow) color, outline width, shadow width, etc. etc.
Close the box by hitting [Apply] [OK]

(4) Select the first (or any one) line of the subs by clicking its "Time" column, and you'll see the preview at the bottom. Maximize the main window so the preview will be bigger enough. If you don't like your font settings, go back to (3), else go to (5).

(5) Hit [Save as...] and save your subs as "Advanced Sub Station Alpha (*.ass)" after checking "Unicode output." (Change the extension .srt to .ass)

(6) Now you have an .ass file--very roughly, it's a "rich text SRT." Run mmg.exe, open your vid, your audio and this .ass thingy, and mux them all to get an MKV. The resulted file will have togglable subs just like embedded SRT, but the subs now have the styles you specified in (3).

It won't take more than 10 minutes to do (1) - (6).
Technically the .ass file you get in (5) is not ideal because the parameters called PlayResX and PlayResY are not specified properly. But the subs show up as you expect anyway and you can safely ignore this problem for now. Even experienced fansubbers often use incorrect PlayResX/Y, so...

Like unmei said, you could actually typeset each line differently, and you could even change the style in the middle of the line, i.e.
A line which looks like this is very easy.

Furthermore, unlike SRT, SSA/ASS supports overlapped time-stamps, which you will find very nice/impotant/essential if you go on subbing...

But I suppose just converting SRT to SSA/ASS would be a good first step. :)

[benten2000]

Big thanx people for the great info.
Will have a go with it asap

:)