[slimmy]

Hi,

here's what I want to do: rip a commercial DVD, manipulate the subtitle files or add ones if there are none. This is because I teach film and most of the films I use have no English subtitles. I'm not going to sell or distribute.

How can I do this with what software? Any guides out there?

[bmedina]

Assuming you're recompressing the movie to save space, there are two ways to do this:
1) Embed the subtitles into the video itself. Most DVD ripping programs that handle subtitles use this method. It sacrifices video quality for ease of use.
2) Use TitleLab to insert the subtitles as a Quicktime text track, separate from the video track. You'll have to find a subtitle file in the appropriate format from one of the websites dedicated to such things. It does take some time, but the video will be of noticeably better quality.

If you're not recompressing the movie, you can just rip the entire disc, subtitles and all, with one of the various available apps.

[slimmy]

Sorry, you've lost me.

I've ripped the DVD, but how do I extract subtitle files and edit them, or add new ones? All the subtitle sw out there (including TitleLab) won't extract the subtitle files from BVOB files.

Slim

[Uncle Skeleton]

There's no way to do this for Mac. Subtitle streams on DVDs are not text, they're bitmap images. Some windows apps extract these and use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to generate text files from these, which you can then edit obviously (and as I understand it, you usually run the output through a spell checker and spend a fair amount of time doing so). Work has been done to try to bring this capability to a mac app using open source OCR libraries, but it was abandonned because the quality of open source OCR was just too poor. Fortunately, there are a number of websites that let you download the finished subtitle files for most commercial DVDs. I only know of one called dvd.box.sk off the top of my head. The closest thing you can do to extracting the subs from the DVD is to use a program that prints the bitmap images onto the video before encoding. I've never tried this because it's distasteful for obvious reasons, but I believe ffmpegX and MPEG2DecX are among the apps that support this feature.

[slimmy]

So, if I understand you, no commercial DVD films can be ripped and subtitled? I don't want to edit subtitles already there, I want to add English ones somehow. SO I wonder if I can add subtitles, not change ones already available.

I don't doubt that this what you say is true about bitmapped titles on commercial films, but why then are there so many (PC) subtitle extractors out there that aren't OCR connected? Apparently some subtitle tracks are in the form of text files.

Slim

[bmedina]

Originally posted by slimmy:
So, if I understand you, no commercial DVD films can be ripped and subtitled? I don't want to edit subtitles already there, I want to add English ones somehow. SO I wonder if I can add subtitles, not change ones already available.

I don't doubt that this what you say is true about bitmapped titles on commercial films, but why then are there so many (PC) subtitle extractors out there that aren't OCR connected? Apparently some subtitle tracks are in the form of text files.

No, they are all image files that just get overlayed on top of the video. All commercial DVDs can be ripped and subtitled. You just need the appropriate file.

If you want to add English subtitles that aren't on the DVD, it doesn't matter that you can't extract them, since they don't exist. You'll either need to find someone who has made them or make them yourself in TitleLaB.

[slimmy]

OK, great. I can add subtitles that aren't there - that's what I wanted to do. But how do I do this? TitleLab can't open VOB files, and I don't know how to add subtitles to them.

Do I have to change the original DVD files to Quicktime files and work with DVD Studio or something?

Any primers about adding subtitles to ripped DVD files? I want to put English subtitles on ripped files.

Slim

[Uncle Skeleton]

look to DVD Studio Pro. It's the only software I know of that supports subtitles and original content. I've never tried it, but I'm pretty sure it has it's own subtitle format, but it might also support QT text format. Be forwarned that the author of TitleLab has said that it was not intended for making subs from scratch, only for touching up Windows sub formats and turning them into QT Text formats.

[k_munic]

another way (cheaper):

rip the dvd.
make dv streams out of it (e.g. dvdxdv, versiontracker)

import the files in an edit prg like iMovie/FCE
add your personally designed, handwritten subtitels ;-)

burn a dvd.

this way, you can use just parts of the movies, in case you need just exceptions...- setting chapter marks, it makes the dvd very usable for presentations etc.

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over here in europe such a procedure is illegal: you crack a copy protection and you change the content of the movie (adding subtitles)... don't get caught ;-)