Handling subtitles for files sourced from DVD

[PStepanas]

My DVD player recently broke down, so I decided to rip some files from a DVD to my PC, then copy them to my T3.

I settled on using Handbrake, but the embedded subtitle track wasn't accessible on the T3 (it was under VLC on my PC).

A bit of searching indicates that the T3 can only play subtitles from separate .SRT files. (True, or is there a plugin?)

So the question is, how do I pull the subtitle track out of the .M4V file created by Handbrake into an .SRT file?

I'm hoping there's a setting in Handbrake (which I'm still not that familiar with) to do it simultaneously with .M4V file creation, but perhaps I need to run the file through a different program.

(Possibly I should be posting this to a Handbrake forum...)

Thanks for any info.

[MrQuade]

Internal subtitles should work as well. I will test a couple of files I have just to make sure though.

Maybe try them in an . MKV container instead of .MP4? I'm not really sure if that will make a difference though.

External. Sub/.Idx subtitles do not work, but as you mentioned, external .Srt subtitles will work just fine.

[MrQuade]

Sorry, I don't think I actually have any subtitles in any of my .mp4 files, but the ones in .mkv's most certainly do work.

I don't know much about ripping subtitles from DVD to files, and am not sure if there are any tricks to it or not. (I recall reading that subs were tricky to extract, and required some kind of OCR....really not sure). Setting as they work in VLC, the subs should be ok on theory though.

One of the media file gurus can help you I am sure

[PStepanas]

I'm hoping one of the "media file gurus" can respond, since the software I've tried so far hasn't worked.

I can't even tell which is the subtitle file! Is it *.ts.sc?

I feel like this should be much more straightforward...

So, short of converting all my .m4v files (I have a lot, by now) to .mkv files, what's a simple program that will extract the subtitles (possibly multiple tracks to choose from) from an .m4v file and write files my T3 can use? And what do I rename these to?

I tried Subtitle and Chapter Extractor, part of the Video Updater Tools. It was able to batch process (which is excellent), but it produced three files from each .m4v, and they don't work with the T3 as is. The files it built were: *.idx, *.sub and _eng.srt However, the .srt file only contains chapter information (no subtitles).

I also tried Subtitle Workshop, but I couldn't find an "export to .SRT" function.

I could really use some help here, as I'm running out of hard drive space!

[MrQuade]

I can't even tell which is the subtitle file! Is it *.ts.sc?

I feel like this should be much more straightforward...

The subtitles are contained within the .ts file itself.

I reckon you don't want to convert any other file types to . ts though.

The files it built were: *.idx, *.sub and _eng.srt However, the .srt file only contains chapter information (no subtitles).

I also tried Subtitle Workshop, but I couldn't find an "export to .SRT" function.

I could really use some help here, as I'm running out of hard drive space!

The .sub and .Idx subtitle format file won't work with the Wiz as I mentioned earlier, so don't worry about them.

You either need to find some way to extract those subtitkes as .srt (can't help with suggestions there), or just remux the .m4v files as .MKV (again, not sure what the best tool is for that). Remuxing should be a much faster processs than reencoding the files from scratch.

Hopefully the media gurus can chime in.

[MrQuade]

Ok, I have done a bit of digging.

When you rip a DVD using Handbrake as you have done, you will end up with vobsub subtitles. These are not text subtitles, but rather images that are just placed over the video when playing. When you extract those subtitles, you end up with .sub .idx style subtitles that the Wiz can't play.

I also tested an .mp4 with embedded text (.srt) subtitles, and it did work fine, so it is not that embedded subtitles in .mp4 files that are the problem. Rather the problem is that the embedded subtitles are vobsub.


What you need to do is extract and convert the vobsub subtitles from your .mp4 files and create the text based .srt file that the Wiz can understand.

This needs to be done via OCR software. I found Subtitle Edit worked and was recommended by others.

Just open your .mp4 file in Subtitle Edit, then select the subtitle track to decode and hit the OCR button. It will go through and convert all the images to text, but may need some help with some names and the like that it doesn't recognise.

You can then just close the OCR page and save the .srt file.

Easy peasy.

You could then go and re-mux the text subtitles back into the original file if you wanted to. I found a little tool called mymp4boxgui that can do that job.

[netmask]

Quite often someone else had done the leg work and converted the image file to SRT. If you do a search for English Subtitles <name of movie> you will quite likely find half a dozen sites. If you see your title with "DVD rip" try that. Otherwise you will have to do the conversion and inevitably a fit of text editing.

To extract subs from a MKV file the best program is gMKVExtractGUI. So if you have a MP4 file with embedded soft subs put it in a MKV container and then use gMKVExtractGUI to extract the subs

[MrQuade]

Quite often someone else had done the leg work and converted the image file to SRT. If you do a search for English Subtitles <name of movie> you will quite likely find half a dozen sites.

Will that work with framerate differences between Region 4 and Region 1 DVDs though? I presume that his will be R4 PAL and thus run slightly faster than any R1 NTSC subtitle rips (which I'd assume would be more common)

[Altimes]

In a similar situation, I simply rip the DVD to ISO. Then let the wiz play the ISO as a DVD. It is a little bit slow in menu navigation but less hassle that extracting all the discrete episodes etc.
You do have to rename the ISO images to something human..

Just in case it hadn't been thought of as an approach.

[raymondjpg]

Quite often someone else had done the leg work and converted the image file to SRT. If you do a search for English Subtitles <name of movie> you will quite likely find half a dozen sites.

Will that work with framerate differences between Region 4 and Region 1 DVDs though? I presume that his will be R4 PAL and thus run slightly faster than any R1 NTSC subtitle rips (which I'd assume would be more common)

It's relatively straightforward to try using subtitle workshop, which OP has accessed. Even if a DVD subtitle rip goes slightly out of sync as the video progresses, there is a feature under edit|timings where you can adjust first and last spoken lines to expand or contract the srt file total duration to fit the video. There are better subtitle tools to do this, but if subtitle workshop does the job then go with that. I couldn't find a similar feature in Subtitle Edit, but as you have indicated it is by far the quickest and most painless way of generating a srt file from sub/idx. Subtitle Edit also has an option under the synchronisation menu to change frame rate, so if that is all that is needed for an srt file accessed from the web then one could try that to see if it works. There is also a framerate conversion option in subtitle workshop, I haven't ever used the feature myself, so don't know how effective it might be.

[netmask]

Quite often someone else had done the leg work and converted the image file to SRT. If you do a search for English Subtitles <name of movie> you will quite likely find half a dozen sites.

Will that work with framerate differences between Region 4 and Region 1 DVDs though? I presume that his will be R4 PAL and thus run slightly faster than any R1 NTSC subtitle rips (which I'd assume would be more common)

You can add in your search 24fps or 25fps and it will give a selection.

Here's and example site
https://www.opensubtitles.org/en/search ... ovie-47528
and another
https://www.podnapisi.net/

[prl]

...
I can't even tell which is the subtitle file! Is it *.ts.sc?
...

As others have said, no, not that one.

Slightly off-topic, but hopefully useful:

Code: Select all

Recordings consist of several files, recorded at various points in time.

Here is a sample listing of the files use to record one event:

Name                                 Date    Time   Size
-----------------------------------  ------  -----  ----------
20140814 2122 - ABC3 - rage.eit      Aug 14  21:21         418
20140814 2122 - ABC3 - rage.ts       Aug 14  22:35  2131650032
20140814 2122 - ABC3 - rage.ts.ap    Aug 14  22:35      146016
20140814 2122 - ABC3 - rage.ts.cuts  Aug 14  22:35          36
20140814 2122 - ABC3 - rage.ts.meta  Aug 29  23:46         164
20140814 2122 - ABC3 - rage.ts.sc    Aug 14  22:35     2010320


==== .eit FILES ====

.eit files are optional. If available, they contain the event data from
the EPG cache, for the event recorded. The payload contains a dump of an
EIT extended event descriptor


==== .ts FILES ====

.ts files contain a subset of transport stream packets that are relevant to
the recorded service, including PMT and PAT.

They don't have a private header.


==== .ap FILES ====

Stored offsets and PTS values. They are collected while recording. Only 
GOP starts are stored.

File format is network-ordered (i.e. big endian), each entry contains
two 64 bit values (PTS, offset).

PTS values are not corrected (i.e. they aren't zero-based), offsets are
relative to the beginning of the file.


==== .cuts FILES ====

Also network ordered, they contain a 64bit value (PTS) and 32bit value
(type) for each cut. (If you want file offsets, use the .ap file to look up
the PTS values.)

Type is:

0 - 'in' point
1 - 'out' point
2 - mark
3 - last play position

If the first 'out'-point is not preceded by an 'in'-point, there is an 
implicit 'in' point at zero.

If there is no final 'out' point, then the end-of-file is an implicit
'out'-point.

Note that the PTS values are zero-based and continuous. If you want absolute
PTS values, you can either:
 - use the .ap file, find discontinuities, and interpolate between the APs
 - or just use the first PTS value as an offset, and work around PTS
   wraparounds. (simple method)


==== .meta FILES ====

.meta files have currently up to 10 lines:

<service reference>
<name>
<description>
<recording time>
[<tags>]
[<length>]
[<filesize>]
[<service data>]
[<packet size>]
[<scrambled>]

The <service reference> contains the Service-ID of the recorded service. With
that ID, you can find the PMT and the elementary streams. As a backup method,
just find the first available PMT and use that.

Strings are always UTF-8 encoded.

<name> and <description> contain the event name and short description of the
recorded event.

<recording time> contains the start time of the recording as UNIX integer time.

<tags> is a space-delimited list of tags assigned to this recording.

<length> is the length of the recording, in PTS-units (1/90000s).

<filesize> was the filesize at the time the length was calculated, so you can
validate if this is still up-to-date or must be recalculated.

<service data> is a private service data cache string that identifies various
aspects of the stream, including audio and video PIDs.

<packet size> is the size of the transport stream packets

<scrambled> is used to indicate whether the service is scrambled


==== .sc FILES ====

.sc files contain an undocumented internal mmapped structure cache.

[PStepanas]

Thanks for all the suggestions (and for the explanation of what's in each of the files the T3 uses).

So, I'm still to check for .SRT subtitles on the DVDs themselves, but Subtitle Edit seems to be doing a pretty good job of converting .VOB for an .SRT file -- though some of the functionality is still a mystery.

I tried a few different things first, none of which worked very well: remuxing an .m4v file containing a .vob stream to an .mkv didn't help. I didn't try creating an .srt stream and remuxing it back into the .m4v file (or an .mkv) -- not much point.

My final solution was simply opening each video file in Subtitle Edit and letting it do OCR. Unfortunately, it takes a bit of time to sort out all the corrections.

If anyone has experience with Subtitle Edit (SubEd), you might be able to help me with some of the following "bugs":

1. SubEd can't find my VLC installation (slightly non-standard location) and won't let me select it when I specify the path. Could this be because I'm not running a 64-bit version of VLC? (I don't know if I am or not.)

2. If I try to add a word to the user dictionary during an OCR prompt, the word is instead replaced by the previous word added to the dictionary! It works okay after the scan is complete or back in the SubEd window, so I'm now postponing these kinds of additions. Interestingly, adding to the name list seems to work fine.

3. The terminology for the noise/name list is very ambiguous. I think it should be renamed to be the case-sensitive portion of the user dictionary (since that's what it seems to be).

4. Here's the big one: when I run a spell check back in the SubEd window (or a search for strange characters), I can't find a way of viewing the graphic for that subtitle short of reloading the video file and rerunning OCR (though I can change its start point). How can I view the subtitle graphic in the normal SubEdit window? (Is it just because of my VLC problem in point 1?)

5. Is it possible to run a spell check or Search while still in the OCR window? (Particularly if point 4 is not possible.)


I'll consider downloading .srt files, as suggested, if this whole process takes too long per file...

Thanks again (and in advance for any help with Subtitle Edit).

[peteru]

I think there is a srt downloader plugin. No idea if it works, but perhaps you can investigate.

[MrQuade]

So, I'm still to check for .SRT subtitles on the DVDs themselves, but Subtitle Edit seems to be doing a pretty good job of converting .VOB for an .SRT file -- though some of the functionality is still a mystery.

DVDs only ever contain vobsub, never .srt subtitles.

[raymondjpg]

If anyone has experience with Subtitle Edit (SubEd), you might be able to help me with some of the following "bugs":

1. SubEd can't find my VLC installation (slightly non-standard location) and won't let me select it when I specify the path. Could this be because I'm not running a 64-bit version of VLC? (I don't know if I am or not.)

2. If I try to add a word to the user dictionary during an OCR prompt, the word is instead replaced by the previous word added to the dictionary! It works okay after the scan is complete or back in the SubEd window, so I'm now postponing these kinds of additions. Interestingly, adding to the name list seems to work fine.

3. The terminology for the noise/name list is very ambiguous. I think it should be renamed to be the case-sensitive portion of the user dictionary (since that's what it seems to be).

4. Here's the big one: when I run a spell check back in the SubEd window (or a search for strange characters), I can't find a way of viewing the graphic for that subtitle short of reloading the video file and rerunning OCR (though I can change its start point). How can I view the subtitle graphic in the normal SubEdit window? (Is it just because of my VLC problem in point 1?)

5. Is it possible to run a spell check or Search while still in the OCR window? (Particularly if point 4 is not possible.)

It's been a while since I used Subtitle Edit, but I'll have a go at your questions.

1. I don't have VLC installed and have always avoided it in favour of other media players. My Subtitle Edit installation plays videos OK possibly because I have LAV filters installed. Your VLC installation should indicate if it is x86 or x64 in the help about window. Presence in the Program Files directory would indicate an x64 installation and in Program Files (x86) an x86 installation.

2. I encountered this bug after updating Subtitle Edit to version 3.5.2. You can download version 3.5.1 from the same page as 3.5.2 at https://github.com/SubtitleEdit/subtitleedit/releases. Version 3.5.1 does not appear to have the bug.

3. Tell the developer, along with reporting the user dictionary bug! I doubt any change will be made to the terminology for the "noise/name list". It;s been like that for as long as I can recall.

4. I don't think you can do what you want here. You are either working on an OCR or text file, and I can't see any provision to compare the two. Again, you could make that suggestion to the developer, but I suspect it would be outside the [current] scope of the application.

5. I haven't seen any software package that runs a spell check or search on an OCR stream. Not to say that there couldn't be one somewhere, but I wouldn't hold your breath.

Just to add, from my experience, once you have run a few OCR sessions on Subtitle Edit and built up the user dictionary, there should be fewer pauses in the parsing of the OCR stream. If you are parsing subtitles from a series of videos with like content, the same should apply to the names list.

[netmask]

As I mentioned earlier most movies and TV series are well represented on the various subtitle sites. With a bit of searching you can find 23,976 or 25 fps versions. You can even find 'Chapter' files for most movies. A few years ago I wrote a srt for Dr Cyclops 1940's scifi movie as the only sub available, none on the disc, was in Spanish. So it was a manual slow translation job, I do have a smattering of Spanish so that helped along with the full screen play of the dialog also freely available on line. It is also possible to convert a 23,976 to 25 fps and visa versa in most Subtitle programs.

[PStepanas]

Thanks for the responses!

So I did find one work-around for the OCR display/spellcheck issue: run the file through two instances of SubEd and only leave the OCR window in one of them!

I thought I saw something about being able to export pre-OCR images to images on an HTML page, but can't find it in SubEd. Might be one of the other programs I looked at.

It does seem like I should figure out how to download SRT files, though. Especially since some DVDs don't have any subtitles at all (eg: The Good Wife Season 6).

For the record, I've now also tried converting recorded .ts files to MPEG4 with Handbrake -- because the F1 is coming up and my T3 Hard Drive's nearly full! Works pretty well, except that Handbrake can't find the closed captions (apparently, this is a well-known omission). So I downloaded CCExtractor, and pulled out the CCs while Handbrake was working. Naturally, I wanted to remove the front and end padding from the recording, which Handbrake does easily. To resynchronise the closed captions, I load the SRT file into Sutitle Editor, remove anything before the start timecode and after the end timecode, then shift all the subtitles back by the amount of the start offsets. Back on the T3, it works okay! Though I could probably shift another half-second or so earlier. While in SubEd, I can also convert upper case CCs to Proper case (which CCExtractor failed to do), correct spelling, and even remove ad subtitles (searching for "<font" works pretty well, and the spell check picks up most others -- plus, look for 30s gaps between subtitles (manually), as many ads have no CCs at all) -- though that's really a waste of time for a movie I'll delete as soon as I've watched it.

So I'm getting close to a full suite of tools. Just need to find a VOB image extractor and then some decent editing software to cut out ads for shows I want to keep (something that can keep motion vectors, and fade to/from black in the middle of a GOP without reencoding the entire GOP). And while I'm making wishes, how about something that automagically removes watermarks!

Thanks, again, for everyone's help.

[PStepanas]

Silly me.

I found the export to HTML option: you have to right click one of the subtitle lines in the OCR window.

Only problem is I have to manually change the background colour to something darker (Blue, I reckon).

[dRdoS7]

Hi,

So I downloaded CCExtractor, and pulled out the CCs while Handbrake was working. Naturally, I wanted to remove the front and end padding from the recording, which Handbrake does easily. To resynchronise the closed captions, I load the SRT file into Sutitle Editor, remove anything before the start timecode and after the end timecode, then shift all the subtitles back by the amount of the start offsets.

If you download ProjectX, you can trim the files, and then demux the streams, inc. subtitles (as srt). That will save you having to re-sync the subs. Remux A & V as mpg, then run through Handbrake.

dRdoS7

[netmask]

The author has not updated ProjectX to handle H264 or MP4 files so only MPEG2TS files ie standard definition TV if any of your files are these formats then TSDoctor is the newer substitute - it is payware but the first month is free. It has regular updates.

[dRdoS7]

Hi,

The author has not updated ProjectX to handle H264 or MP4 files so only MPEG2TS files ie standard definition TV if any of your files are these formats then TSDoctor is the newer substitute - it is payware but the first month is free. It has regular updates.

Yes, sorry, I forgot we have more than mpg now.

dRdoS7