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Add SRT subtitles to DVD / VIDEO_TS without re-encoding #

Steps

0. Rip DVD to VIDEO_TS

1. Run DVDStyler and select new project options (e.g., DVD-9 (8.5GB), NTSC 720x480, AC3, etc) based on values of source VOBs (check with ffmpeg or ffprobe) > OK > No template

2. Click DVD > Add > Titles from DVD... select VIDEO_TS directory > Open

3. Right click "Menu 1" in the Titleset Manager > Delete > Yes

4. Right click "Title 1" in the Titleset Manager > Properties...

   1. Verify that video and audio are set to "Copy" (which will skip reencoding) and check "do not remultiplex/transcode" if possible (even if it is grayed out, only multiplexing will be performed)

   2. Delete "call last menu;" from "Post commands:" (to prevent "Cannot jump to menu" error)

   3. Click the green plus symbol > select your SRT file > Open (had to resave SRT in Notepad with UTF-8 encoding to resolve "Error 42 -- Illegal byte sequence -- decoding subtitle file at approx line...")

   4. Click the ... button next to "Subtitle: srt"

   5. Select language, charset, font face/size (the default 28pt Arial worked best, but there are many fans of PT Sans Narrow Bold), and fill color (light gray was more pleasing than the default yellow) > OK > OK

5. File > Burn DVD... > select "just generate" to create new VIDEO_TS with subtitles > Start

Notes

Previous instructions to losslessly convert and merge desired VOBs from VIDEO_TS into a single MPG or VOB file via:

• VOB2MPG,
• DVDVob2Mpg,
• MPEG Streamclip (drag desired VOBs into window > "Do you want to open this stream as a DVD?" > Yes > File > Save As... > set filename for new combined VOB > Save), or
• ffmpeg -i 'concat:VTS_01_1.VOB|VTS_01_2.VOB|VTS_01_3.VOB' -acodec copy -vcodec copy combined.mpg
• (but not VOBMerge or cat *.vob > merged.vob, the output of which had problems with the playback timeline and location. See VOB files reporting wrong playing time and DVDVob2Mpg's homepage. The latter states in part, "VOB and VRO files contain the MPEG, but also various other data, and headers may be incomplete or wrong etc. Because of that, VOB and VRO files typically don't play well using media players ... Typical problems are: timing issues, not being able to show the progress properly, no way to skip forward, crashes, missing audio, audio off sync, only showing the first 5 seconds of the video etc.")

and adding it to a DVDStyler project generally allowed checking "do not remultiplex/transcode". However, the new process (using the entire VIDEO_TS directory) completes in almost exactly the same time and produces virtually identical results even if the box cannot be checked, as reencoding is not performed.

Another advantage of the new directions: obviating the need to deal with preexisting subpicture streams, which otherwise may need to be deleted before adding new subtitles:

Removing existing substream from a combined VOB or MPG:

0. Attempting to generate DVD returns "ERR: [duplicate substream ID 0x20" due to an existing subpicture stream with ID 0

1. Confirm in DVDSubEdit:

   Current subpic info:
   Subpic# = 0 (0 in stream)
   StreamID = 0x20
   ...

2. Open VIDEO_TS\VTS_01_0.IFO in IfoEdit > VOB Extras > Strip Stream's [sic] > OK > uncheck SubPicture 1: English (2-bit rle ) (ID: 0x20) > click "Strip it" button (h/t rmdeboer82)

Alternate methods utilizing SubtitleCreator

• How to add new subtitles to an existing DVD

• Adding Subtitles to a DVD

• SubtitleCreator returned "Error reading subtitle number 3. (Input string was not in a correct format.)". Resolved by converting SRT to MicroDVD / SUB in Subtitle Workshop.

/misc | Jun 28, 2018

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