OK so this is a long shot...but it's ten to midnight and I've spent all evening trying to help out my son.
As part of his finals he's had to translate 30 minutes of a highbrow french film and put English subtitles on it.
To do this we ripped the start of the DVD into an AVI file when he came home a few weeks ago, then he downloaded some freeware called 'Subtitle Workshop' and put all the subtitles onto the AVI. Worked a treat.
The problem is that the software keeps the AVI as an original file and overlays the subtiltes using it's own file format, then merges them together in real time. Try as we might we can't get the thing to write the finished product back to AVI or any other format. Ultimately it needs to end up as a subtitled DVD
Have any of you people who muck about with video on computers got any ideas or any experience with any other software that does subtitles?
Mood: Awaiting the arrival of the sun and the disappearance of the rain
Sorry Jools,
Wanted to ackn' reading your post and cross my name off the list of 'usual suspects', but as a known PC video dabbler, I'm lost when it comes to subtitles and your problem.
You need to get some good Video editing software that allows you to make the changes and then bundles it all back into an AVI file. Shareware may not be the way to do this. Newer editions of Roxio software may be that flexible, but I don't know. Usually, all the editing is done on an iterim file that can be converted into an AVI or similar file after editing changes, but you may be limited as to how much text you can throw into a set of frames.
I use Cyberlink Power Director, this along with a few other packages will allow you you overlay text onto the screen giving you the same effect as subtitles. This will burn the finished article straight out to DVD too.
Cheers Mr S, followed your links and worked it out. Blimey though, what a faff. Download Virtual Dub, Download a thing called Vobsub which contains a TextSub filter for Virtual sub, load all that, then export the translated subtitles from Subtitle Workshop into Sub Station Alpha format and then work out how to use Virtual Dub to create another AVI output file.
But, we've previewed the output and it's now creating the output file at 2 frames per second, so it's got a long way to go. Once that's cooked, all we've got to do then is find an AVI editor to trim the length of the original AVI file from around 40 minutes to the required 20 minutes of translated stuff.
There is a freeware video editing software called Jahshaka which might be useful. I haven't tried it myself but you can find it at http://www.jahshaka.com/
21-Feb-2005, 05:19 
Jools
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