Subtitles

Introduction

In addition to regular commentary shown on the game's html page, SDA will allow author commentary in the form of subtitles for videos encoded with H.264/AAC in the mp4 container, since subtitle files can be placed inside and turned on or off while playing the video. The avi container, however, cannot have subtitle files muxed inside and external subtitle files will not be offered by SDA.

Playback

Note: Quicktime will not play subtitles in the format explained in this guide. There is a way to make QT7 compatible subtitles, so feel free to Google it. Perhaps this guide will cover it in the future, but I doubt it since we don't care that much about Quicktime... well, at least for subtitles that is.

VLC Media Player, recommended by SDA, will play videos with properly configured subtiles just fine. The subtitle track is turned off by default and can be turned on by clicking on Video -> Subtitles Track -> Track 1.

If you want to load an external subtitle file with VLC, start the program and go to File -> Open File and select both video and subtitle.

For any other media player that can't play the subtitles directly, you can install DirectVobSub, which will detect the subtitle file. It will also detect external subtitles if you give the file the same name as your video, e.g. sws_part01.mp4/avi and sws_part01.srt. The subtitle track will be turned on by default, and can be turned off by right-clicking the vobsub icon in your system tray (bottom right) and selecting hide.

Creating the subtitles

The SubRip format (.srt) is simple. It consists of a subtitle number, start and end times, the text which can be on more than one line, and a blank line. Here is an example:

1 
00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:06,000 
Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. 
You killed my father. Prepare to die. 

2 
00:00:06,000 --> 00:00:09,000 
Stop saying that!

You may find it easier to create subtitles with Subtitle Workshop. You should be able to open the video inside the program so you can see when to place the subtitles.

Multiplexing

You can mux the subtitles during this step of the MeGUI guide.

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