Add Subtitles To Any Movie Or Television Show

Windows only: If you’ve wanted to put the subtitles for a video directly into its own file for maximum compatibility across players and platforms, VirtualDub and VobSub will help you merge the two. Why would you want to embed your subtitles, when almost all popular media players—like the ever-useful VLC—will load subtitles along with the master video file? Smaller media devices like the iPhone and PSP won’t recognise subtitles, and burning your subtitles to a disc for playback in DVD players is an absolute crap shoot of compatibility. If the subtitles are part of the video file itself, they can be displayed on any device that can display the video. Simon at technology blog MakeUseOf has put together a step-by-step tutorial on using the free programs VirtualDub and VobSub to embed subtitles into video files. If you don’t already have the screen text for your video, make sure to check out Sublight (Windows) and Subdownloader (cross platform), which we’ve recommended for searching and matching subtitles. VobSub uses the VirtualDub engine the same way as the previously reviewed DiVXLand Media Subtitler, although the interface on VobSub is slightly more user friendly. The entire process outlined below involves a re-encode of the video file and is quite CPU intensive, so expect the process to be nearly real time—a two hour movie takes roughly two hours to embed with subtitles. Hit the link below for the full native subtitle lesson. Photo by WorldIslandInfo.