Hardburning .srt on top of mkv?

In Handbrake you can load the SRT files and hard burn them in with MKVs.

Handbrake wont allow you to burn-in srt subs, there passthru only.

http://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/Subtitles

Is there any reason you need them burnt in and not as softsubs?

roidy said:

Handbrake wont allow you to burn-in srt subs, there passthru only.

http://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/Subtitles

Is there any reason you need them burnt in and not as softsubs?

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Just guessing, but he may want to encode them as DVD's for backup or something.

Could be TOTALLY wrong, though.

Yes Plex will allow you to choose which, if any, subtitle track to use.

No Plex should play a full size mkv ripped from a Blu-ray, you can re-encode it to either mp4 or mkv at a lower bitrate to save hard drive space, it's upto you. I'm not sure but Plex may even be able to use the Blu-ray sup subtitles right from the mkv rip, but I'm not sure????

roidy said:

Handbrake wont allow you to burn-in srt subs, there passthru only.

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Fair enough. I have only used SRTs with about four AVI files so I was going from (faulty) memory.

Anastacio said:

Will I just have to put the .srt in the same folder as the mkv movie on the Mac? Or do I softburn it in HB?

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I only have experience with XBMC which is what Plex is based off, so I don't know if Plex will read a srt file from the same directory as the video file.

If you do want to put your srt subs into your mkv file then don't use Handbrake as this will re-encode the entire file which is a waste of time (unless you want to re-encode and shrink the file). A better option, if you don't want to re-encode the file, is to use mkvtoolnix to mux the subs into the mkv container, leaving the original video intact.

Anastacio said:

I guess it'll find all the info and covers itself? Or I got to find a cover for all my movies?

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Plex will find movie info, movie poster art and fan art for your movies if you named them right. It makes mistakes, but you can go through your library, fix named and refresh info. Eventually, you will have a perfect database with great looking splash screens.

I use submerge works great for me ...

http://www.bitfield.se/submerge/

this is a good guide for ripping from the plex forum, includes a how to for subs which works well

http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php?/topic/14731-blu-ray-rip-and-encode-guide-for-plex/

I use MKVTools to do this. Got a very nice 1080p version of Avatar with subtitles burned into the video track using MKVTools.

First, sorry to resurrect a very old thread but I want to ask the same question as the OP did, and I've hit a brick wall in my research. In my case "soft coding" subtitles isn't an option, it has to be burned in. My subtitles are English alien/foreign language ones that you want to see. Reason for this is I'm planning on playing my BRRips onto my Viera TV that has a built-in media player that plays .mkv files great, but there just isn't an option to turn on or off subtitles in the media player.

Is there any way to burn-in .srt subtitles into an mkv? I don't mind paying for software to do it. I know that handbrake isn't the solution as it can only soft code srt titles in.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

One option for handbrake is to use .sub files (VobSub) instead of srt. These CAN be hardcoded using handbrake for foreign language parts.

you can find a free program at http://www.divx-digest.com/software/srt2sub.html to convert .srt to vobsub format but it only works with windows.

There are some other programs as well that will allow you to add foreign only parts to mkv or m4v containers as well, but I dont know what they are off the top of my head. Subler is a possible choice but I'm not entirely sure if it can or not.

Thanks for the suggestions Pyromonkey83. I hadn't even thought of the possiblility of converting .srt to .sub. I may have to look for a mac version of such software as I'm window-less.

If I do find such software, I take it what you're suggesting is this (?):

1. Convert .srt to .sub (I assume I'll need the accompanying .idx file too)
2. Run MKVToolnix to mux the .sub/.idx into the .mkv file
3. Encode the new .mkv using HB, this time burn-in the subtitles that I had just muxed in step 2

On an unrelated note, I wish movie studios burned in alien/foreign language subs. I mean, can anyone out there really understand what jabba the hutt says?

I went ahead and checked on Subler to see what options they have for subtitles and it looks like it does allow for hardcoding subtitle tracks via srt.

Essentially your steps would be:

1) Encode movie with Handbrake to your specifications without the .srt file

2) Once file has finished running through handbrake, open the file using Subler

3) Go to File -> Import file then select the .srt file and open it

4) check the box under "subtitle track" and highlight the field, opening the expanded menu options shown below.



5) Force the track you are looking for.


It should be noted that I have never actually used this function of Subler, so I dont fully know how the forcing actually works. You can also add multiple subtitles and have one hardcoded and one soft coded (hardcode foreign parts and soft code a full subtitle for example). This may take some playing with and trial and error, but the good news is that Subler is just a muxing program, so it only takes about 30 seconds to finish. Therefore you dont have to spend 2+ hours on an encode just to find out it didnt work correctly or you did something wrong.

Also, if you are interested you can add the full metadata to the file using this program and add HD tags, ratings, descriptions, and other things.

Let me know if this works out for you!

Thanks. I just downloaded Subler and installed it. But I think it has issues with Mountain Lion, either that or I'll have to figure out how to use it.

I added the video, imported the .srt, chose force track and then I just clicked the save-as/export button on top right. Nothing happened and there's a red banner with the number '1' on it. I looked at the work queue and there's one video, I then clicked start but I'm not sure if anything's happening. CPU is at idle. It now says "Done" but there's just a 4KB (.m4v) file on my desktop that does nothing.

I'll have to give it another try later when I get home from work.

ATC said:

Thanks. I just downloaded Subler and installed it. But I think it has issues with Mountain Lion, either that or I'll have to figure out how to use it.

I added the video, imported the .srt, chose force track and then I just clicked the save-as/export button on top right. Nothing happened and there's a red banner with the number '1' on it. I looked at the work queue and there's one video, I then clicked start but I'm not sure if anything's happening. CPU is at idle. It now says "Done" but there's just a 4KB (.m4v) file on my desktop that does nothing.

I'll have to give it another try later when I get home from work.

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Mountain Lion broke Perian and Subler needs Perian to function correctly. To solve the problem you need to download and add a file to your system. Search this forum for exact instructions on what you need to do.

Ahh...thanks. I thought I was doing something wrong.

I just found this, looks like I'll have to read it and fix later. Thanks again.

ATC said:

Ahh...thanks. I thought I was doing something wrong.

I just found this, looks like I'll have to read it and fix later. Thanks again.

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Try there. If you run into any problem, search back here as I know there have been very good tutorials posted on what to do.