Every Flavour Beans

Suppose you rip one of your DVD movies to an encoded/compressed format like DivX/XviD file and store it on your hard drive. Now you want to watch it along with the subtitles in your favourite language. You can search for the subtitles on the web but sometimes it is hard to find a subtitle for a less popular movie. If it so happens that you find yourself half-lucky and succeed in finding the subtitles but for a 2 or 3 part version of the video whereas you have ripped the DVD to only one part, you can either rip the DVD again, this time into 2 or 3 parts to exactly match the number of subtitle files available or you can follow the simpler procedure described below and use Subtitle Workshop to join the downloaded files into one subtitle file. How to split the subtitle files in case you have the video in multiple parts but the subtitle file in only one part is described next.

Joining Subtitle Files Using Subtitle Workshop

1. Download and install Subtitle Workshop. Run it from the start menu.

   

   Subtitle Workshop main window:

   

2. Go to Tools -> Join Subtitles or press Ctrl-J on the keyboard.

   

   In “Join Subtitles…” window, use the “Add” button to add as many subtitle files as you want to merge together. I could only find two subtitle file version of Paris, je t’aime but the movie that I have is only one part. So I am going to merge these two SRT files together. After adding the files to Subtitle Workshop, the window looks like this:

   

   You can select what format the joined subtitle file should be created in “Output Format:” field((select “SubRip” if you are not sure). You can also check the “Load file after joining and saving” checkbox if you want the joined file to be opened in Subtitle Workshop for further editing(Subtitle Workshop is a powerful tool to do all kind of subtitle editing, only we are going to talk about splitting and joining operations).

3. Now comes the only hard part of the process: you need to know or need to find out the frame rate of the movie for which the subtitle was extracted. As only the person who created the subtitle file would know what framerate he was targeting for, chances are that the place you have downloaded the subtitle file from can tell you the framerate of the subtitle file(subscene mostly does). Sometimes it is noted in the file name itself. If you are unable to find out the correct framerate to be used with the subtitle file, your only hope is to guess it from popular framerate values and try them out one after the other. You can try the order as present in the dropdown box which is right to the “Clear” button in the second image in Step 2. I have never seen a subtitle being made for any other framerate.
4. After selecting the framerate of both the movie and the subtitle files, you are ready to go. Select your favourite Subtitle file format and click the “Join” button and select a location for the output file and enter a name for it in the pop-up “Save As…” dialog box. The joined file will be created at the selected location which you can use to play with the movie using a media player like VLC. (If you find that the subtitle text keeps getting unsynchronised as the movie plays, then read Step 3 again and try another frame rate. You can also select a custom frame rate directly from “Advanced Settings” in File -> Open File… dialog box of VLC Media Player).

Splitting Subtitle Files Using Subtitle Workshop

If you have a video file in two parts but the subtitle for it is available in only one part then we need to either join the video files into one or split the subtitle file in two parts. Merging two video files is a very time consuming process, what would be far more easier is to split the subtitle file using Subtitle Workshop.

1. Start by loading the subtitle file in Subtitle Workshop using File -> Load Subtitle menu item.

   

2. Next go to Tools -> Split Subtitle (this menu item will be disabled until a subtitle file is loaded)

   

3. The Split Subtitle window looks like this:

   

   In this window you can select one of many ways to determine exactly at which point to split the subtitle file. In most cases the simplest way to find this out is to select “End of Video” radio button and browse to the first part of the video file using the “Browse” button. You can also specify the duration of the video file in “Given Time” field if you know it(you can find it out from file properties or by playing the video in a media player). If you want to split the file exactly in half by number of lines in the subtitle file or the duration of the entire video, then click the “Advanced” button to see the options(these are rarely of any use).

   After selecting one of the options above(End of Video/Given Time/Given Frame/Advanced), click the “Split” button to split the file into two parts. The values in “Naming,” “Output Directory” and “Output Format” fields can be left with the default values.

The above methods of joining and splitting subtitle files should work without a hitch unless there is a discrepancy between the framerate of your video file and the framerate for which the subtitle was created. Because the split and join operations take no time at all you can always experiment with different framerates(it’s easy to find out the framerate of the video file from its file properties, you need to worry about the subtitle file only). You can also first synchronise the framerates of video file(s) and the subtitle file(s) and then attempt the joining or the splitting operations. Or you can also try different framerates right when you are playing the video in a media player like VLC(I mostly do just this). I will perhaps make another post on how to do such synchronisations using the sameSubtitle Workshop application in the future.