A question about subtitles

[irydion]

I gave a friend an original dvd with a film on it. He claimed to know english well enough to watch a movie, but, well, he does not. I found subtitles in his own language, but I really don't know how to use them. It's pretty obvious with a film downloaded from the net, but here, it makes me chose language subtitles from the list of subtitles that I got with the dvd, and I don't see an option to just browse and find a subtitle file on my own. What should I do?

Thank you very much.

 

[Corny]

That depends on the media player that you are using. with the original windows media player you are probably screwed

however in media player classic or vlc you can chose the subtitle file to use (never tried it with a dvd though).

the problem that might arise though is that your subtitle file is for a different version of the movie than the DVD - and the timing might be off.

 

[irydion]

thanks. I guess I should be looking for media player classic
or vlc in the web, then.

 

[miatajim]

I'd just get the torrent file of the move and the cap file. And they wounder why I don't want to sit for 10 minutes of crap on a DVD I paid for?

 

[irydion]

my friend lives in a country where the internet is pretty slow there... and he doesn't have it at home anyway.

 

[trinket]

but here, it makes me chose language subtitles from the list of subtitles that I got with the dvd, and I don't see an option to just browse and find a subtitle file on my own.

Hey irydion! I'm not sure I'm getting the distinction of what you're exactly after here - since you're dealing with a factory-pressed DVD, what's the difference between choosing the subtitle track from the list the disc presents you in setup/menu, and "just browsing and finding a subtitle file" on your own? I mean, the disc is going to present all available subtitles to you - you won't be any further ahead by trying to hit the file directly.

If you like, though, you can try some subtitle tools (from here). Two I've played around with before are SubRip (rip subtitles to plaintext or BMP) and VobSub.

As others say, I recommend VLC as a nice player. Under the "Video" menu is a "Subtitles" option with all available subtitle streams to pick from while the disc plays. This image is from http://www.vlcplayerdownload.com/ :

 

[irydion]

thanks.

the difference is that the disc won't show the turkish subtitles I've downloaded from the net...

 

[trinket]

thanks.

the difference is that the disc won't show the turkish subtitles I've downloaded from the net...

Oh, sorry. That distinction clarifies it! Reading your initial post where you talked about the original DVD, I thought you meant you "found" subtitles on the disc itself, through the menu. I don't know you meant you were trying to introduce the external subtitles from a different source.

So yeah, if the file is an .SRT (info and sample structure here), you can play it alongside your film with VLC. That Video --> Subtitles Track menu option will list all available subtitles on the DVD (or MKV, for instance) but it also has a "Open File" command to take an external file. You can use a DVD authoring program (like ConvertXToDVD) to reauthor the subtitles back into the primary movie if he's not a techie and you want it simple - just specify your subtitle file as the file to use. (It may strip out other ones.)

As was noted here though, if the version is slightly different (a different edit) they won't line up - even PAL vs. NTSC due to slight time-speed differences. If it's for something important, like you're a filmmaker preparing your own film for demo purposes or something, you could fiddle with the time index values contained in your .SRT (or whatever format) text subtitle file - using a tool like Subtitle Editor. Or manually if you have the patience/interest. But I don't think you'd want to go to all this effort just for this.