Subtitles

[Scruffydog777]

I've added subtitles to two of Alizee's videos, Hey Amigo and LUO ou Toi and hope to do more. I've added both the french and english subtitles on each video. Is there a way I can post these videos so other people can share them or is that in violation of copyright laws?

[Rev]

Try PMing Brad.

[Scruffydog777]

Brad Pitt?

[RMJ]

They are videos ripped from her concert DVD, so yes, it's illegal to share them.

Why not simply give the subtitles ? Smaller download and everyone can turn them on if they likes to have them visible.

[Scruffydog777]

If I were to make just the subtitle files available, wouldn't someone have to have a program like virtualdubmod to watch them? That's what I use and I don't think there are that many people out there who have either enough time or maybe enough computer savvy to use programs like that.
That's why I was hoping to make the videos with the subtitles already embedded in them available: confused: .

[RMJ]

No, it doesn't need programs like virtualdub.

All decent media players (MPC, VLP, ZoomPlayer, etc.) can show subtitles on the fly. And the rest that can't, can show them by installing proper software like vobsub. (which virtualdubmod uses too quite likely... unless you did them literally by hand...)

That's how DVD player does it too. It doesn't have burned in subtitles. It plays them on the fly from separate file. And that's how it's done with majority of ripped movies on the net (tho, some does have burned in subtitles).

There's dozen reason why subtitles shouldn't be burned into the file. And practially no reason to have it burned in.


There's absolutely no point making another set of videos, with lower quality, and unability to watch them without subtitles (which most wants anyways, after they learns to remember what's said in it). It takes dozens of gigabytes of extra space to have them in all videos (which of course you wouldn't want to do anyways, since theres 300+ of them). Whilst the same effect can be done with few kilobytes txt file. Which can be turned off and on by anyone. And not just off and on but you can have several different languages available.

[Scruffydog777]

I appreciate the information,
However I have found a way to embed them into a video and have the resulting file size only a little bit larger than the origional video. After I use virtualdubmod to embed the lyrics into a video that lets say was origionally about 100 megabytes in size. I save it as an avi file. The resulting size of which is unbeleivably large. Typically about 7 gigabytes. I then play the video sending out the video signal with a s composite cable for the video portion going to an ati video card on another computer of mine and I send the audio out through an spdif optical cable so there is no loss in audio quality and very little loss in video quality. The resulting mpeg video is just a little bit larger than the origional 100 megabytes. That way I have plenty of room to store both types of her videos on my computer. Files with or without subtitles.

[heyamigo]

the thing is, a lot of us have the video files. there is an organized list of the highest quality of videos in the "Dandy's List" (http://www.alizee-forum.com/showthread.php?t=16806)over at AF. most of the hardcore have the videos from that list. now, there are existing subtitles for some of these videos, but not all. but i think it makes most sense to just provide the community with the subtitle file only, instead of making us download the whole new video file again (see the community subtitles pack). if it is a new video, then try to get it on the dandy's list. however, remember that hey amigo and lui ou toi are en concert performances, and i don't think the community shares en concert DVD video files. over here, it's only for streaming viewing and still some members were against that and i think they came to a compromise of limiting the en concert videos here. so it might be best to upload your work to streaming sites like youtube for those. if you have done subtitle work for the other videos, you can always ask brad if he is interested and provide him with just the subtitle file. he has to encode the video himself to flash video format but i believe because the new version supports external subtitle file, he would NOT want you to send in a video with subtitles burned in. in any case, if you have just the subtitle, why not just provide the subtitle file here? it's small enough to use as an attachment to posts here and i would definitely download them and keep them with my videos.

[RMJ]

I appreciate the information,
However I have found a way to embed them into a video and have the resulting file size only a little bit larger than the origional video. After I use virtualdubmod to embed the lyrics into a video that lets say was origionally about 100 megabytes in size. I save it as an avi file. The resulting size of which is unbeleivably large. Typically about 7 gigabytes. I then play the video sending out the video signal with a s composite cable for the video portion going to an ati video card on another computer of mine and I send the audio out through an spdif optical cable so there is no loss in audio quality and very little loss in video quality. The resulting mpeg video is just a little bit larger than the origional 100 megabytes. That way I have plenty of room to store both types of her videos on my computer. Files with or without subtitles.

Argh... You make me physically sick wit those things you do....

Just an advice... don't do it. Really. You are much better off if you do separate subtitles file. Even for you own use.

And the quality loss is significant in any case. And the problem is you need two files. One with subtitles, and one without subtitles for your archives. And possible one with French subtitles, too... so that already 3 copies of same video... 100 MB becomes 300MB... 100 GB video collections becomes 300 GB collection... and my 300GB collections becomes almost 1TB collection... plus another 1TB for backups...

You see the problem ?


So... Before I start banging my head to wall, I give some pointers, since you want to do subtitles. And it's good thing, since we always need them.

So... First... Get proper tools for making them.

Subtitle Workshop:
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Video/Other-VIDEO-Tools/Subtitle-Workshop.shtml

Use that for creating the subtitles. Save the subtitles in SubRip (*.str) format, which is pretty much de facto format.

One you have video and subtitle file in your folder like this:
Lili_Video.mpg
Lili_Video.srt

Just open your favorite played (which is MediaPlayerClassic (http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/) or VLC (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/). Or if it isn't, it will be now on) just open the video file and tadaa... You have video with subtitles.

If you don't see the subtitles for some reason, in MediaPlayerClassic (MPC) hit ctrl+L and load the subtitle file.

If you still can't see it, then install VobSub, which is directmedia filter to show subtitles:
http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/subtitle_tools/vobsub.cfm


Now your subtitles works for sure !


And to test this how wonderful the world of subtitles can be... some subtitles to try on (just find the right video for them) :
http://www.3rdw.net/alizee/subtitles/

(if you don't have ANY of the videos included in the subtitles.rar file, then ask someone to upload sample video just for you...)

[fsquared]

Scruffydog77,
Welcome to the forum! I saw your intro and haven't said hi explicitly.

I'm not a video expert by any means but what you said sounds so counter to the principles of working with digital video (especially the part about re-encoding via analogue) that I think I can understand why RMJ is reacting as he does. If you're new to the forum, you may find his manner a bit brusque, but as he is our resident expert on video quality, and many other things, I tend to defer to his judgment on such matters.

While I suppose I can understand a personal preference to have "just one file" with the subtitles embedded, about the only reason I could think of offhand for embedding the subtitles into the video is to be able to, say, upload it with the subtitles embedded into Youtube (and maybe there are better ways of that, even...?)

Anyway, welcome again!

[Scruffydog777]

I appreciate all the advice but for my own personal use, I'm going to stick with having two files for each video. One with and one without subtitles. I only need one extra video for each song because I put both the english and french lyrics on the same video and where I have 2 hard drives with a total of 800 gigs of memory. Having about a dozen extra files roughly about 100 megabytes in size is no problem and these files are of very good quality. But once again I want to thank you for the information. I will try the method you recommended in case I do find some future use for it.

[RMJ]

Well... do as you wish... I just tried to help and advice.

You have the spirit to make something good but you are wasting resources.

[espire]

Scruffydog, trust me, don't even try arguing with RMJ ;)

[RMJ]

What is there to argue anyways. It was simple advice. And very valid one.

[Scruffydog777]

I just finished adding english and french lyrics to the following videos , Toc de mac, L'alize, Hey Amigo, Contre Courant and Ella Ella. I added the english and french lyrics to the same video, not 2 seperate videos. The method I used resulted in no loss in audio quality and to tell you the truth, I have a Samsung Syncmaster 226 bw 22" lcd monitor set to maximum resolution and I don't see a difference in video quality. The average file size is 130 megabytes. I don't think I could do any better downloading a another video player that would probably require a larger file size to handle these subtitles, so like I said before, I'm going to stick with what I'm using. If anyone is interested, I could send them a small portion of a video to see for themselves.

[fsquared]

I just finished adding english and french lyrics to the following videos , Toc de mac, L'alize, Hey Amigo, Contre Courant and Ella Ella. I added the english and french lyrics to the same video, not 2 seperate videos. The method I used resulted in no loss in audio quality and to tell you the truth, I have a Samsung Syncmaster 226 bw 22" lcd monitor set to maximum resolution and I don't see a difference in video quality. The average file size is 130 megabytes. I don't think I could do any better downloading a another video player that would probably require a larger file size to handle these subtitles, so like I said before, I'm going to stick with what I'm using. If anyone is interested, I could send them a small portion of a video to see for themselves.

Every conversion to analog entails some sort of video quality loss. Some people are more sensitive than others, I suppose.

BTW, video player are you using now?

[Scruffydog777]

I'm using windows media player