Few months ago I’ve written a guide on how to include subtitles in downloaded movies by finding and placing the SUB or SRT subtitle file together with the AVI movie file. You must also have DirectVobSub installed, otherwise it won’t read the subtitle file. However, this works only in computer. What if you want to burn the weekly Heroes TV series to VCD or DVD and watch it on your huge plasma screen TV? Problem with older DVD disc players is it can’t read AVI format and subtitles as well. It can only read DVD format which is VOB and VCD in DAT format.

You will need to embed the SRT/SUB subtitle file to AVI movie file permanently, then convert and burn it to VCD or DVD using your favorite disc burning software. There are a few ways of doing that but I will only show the way that I think it’s easiest and without using too many programs. Just follow the step-by-step instructions below on how to burn AVI to VCD or DVD with subtitles.

Before you start the process of adding subtitles into AVI, it’s important you are sure the AVI video file can be played on your computer WITH subtitles. If the downloaded AVI video can’t be played, just install K-Lite Codec Pack.

1. Download VirtualDub and VobSub

2. Extract VirtualDub-1.7.7.zip to C:\VirtualDub-1.7.7

3. Install VobSub, expand Plugins and select VobSub for VirtualDub and TextSub for VirtualDub and Avisynth.
Install Vobsub for subtitle

4. When asked to select the directory where VirtualDub is installed at, browse to C:\VirtualDub-1.7.7
Burn subtitle to AVI

5. After finish installing VobSub, run VirtualDub.exe from C:\VirtualDub-1.7.7

6. Go to File -> Open Video File and select the AVI

7. Go to Video on menu bar, select Filters (or press Control+F)

8. Click Add button, select TextSub 2.23 and click OK.
TextSub subtitle in AVI

9. In TextSub settings, click Open button and look for the SRT or SUB subtitle file. Click OK and OK.
play avi with subtitle in DVD player

10. Go to Video on menu bar and make sure that Full processing mode is selected.

11. Go to Video on menu bar, select Compression (or press Control+P) and choose the video compression that you’d like to use. For me, I use DivX.
Video Compression for AVI

12. Finally, click File and select Save as AVI (or press F7)

Wait for the processing to complete and you will have a new AVI file with subtitles embedded into it. You can now burn it to VCD or DVD using your favorite disc burning software such as Nero. If you have a DVD player that can supports DivX, you can directly burn the AVI file to the disc without converting it to DVD or VCD format. That’s the advantage of using DivX as video compression.

It looked like a lot of steps but it’s actually quite easy when you’ve got used to it. I am no expert in video codecs, compressing, decompressing, lossless or lossy. So I am not sure if the method above will worsen the AVI quality or not but to me, the video still looks great.

[tags]avi, subtitle, dvd, vcd, vobsub, virtualdub[/tags]