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How To Add Two or More Subtitles to AVI Video

Posted By Raymond In Category: Computer

Mar
16
2009

I never had to download any movies from the Internet because most of the time I watch them in cinemas. Moreover one of my very best friend is working in a shop that is selling pirated DVD movies, so he would hand me some free DVD movies once in a while. The only video I download from the Internet is TV series such as Heroes and I prefer to watch them on my TV. My DVD player can only play VCD and DVD format but not DIVX or AVI files. So to watch the downloaded TV series on my TV, I have to burn the subtitle to the AVI file, convert it to VCD format, and then burn it to a CDRW. It takes hours to complete the whole process.

Then about a month ago I was approached by BolehVPN if I’d like to purchase WD TV, a small hardware that is able to turn my USB drive into an HD media player. Now all I needed to do is to download the video file, copy it to my USB drive and then plug in the WD TV that is hooked up to the TV. I no longer need to go through the tedious and time consuming process anymore.

In DVD disc, we can switch between between multiple language subtitles and I wanted to see if it was possible to do that on an AVI video file. I found out it is possible and in fact there are a few ways of doing it since the support for subtitles on DVD players is getting better and better.


To play an AVI video file with subtitle, all we need to do is to re-name the subtitle file to match the video file name. For example, the video file is Heroes.S03E19.HDTV.XviD-LOL.avi so we’ll need to make sure that the subtitle file name is Heroes.S03E19.HDTV.XviD-LOL.srt. As you can see, the only difference is the extension of the file.

But to add two or more subtitles to AVI video, here is what you need to do. If your DVD player supports multiple subtitle files, you can just add numbers at the end of the subtitle file name. Let’s say the AVI video file is WeddingCrashers.avi.
The default subtitle is WeddingCrashers.srt
The second subtitle is WeddingCrashers.1.srt
The third subtitle is WeddingCrashers.2.srt
Multiple SRT Subtitle for AVI
You can also replace the numbers with language codes such as EN for English, DE for German, and etc. I am not sure what is the maximum number of subtitles you can place but if I am not wrong, it is 8.

If your DVD player supports only 1 subtitle, then you can merge/join the subtitles using Subtitle Workshop v2.51. Download, install and run Subtitle Workshop. Click on Tools menu bar and select Join Subtitles. Alternatively you can also use the hotkey Ctrl+J to go to Join Subtitles. Click Add button and select the subtitles that you want to join. Now the subtitles will be listed in the window. Simply click the Join button and you’ll be prompted to save the newly joined subtitle file. Make sure that the .srt file has to have exactly the same file name than the .avi file.
Join Merge Subtitles
There is also a website that provides free online subtitle merging service but it can only support 2 subtitles at a time.

Finally, here are 2 more free software AVIAddXSubs and Sub2DivX, that is able to merge as many as 8 subtitles to your AVI file. After finished merging, you will only have 1 .divx (you can also rename the .divx to .avi) file which is the video file. You don’t need to place the external subtitle file together with the video file because it is already merged into the video file.

You’ll have to try which method works for your video player. Press the subtitle button on your player’s remote control and if it switches subtitles, then it works. If not, try the other methods that I’ve listed in this article.


Related posts:
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  • Include Subtitles in Downloaded Movie
  • Fix AVI Video with Subtitle Playing Upside Down Problem
  • Easily Search for Correct Subtitle that Sync with AVI Movie
  • Easily Find and Download DivX Subtitles from Various Websites
    • Rekhyt

      Thank you Raymond. :) wish you all the best

    • http://www.thenerdforum.co.cc brayden

      thanks ray. looks nice, i never thought it would the THAT easy to add more than one subtitle.

    • kyron74

      I’ve been using divx subtitling for quite some time and the best subtitler i’ve found is sub2divx (http://userxp.tripod.com/). It let’s you add 8 subs at one time, and you can choose font, size, color, contour, position and if the lines are too large it decreases the font size of the longer lines to fit in the screen. The process is this: first i check the subs are correct in timing with subtitle workshop, and then sub2divx to join the subd to the avi file. Then i burn a dvd with 6 movies at maximum and watch them in my tv with a philips dvp 3254k.

    • http://setugarg.in Setu Garg

      Hey,

      Cool guide. Really helpful. Can you put together a guide for adding subtitles to wmv videos which can be played on Xbox 360?
      The above process adds subtitles to the avi files as XSUB which is not supported by Xbox 360 as of now.

    • Thomas Atunes

      I use TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress to embed 2 subtitles and I can position them anywhere on the screen. So my wife Spanish and I English can watch a Japanese movie together.

    • http://www.hondaquintet.tk MrDominotk

      convertxtodvd is fast and great, ..unfortunately Payment :(

    • Gaara

      Fortunately for me, my DVD player supports all these file formats (except .divx, .mp4 and .mkv) and also supports .srt subs. It doesn\’t even require that the video file and the sub file have the same name. If the sub file is in the same folder as the video, it will display the subs.

      It is some third rate company called Cemex (not the building materials company… or is it?). My mom bought it cuz it was cheak as fck. But it turned out to be a real gem.

    • Ahinigami

      Any1 know how I can apply the same method with DVD?
      I converted a MKV file to DVD and the sub become very crappy so I wanted to add the sub file into the DVD folder manually TQ.

    • mohan

      Hey Ray,
      Plz post a nice screen recorder for video tutorial purpose. I tried but the Techsmith codec is NOT FREE! Is there any codec equivalent to TSSCC? Please Help me Ray…

    • FaeGiN

      Great guide for some I am sure but as far as I know, my friends and family I mean, not many people have such machines commonly yet. Not here in UK at least. Most people have a DVD player, in fact more likely they have a recorder but they don’t have one like the WD types. I still use two cheap ones I bought in the last 2 years. One is UMAX/YAMADA and is brilliant..plays everything from divx,xvid,wmv,mpeg,mpg,dat files too and a few more plus audio formats a plenty! The other one is a DK-DIGITAL, not quite as good as the yamada but still supports subs and plays every file I throw at it!
      As for the Yamada though: You can still pick these up cheaply and, for people who fancy the idea of a player that you can use to put a downloaded file right onto data disc and watch without any re-encoding, have a look around especially if you are short of money, at the UMAX brand because they have even better ones nowadays and they are still cheap but great performance!!!
      Oh yeah I almost forgot they can handle sub files but only the text type..so the /srt type is best. With tools like the ones mentioned in the article though, if I download a film with vobsub subtitles (.IDX and .SUB) I can easily convert those to srt and as long as it’s in the same folder as the movie on the disc, all goes well.
      I would love to have the cash to buy one of the WD latest technologies as I was looking at them and they really are the best on the market..they support mov and mp4 files too which almost all others do not. At least I couldn’t find many!

    • Mohammed

      Thanks , Great guide for me .

    • RER

      Hey kyron74
      I tried do this by your method, but I keep getting an error message that DivXMux failed to open, can you provide a guide on how you succeeded?

    • ramin = confused^^

      pls help. i’m trying to watch my downloaded movies with sub on my xbox, but won’t work. the movie plays fine, but the sub won’t appear. i’ve used the same sub name as the movie and srt at the end. any sugestions?

      thx:P

    • samiii

      thanks alot man i tried to looking this and fainaly after 3 days i got it man thanks alot .

    • Erick

      Any similar software for Mac OSX?

    • Moon River

      For Mac users:
      I think freeware ffMpegX can help us finish the work :
      Add Two or More Subtitles to AVI Video
      just consult this guide:
      http://www.dvdburnermacosx.com/tutorial/how-to-burn-srt-sub-subtitle-to-dvd-on-mac.html#129

    • ivania

      what if i want to do this but in a mac?? because i see that everything, even the program, seems to be for a PC

    • Thushkeet

      pl name a software which can add 4 subtitle layers for dvd

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