Advice on subbing..

[aimaime]

My friends and I wanted to try subbing some of our favourite Japanese videos for fun. So far we figured out how to do softsubs into a separate srt file. That's fine and all but there is a restriction on how much we could play around with using different sub positions, colour, fonts, adding special effects, etc. I noticed that some fansubbing groups (like JPHIP's very own) do these very well by hardsubbing their videos. Does anyone know how it's done and how to add the effects? Please point us in the right direction as we're pretty keen on learning the tricks of the trade. Any info would be welcome, like useful programs for starters, etc. Thank you.

[tenkei]

get a program called aegisub. i dont do typesetting so i dont really know how to use it, but im sure there are some tutorials and such out there or you can try asking some of the typesetters on [jphip] team

[GTO_MM]

get a program called aegisub. i dont do typesetting so i dont really know how to use it, but im sure there are some tutorials and such out there or you can try asking some of the typesetters on [jphip] team

Yes, use aegisub. http://www.malakith.net/aegisub/
donwnload,read help, and join the forum. 

[thatguy]

it's also possible to do embedded soft-subbing, particularly when using the matroska container (.mkv file). in this way you can sub with a little extra control, thought not with as much flexibility as hard-subbing (like special effects, etc), but you can preserve the original video.

[BigDnm01]

u know someone told me to use VirtualDubMod to encode subs into videos but so far i have absolutely no idea how to do that.  i heard that aegisub is a great program to create subs file, typesetting, timing and whatnot. the only it can't do is to encode the subs into videos, only softsubing, is that correct?

[Happosai]

u know someone told me to use VirtualDubMod to encode subs into videos but so far i have absolutely no idea how to do that...

You need to add a filter (download SubTitler2.4 filer here :http://virtualdub.org/virtualdub_filters ), put it in the plug-ins/filters directory, open Video in VDubMod, go to filters, add filter, select subbtitler, select sub file, encode as usual. 

[aimaime]

Sorry for replying so late. Thanks all for the recommendations. Aegisub looks like a very good software, but very complicated as well. I'll be spending time learning how to use it. Thanks again.

I tried encoding the file using VirtualDubMod but the quality of the encoded movie turned out to be worse than the original. In some parts the audio seemed to be lagging. Is there a way to prevent loss of quality?

[~Dan~]

I tried encoding the file using VirtualDubMod but the quality of the encoded movie turned out to be worse than the original. In some parts the audio seemed to be lagging. Is there a way to prevent loss of quality?

To prevent loss of quality try encoding at a higher bitrate.
Select direct stream copy for the audio so you're not re-encoding it and it shouldn't lag.

[stoneden]

Hello all,

I had the Kekkon Dekinai Otoko episodes in 16:1 avi format with seperate srt files. Here's my way of hardsubbing that worked for me. No special effects, but the overall quality is great on my hdtv.

1. Used VirtualDubMod with the filter VobSub. Also resized the screen to 4:3 for viewing on standard tvs.

2. I selected Xvid MPEG-4 as the video compression. The quality bar was set to maximum.

3. Used the job control feature to queue all episodes to process all night. I ended up with avi files that are hardsubbed and at least 1 gig each.

4. Used NeroVision to author the hardsubbed avi files.

That's it. Of course, having a fast computer to do the video compression helps. 
I have 2 standalone computers just for video editing.