multiple SUBTITLES

I would like to be able to create a movie that includes TWO separate subtitle files for spanish and english.

I looked at "submerge" and some other programs but none can do TWO sub files.

Anyone know how to do this? Thanks!

MKVToolnix includes not only command-line tools, but also a nifty GUI app for creating MKV files with as many audio, video, and sutitle tracks as you like. You can even include fonts as attachments in MKV files, ensuring that subtitles appear with the font and styling you desire. Just make sure you have the subtitle files already made to be put into the file.

The only catch is that the output file has the extension .mkv, so on Windows the user is best off having CCCP installed whereas on OS X the user is best off having some variation of MPlayer installed (or Perian if you want to watch in Quicktime). I recommend Adrian's build of MPlayer with a custom GUI, called MPlayer OSX Extended.

Thank you very much for the response...
I downloaded MKVtoolnix and I will check it out now.

I have had some issues using Mkvmerge.
On my first attempt, I added the movie (an .avi file) then, under "attachments" I added an english .srt subtitle file. I made the new movie and opened it in VLC and the subtitle track was there, everything good. On my second attempt, doing everything the same, VLC reported an error and the subtitle track did not show up. So then I tried opening it with MPlayer... still no subtitle track.

Can you give me a basic explanation of how to add two seperate .srt files to one movie? Also, the program requested the MIME of the .srt file and I chose text/english, not knowing if this was even important.

Thanks so much!

Ok, an update...

The inconsistency between attempts was a result of moving the files from their original location to my desktop. Now I have all the files I'm working with together in the Downloads folder. However, although VLC recognizes ONE subtitle track (and reports a lot of errors), Mplayer still is not recognizing the subtitles in the newly created file. I don't know why. (I d/l'd the version you recomended).
this is tricky! haha. thanks

bobsakamano said:

Ok, an update...

The inconsistency between attempts was a result of moving the files from their original location to my desktop. Now I have all the files I'm working with together in the Downloads folder. However, although VLC recognizes ONE subtitle track (and reports a lot of errors), Mplayer still is not recognizing the subtitles in the newly created file. I don't know why. (I d/l'd the version you recomended).
this is tricky! haha. thanks

Click to expand...

You're not supposed to put the srt files in as attachments. You're supposed to make them "input files" like the original avi video file. Same would go for any audio files you want to use as audio tracks. The "Attachments" section is only for stuff not technically essential, like if you specified the subtitles to be a certain font and so you want to put in the ttf file for that font as an attachment.

thanks, I took that advice and applied it but the result is the same.
1) only the english subtitle file shows up
2) magically, when i only add the Spanish subtitle file, it becomes English even though I did not add the English one.
3) When attempting to use Mplayer to view it, instead of subtitles, little black splotches form where the subtitles would be. Only VLC comes close to being able to handle this.

If there's no solution that's ok... I won't bother anymore. Thanks for your help

those little black splotches, upon closer inspection, are the subtitles, but they are super small. How do I make them bigger?

If you're using MPlayer OSX Extended, in the "Video" tab of the Preferences there's a Subtitles section. In there you can adjust the Scale to be higher than 100% if need be. While you're in there, I'd recommend making sure both "A S S subtitles" and "Use embedded fonts" are enabled. If you;re using regular MPlayer OSX, in the "Miscelaneous" section under "Additional parameters," type -***-font-scale X where X is the scale number (note: unlike in the fancy preference option in Extended, 1.0 means 100%, 1.2 would mean 120%, etc.)

Erm, the bit that got bleeped out is a s s without the spaces.

And if your file is in the same folder as where the subtitle files are, it will detect those subtitle files automatically if they have the same file name (not including extension). I'd recommend testing your new video file in a different folder. Remember that the J key is the hotkey for scrolling through subtitle tracks in MPlayer (or you could stick with the fancy GUI dropdown list, your choice). Also, if you;re specifying the font size in the subtitle file, keep in mind that you often need a pretty large font size for the subtitles to show up well. VLC may ignore this because ignoring what subtitle files actually say and messing them up is VLC's speciality (though supposedly Version 0.9 has some improvements in this area).