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DVD editing?

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NutmegCT

NutmegCT

Great Pumpkin
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Morning all.

Has anyone ever added sub-titles to a DVD?

I'd like to take a DVD made by a colleague (not copy protected, home PC created) and add subtitles of the audio. This would be done as a Christmas gift surprise.

I don't know what software he used to make the DVD.

The original video was recorded in a classroom, so the audio is often difficult to understand, due to ambient noise and being recorded from a mic at the back of the room where the camera was.

I've already created the entire text file by transcribing all the narration into text. Fun!

Rather than completely disect the DVD ... is there a way I can just "add" an overlay of subtitles or scrolling text?

Subtitles would be optional to the viewer when the DVD is played.

Thanks.
Tom
 
I use Windows Movie Maker (standard on most currrent Windows machine), to create movies with music and titles. I haven't added any self recorded speech, but it doesn't look too hard.

~Like This One~

Burning to a CD is just basically drag and drop.

I sat in on a class for this software a while back and found that my "self-taught" method was wrong. Since then, I have found it to be pretty simple and easy. There's also Movie Maker HD, but that's an extra cost.
 
Thanks! I'll take a look at Movie Maker. Didn't realize I could add subtitles using that.

Just to be clear ... I'm not trying to add audio ("self recorded speech"). Just an overlay of text on top of the video that's already there.

Tom
 
If the video was saved in a DVD format (VOB) file, Movie Maker won't open it. Unless there is an add-on you can download.
 
Thanks Greg. I just found that out here myself!

The two folders on the DVD are:

Audio_TS and Video_TS

The Audio folder is empty. The Video folder has several (large) VOB files, plus a couple IFO and BUP files.

Total size of the Video_TS folder is 3.8g.

T.
 
GregW said:
If the video was saved in a DVD format (VOB) file, Movie Maker won't open it. Unless there is an add-on you can download.
Click to expand...

Ahh! Too bad!

I'm new to this stuff too.

If you google "free DVD editing software" there seems to be some out there.
Not sure if it's any good, but maybe worth looking at.
 
Interesting observation.

I tried opening the VOB file in Movie Maker; got the message "not a video file."

Read on a couple websites that a VOB file is just a "video mpeg".

So I just renamed the VOB file to give it a "mpg" filetype.

Opened up fine in Real Player, Windows Media Player, JVC player, etc.

But when I opened it in Windows Movie Maker, it popped right open without an error message ... and then said "file is empty". It's 86 Meg - but empty?

So the only video editor I have - Movie Maker - is the only app that doesn't recognize the mpeg content.

Using the original VOB filetype, it plays fine in several DVD players I have installed.

argh.
 
I would venture a guess that you can't open it because of DRM. I know you said earlier that it was home made.
 
The answer to your question is no. You have to convert the DVD to a standard format, like MPEG or AVI, edit in the subtitles and then convert back to DVD.

Movie Maker won't open the VOB files because it doesn't have the proper codecs, etc to do this. There may be a way to feed it what it needs for the job but I've never looked into this.
 
WMM (xp version) doesn't work with mpeg2 or mp3 audio files, you can use free software like Super to convert to WMV or AVI-DV WMM works well with those type of files. Having said that, look out all "AVI's " are not the same "codecs" are the problem. You can search the WMM forums for all kinds of help, or pm me and I can link you to some stuff. There are about a half dozen things that need to be done to make WMM work well. I have heard Vista will handle mpeg2 files, and Super Converter, works well, but it's not user friendly....downloading it is a bit of a wild goose chase! PapaJohn has some very good tutorials on Wmm forums website, lots of how to's Oh did I mention video editing takes up allot of resources!!! tt aka "oldgoaly"
 
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