Here's a more detailed description of the most common subtitle formats. What are subtitles? How to enable subtitles? Subtitles pgs to srt

Today, for a person who decides to learn a foreign language, especially English, everything is much simpler than ten years ago. And the point here is not only in the huge number of newfangled training courses, which swear that in just three or four months a person will be able to master a new language.

Modern technologies allow you to learn a foreign language on your own. All you need for this is a computer connected to the Internet, desire and perseverance. On the Internet you can find not only all the information about English or any other language (rules and exercises), but also communicate with its native speakers on various forums and specialized sites. In addition, everyone has the opportunity to download a foreign film in the original language in order to practice their ability to understand the language by ear. However, in the early stages, having not yet mastered the target language sufficiently, you can watch films with subtitles.

What are subtitles

The word “subtitles” itself, or “subtitles” as they are called for short, comes from the French language from the phrase sous-titres - captions.

Subtitles are the text at the bottom of the screen that displays the speech of the characters throughout the entire film or TV show. Sometimes subtitles do not duplicate information from the audio track, but supplement it with new information or commentary (this is more typical for TV shows and news).

In most cases, subtitles are designed as light (usually white) printed text with a dark outline. This text is present throughout the film along with the image, as opposed to "intertitles" (the periodically appearing on-screen captions used in silent films).

What are subtitles used for? The history of their origin

Having understood what subtitles are, it is important to pay attention to how they arose and why. The need for subtitles arose at the dawn of the era of sound films, since every country that made films dreamed of selling the distribution rights to as many other countries as possible. For this purpose, films were brought to various film festivals and shown to representatives of different countries. Those who liked the film signed a contract and bought the rights to show it in their country.

However, creating a dub in another language in those days was a rather long and expensive process. In addition, it was not easy to predict which countries would be interested in the “product.” Therefore, it was decided to leave the films in the original language, providing them with subtitles in a foreign language. And the translation of the film was carried out by the country that bought the rights to distribute it.

Over time, subtitles began to be often used to convey the lyrics of songs in a foreign language that were difficult to translate.

On television, subtitles were introduced to help people with hearing impairments better understand what is happening on the screen. But more often this concerned ready-made programs or documentaries. Since it was very difficult to quickly create subtitles in news broadcast in real time, sign language translation was used more often. But with the improvement of technology, in particular with the advent of digital television, subtitles have become more accessible both in price and in speed of creation.

Today, subtitles not only help deaf and hard of hearing people know what a movie or program is saying, but also provide additional information to all viewers about what they are watching. This is especially true for educational programs and documentaries, where they talk about the meaning of certain terms using subtitles.

With the advent of VCRs, films with subtitles have become increasingly used for learning another language. For example, in many language universities, at the initial stage of study, students are shown films in English with Russian subtitles. After they get used to distinguishing most phrases in films by ear, they are shown a video with English subtitles. And having mastered this, students gradually switch to films without translation and subtitles.

Subtitles are also indispensable for those who like to watch new movies. Most modern Internet users, in order to quickly enjoy a recently released foreign film, without waiting for its translation, use Russian subtitles, which are less labor-intensive than translation and appear in the public domain much earlier.

This practice also applies to popular TV series. Usually you need to wait a couple of days until a new episode dubbed into Russian is released. You can get subtitles translated into Russian almost the next day after the premiere.

Another relatively new area of ​​application for subtitles is the beloved karaoke.

Types of subtitles

Having learned what subtitles are and what they are used for, you can consider what types there are.

First of all, these are embedded subtitles, or hardsubs. In this case, the text is overlaid on the original image and cannot be turned off. It is worth noting that all the first subtitles were embedded. There were several ways to apply text to film. Later, even machines appeared that did this automatically. It was a labor-intensive process, because it was necessary to apply subtitles to almost every frame. Today, thanks to digital technology, this is much easier. However, due to hardsubs, the video quality deteriorates.

Much later, soft subtitles appeared. These are separate files containing subtitles. You can freely connect them to a video file, and also select the desired size, placement, font, and even speed up/slow down their appearance. If you wish, you can find a file with subtitles in any language for almost every movie and easily install it. Moreover, almost all modern phones have the ability to embed subtitles into the video being watched.

According to their form, all subtitles are divided into two large groups:

1. Built-in subtitles (located in the same file with the video, they can be enabled or disabled by selecting the appropriate item in the context menu).
2. External subtitles (separate files of specialized formats, which can also be connected using the context menu).

Subtitle formats

Today, for those who want to watch a film with text, there is a huge selection of external subtitle formats that are perfect for the most common video players.

• SRT is the most famous subtitle format. It is extremely easy to use and can be edited. In addition, SRT is able to synchronize with the video on its own, preventing subtitles from appearing prematurely or being late.
• SUB was once a very popular subtitle format. But today it is being replaced by more modern formats.
• SAMI is a specialized format developed by Microsoft. It has a very clear structure. Supports the ability to change the font, its color, size and location.
• MicroDVD is a subtitle format developed specifically for the MicroDVD player. In this regard, when using these subtitles in other players, there may be a time discrepancy. After all, the subtitles of this format are synchronized by the frame number of the video sequence, and not by time, like most other formats. At one time it was very popular, but today it is being replaced by more universal formats.
• PGS is a modern subtitle format designed for use on Blue Ray discs.
• SSA is a subtitle format intended for use in the Sub Station Alpha program. This is a specialized program for creating subtitles.
• ASS is an improved SSA format.
• IDX+SUB - graphic subtitles designed for DVD.
• TT is one of the most promising subtitle formats today.

How to enable Russian subtitles and captions in other languages

In order to download subtitles, you first need to download them. Most modern discs come with corresponding subtitle files. Otherwise, you just need to download the file with them.

In most of the most common modern players (Media Player Classic, GOM, KMP, Quicktime player and others), you can enable subtitles, if they are built-in, using the context menu called by right-clicking the mouse. In the window that appears, you need to select the “subtitles” tab. In the menu that appears, check the box next to “display/show subtitles”. In the same menu you can adjust them to your taste. If there are several, you can select suitable subtitles: Russian, for example.

If there are no built-in subtitles, the same menu item in GOM will allow you to connect external subs. You just need to select “subtitle manager” in the context menu and, by clicking on the “folder” icon, select the desired file on the disk.

In the KMP player, to enable external subtitles, you need to select the “open” option, and then “open subtitles”.

In Media Player Classic, you need to select “file” in the context menu, and then “open subtitles”, and you can watch the movie.

Of course, there are other players, but in them, loading and turning on subtitles is carried out according to a similar principle.

Where to look for subtitles

Knowing what subtitles are, how to install them, and what the most common formats are, it's worth figuring out where you can find them.

If the subtitle file was not included on the movie disc, you can find it on the Internet. To do this, you need to go to any subtitle library and download or purchase the necessary file. You should be careful with subtitle formats so as not to have to worry about manually adjusting them to the video stream.

When searching for subtitles, it is also important to know how the title of the film is written in Russian and in the original - this will simplify the search. Some players, for example Media Player Classic, are able to find subtitles for a movie themselves. To do this, you need to pause the open file, go to the “file” menu and select “subtitle database”. Using this item, you can find and download the necessary subtitles, but the function does not work in all versions of the player and not in all regions.

With the development of modern digital technologies, watching a foreign film with a readable translation has become as easy as translating a phrase from one language to another in an online translator. Every day, an increasing number of people use subtitles not only as an entertainment tool (watching fashionable films and karaoke), but also to develop the ability to perceive a foreign language by ear. Today, subtitles are the most accessible and cheapest way to do this.

Didn't find the required subtitles on the Internet? No problem: they can be “pulled” from a DVD Video or Blu-ray disc. But it is impossible to use such interlinear words in media containers. Let's talk today about how to make them compatible with most video formats.

First I will describe the task. Many cinephiles prefer to watch films in the original language with subtitles, even if there is a translation. There are several reasons for this, but discussing them is beyond the scope of this article (I’ll just say that I often do this myself). It is also no secret to our readers that optical media are gradually becoming a thing of the past. Those who have a home media server are either already converting their movie collection to a discless format, or at least have begun to think about it. Most often, MKV files are used for home storage.

Extract subtitles using HD-DVD/Blu-Ray Stream Extractor. You can remove all threads from the container

There are many tools for creating them - for example, HandBrake (handbrake.fr), which I recently described in the article “Omnivorous Generalist” (see UPgrade #15-16 (570-571)). The only really serious problem faced by those who do their own rips is obtaining subtitles. The fact is that DVD Video and Blu-ray usually use the so-called. pre-rendered subtitles – they are a ready-made picture that is simply superimposed on the frame (more information about the types of subtitles: ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subtitles).

But only text ones can be “sewn” into Matroska containers (in fact, there is a way to put subtitles “torn” from an optical disc into MKV files, but this is highly not recommended due to compatibility problems - many players simply will not see them) . On the other hand, searching the Internet for subtitles in text form (SRT / SMI) does not always give the desired result, especially for publications like the “extended director's cut” or, let's say, films that are not very popular among the average consumer of cinema. So you need to somehow extract the interlinear text from the disk, convert it to the required format, and then feed it to the converter.

To the untrained eye, the task boils down to ordinary text recognition. And indeed, if you type the phrase “FineReader Blu-ray” into the Google search bar, in the first five results you will find a link to fairly detailed instructions in Russian on how to do this. But, firstly, you will have to use commercial software, and secondly, the process turns out to be quite labor-intensive. In general, it’s not our choice: we’ll minimize body movements and make do with free software.

First, these same pre-rendered subtitles must be obtained somehow. The exact method depends on the source format. Let me just say that in any case you will need a copy of the film on your hard drive. But since hacking the security is an illegal action, we will have to refrain from describing it. I think anyone can easily find a manual on the Internet.

In the case of Blu-ray, we take the console utility eac3to (madshi.net/eac3to.zip). By the way, you can “attach” some kind of graphical shell to it, of which there are quite a few. Personally, I liked HD-DVD/Blu-Ray Stream Extractor (code.google.com/p/hdbrstreamextractor), which I recommend. All you need to do is unpack the resulting archive into the same directory where eac3to lives, and then run HdBrStreamExtractor.exe. Now you should click the button to the right of the Input field (Select Input File(s) tooltip), select the largest file in the STREAM folder with the *.m2ts extension, and then specify the destination directory in the Output field.

All you have to do is click on Feature(s) and wait until the program finishes reading the container. After this, a list of detected streams will appear in the Stream(s) section. If you want, extract everything, if you want, just subtitles: just check the box next to what you want to extract, and then start the process with the Extract button.

After some time (which depends mainly on the speed of the PC; on modern machines, extracting subtitles from Blu-Ray discs usually takes a little more than an hour), the folder with the results of the work will contain files with the extension *.sup and uninformative names like 1_7_subtitle (the second number, in in this case – 7, means the thread number). These are our subtitles “in pictures”, which now need to be recognized.

If we are talking about DVD Video, you need to take a utility called VobSub Ripper Wizard from the well-known Gabest. It is included in Gordian Knot and other similar packages. However, it is not at all necessary to litter your hard drive with unnecessary software: VSRip lives at: sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/files/VSRip. There is a ZIP archive, inside of which there is a single executable file. The interface of the program (which, by the way, was released back in 2003, but works perfectly in Windows 7 x64) is primitive.

The first thing you need to do is open the file with service information (Load IFO... button), which corresponds to the containers in which the movie itself is stored. Determining which one is quite easy: you need to go to the VIDEO_TS folder and find any 1 GB VOB file in it.

Suppose it is called VTS_01_1 - then the ripper needs to “feed” VTS_01_1.IFO (in other words, the numbers in the names after the character set “VTS_” must match). What to indicate in the Save to... field - guess for yourself (smile). Next, click Next and at the next stage of the wizard, select subtitles in the required languages ​​in the Languages ​​list. It is important here that all positions in the Vob/Cell IDs column are selected - otherwise the subtitles will be extracted with gaps. Click Next again and the output will be two files with the same names and extensions *.idx and *.sub. They are what we need.

The internal structure of subtitles pulled from DVD Video and Blu-ray differs. For the latter, you can use the SupRip recognition engine (exar.ch/suprip), which generally copes with its task - although
and I can't say it's perfect. She is able to “decipher” English much better than Russian (but if you want, try it, no one forbids it). She is unfamiliar with “video” subtitles. People recommend the SubRip software for them (zuggy.wz.cz) - by the way, pay attention: the names differ by only one letter, but these are different programs.

Somehow it didn’t work out for me with the second one: I was never able to make it work with the 64-bit “seven”. Your humble servant has never complained about crooked hands before - although, of course, anything can happen. Maybe the truth - as in the famous television series - is somewhere nearby, but I was not able to discover it. Then I tried several more similar utilities, but did not find any understanding with any of them. I am writing about this only so that you do not repeat my mistakes.

There is a solution, and a universal one, and it’s called Subtitle Edit (www.nikse.dk/SubtitleEdit). What I liked about this editor is that it is trained to recognize pre-rendered subtitles of both types and more. It is distributed both in the form of an archive that does not require installation, and in the form of an installer; in essence, they are no different. The interface is perfectly Russified (Options > Choose Language), and there is also quite detailed online help in the language of - forgive the banality - Pushkin and Dostoevsky. The open source Tesseract OCR engine is used for recognition (code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr).

However, before the program is able to work with Russian subs, something needs to be done. First, go to the website of the engine mentioned above, look for the file rus.traineddata.gz in the downloads section, download it and put it in the Tesseract\tessdata folder in the Subtitle Edit program directory. Then we restart the editor, open the “Spelling” menu > “Get dictionaries...” and in the drop-down list select the item called Russian Spelling, Hyphenation, Thesaurus, and then click “Download” (I think no special explanation is required here). Now everything is ready.

To recognize subtitles obtained from DVD Video, use the “Import/OCR VonSub (sub/idx) subtitles...” item in the “File” menu; for a similar operation with subtitles from optical discs where HD video is stored, use “Import/OCR Blu-ray sup file..."

In the first case, you will be asked to select a stream with the required language (if there are several of them), in the second, the wizard will be launched immediately. The further procedure does not differ. In the “OCR Method” field, you need to leave the “OCR using Tesseract” item, in the “Language” field, select the one that corresponds to the subtitle language, and in the “OCR/Spelling Correction” list, the smart program itself will select the appropriate option if the appropriate dictionaries are installed. I also advise you to enable the “Query for unknown words” option - then you will be asked to manually correct a word unknown to the spell checker.

With some training, it takes 30-40 minutes to process Russian subs of a 2-hour film. With English things go even faster. When the process is completed, text subtitles must be written to disk (“File” > “Save”, leave SubRip in the “File type” field). Subtitle Edit also has a very useful “Synchronization” function, which will help you recalculate time codes from one frame rate to another (useful if you want to attach subs obtained from DVD Video to a BD rip).

In theory, after receiving SRT subtitles, they can be immediately encapsulated in a container. But since automatic recognition often makes mistakes, it is better to edit them in some editor. I personally liked the free Srt Corrector. But since, as always, there was not enough space allocated for the article, look for its detailed description in “Small Programs” in the same issue of UPgrade. U.P.

Subtitles subtitles subtitles Subtitles are displayed as text appearing at the appropriate moment at the bottom of the screen when watching a video.

Subtitles called text accompaniment of the video in the original language or in translation. In most cases subtitles They duplicate the words spoken by the characters and some sounds of the film. Sometimes subtitles have an explanatory or complementary character. Subtitles are displayed as text appearing at the appropriate moment at the bottom of the screen when watching a video. One of the most common methods is to use subtitles at karaoke. Subtitles simply necessary for people with hearing impairments. It is no secret that the professionalism of doubles is sometimes inferior to the professionalism of doubles, and the quality of sound and translation in dubbings sometimes leaves much to be desired, especially in cases where the dubbing covers the entire audio track and most of the sounds (explosions, the sound of car engines, people laughing) are not taken from the original audio track, but from the sound library of the duplicating group. Therefore, to watch a movie with the original soundtrack, they may be useful subtitles. The original soundtrack better conveys the atmosphere of the film and emotions; we hear the intonations and sounds that the film director intended, and not the dubbing director.

Many people know the film “Eyes Wide Shut” directed by Stanley Kubrick, which was released in Russia without dubbing and with subtitles. Thus, the filmmakers wanted to ensure that the viewer heard the masterful performance of the actors, and not the unknown quality of dubbing. Subtitles can be included in a video sequence or overlaid on top of an image when watching a movie. Subtitles, which are superimposed at the time of video encoding are called embedded, and if subtitles are superimposed in real time, then such subtitles are called external. External subtitles look better and can be turned off if necessary.

Subtitles can be presented as a separate file with an extension corresponding to the subtitle format, or included in a media container, for example in MKV. The characteristics of each media player must indicate the formats supported subtitles. There are many formats for digital external subtitles, which can be displayed when watching movies on media players. We will talk about them below.

SubRipper(SRT) is a working file subtitles programs SubRip, which is one of the most popular for extracting subtitles from DVD. This format is one of the most common and convenient for editing, it is simple and clear, and synchronizes with video based on time with an accuracy of microseconds. Initially it did not support text design elements, but was later expanded to support colors and character styles (italics, bold text).

SAMI(Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange, SMI) is the format subtitles from Microsoft, based on SGML. This format is well documented and has a complex extensible structure. The standard supports changing font size, color, typeface and style, as well as changing position on the screen.

SubViewer And Submagic(SUB) is a popular format in the past, intended for playback in the Submagic program. Due to the proliferation of newer formats subtitles loses its relevance. In file subtitles font settings can be specified.

MicroDVD (MDV, SUB, TXT) is a proprietary format of the MicroDVD player. It does not have a fixed extension, usually txt, sub or mdv. Due to the fact that MicroDVD Player has long remained unrivaled among players with subtitle support, as well as detailed documentation, support for variable style, font size and position, this format has gained respect among users. MicroDVD synchronizes by frame number, while most subtitles synchronized in time. Therefore, when applying such subtitles on video with changed frame rate subtitles will appear at the wrong time.

SubStation Alpha (S.S.A.) is a working file subtitles SubStation Alpha program, which is designed for preparation, timing, and overdubbing subtitles. It fully supports working with all font parameters (color, size, typeface, etc.), placing text anywhere on the screen, and comments. S.S.A. allows you to apply complex video effects to characters (shading, movement, rotation, etc.). Many fields define the parameters of each phrase, for example a special field to determine who pronounces a given phrase. In addition to text, you can insert pictures, sounds and even small video fragments.

Advanced SubStation Alpha(ASS) - a format with a dissonant extension for those who know English is a further development of SubStation Alpha. The advanced format contains features such as the use of vector graphics and text highlighting in karaoke mode.

IDX+SUB- binary format of drawn graphics subtitles, extracted from DVD.

SUP- binary graphics format subtitles, used in VOB files of DVD discs, as well as in Blue Ray discs.

Presentation Graphic Streams(P.G.S.) is a relatively new subtitle format used in Blue Ray discs.

Timed Text(TT) - one of the most promising formats subtitles, based on XML.

Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language(SMIL) - a markup language recommended by the W3C based on XML for describing multimedia presentations has also become widespread in application to subtitles. The correct extension for files with subtitles in this format is *.smil, but sometimes they mistakenly make the extension *.smi, which corresponds to the SAMI format.

What is the easiest way to convert PGS to SRT subtitles with Subtitle Converter tool on Windows or Mac? I will refer to a problem to tell you how to convert PGS to SRT subtitles with SupRip, BDSup2Sub or ByteCopy.

1. What's SupRip?

(not to be confused with SubRip) is a program that OCR's Blu-ray and HD-DVD formatted SUP files (such as those exported by eac3to), and can then export SRT formatted subtitle files that can be muxed into MKV or other containers, or read as external subtitles by compatible players. It allows you to rip DVD subtitles with their timing as a text file. It converts vobsub(sub and idx) to srt text subtitles ( vobsub to srt / sub to srt / subtosrt / sub2srt ) at ease. Yet the program can do more for you. In fact it is capable of converting Blu-ray .sup subtitles to .srt as well with OCR option. Below is some info about the Subtitle Converter – SubRip Pros:

• Rips DVD Subs, Image Subs, PNG Subs, and HARD-CODED SUBS!
• Learns well when training.
• Can be modified (using semi-source) by knowledgeable user to do non-Latin text.

• Hard to extend to non-latin text by average user
• OCR has difficulty reading the odd Sub file now and then. Indispensable tool for foreign language films.
• Slower than some rippers.

Compatible OS: Windows XP, 2000, Vista (Windows ONLY)

2. What are PGS and SRT subtitles?

– The .sup file extension stands for subtitle bitmap image extracted from a Blu-ray movie; it contains subtitle text graphics that are displayed during movie playback. The .sup subtitles are encoded with PGS codec, and sometimes known as PGS subtitles. Blu-ray PGS subtitles is not so widely supported by HD media players as DVD subtitles and usually need to be converted to more common subtitle format like SRT, SSA, IDX, ASS, etc. When a Blu-ray is ripped into .m2ts streams, the .sup subtitles can be extracted by demuxing the M2TS using tsMuxer. – The .srt is primarily associated to DivX, DVD and some other video formats (e.g. MKV) as external subtitle format. SRT files are text files used in video playback. Therefore, they do not contain any video data, but they include the time each subtitle should be displayed followed by the text of the subtitle.

• Read More:

3. SupRip Tutorial – Converting PGS .sup subtitles to .srt using SupRip

SupRip v1.16 Download (Windows ONLY, Mac users you can have a try with this app if you're ripping Blu-ray to Mac, which lets you convert Blu-ray .sup subtitles straightly from Blu-ray Disc) Step 1. Start SupRip, load the SUP file with the “Open” button.
Step 2. Click “Auto-OCR” to automatically scan the whole file and leave any unknown characters alone. Step 3. Go to the SRT tab.
Step 4. Review the subtitles and statistics. Change some options there if you want.
Step 5. Save the SRT file with the “Save” button.
How to name multiple srt files so that the language shows to select: 1. name the subtitles exactly as the video stream. E.g. 00033.m2ts-> 00033.srt 2. give an id to subtitles with different languages. E.g. name English subtitles xxx.en.srt and German subtitles xxx.de.srt
What's annoying– there are lots of spelling mistakes and indistinguishable characters when Auto-OCR is used, and you have to proof and correct them one by one.