How do I add my own subtitles?

[Z Draci]

I have an excellent documentary DVD from NHK's Project X series about the Z car.

Since it's all in Japanese, I'd like to add my own subtitles so that I can encode and distribute it for everybody to enjoy.

I'm completely computer illiterate so I need some help. How do I go about doing this?

 

[ESPNSTI]

I'm not an expert on this, but I wouldn't encode subtitles into the file.
Instead create an accompanying text file that has the same name as the video, but that ends in ".srt" or ".sub".

In the text file, you can put lines like this:

00:00:05 Opening Credits
00:00:20 Hello

etc...

Some players can read this without problems, however for some you might need to get the VobSub codec in order to play it. ( http://www.doom9.org/Soft21/Subtitles/VobSub_2.23.exe )

If you're lucky, someone already created one of these, so I suggest you do a search on the net for ".srt" / ".sub" / ".txt" files.

 

[AxlxA]

also, if you hvae ffdshow from 2005, then subs would work too. Creating subs on the other hand is quite tricky. u have to specific text size and color as well. also fonts.

 

[Z Draci]

Hmm, it sounds like a big job!

This DVD is actually an NHK program.
NHK is the Japanese version of the BBC. All the dialogue is very dense and compacted. It'll be a very time consuming task.

I wonder if NHK will contract me to do the work. I know I'm better than 99% of Japanese-English translators who do horrible work on anime and movies.