Try SubRip. It can extract subtitles to BMP, which you can then stick on a Vegas timeline.

Or you could try extracting to a "normal" text based format, but you would then need to copy / paste the text into generated media.

Rob

Thank You blink3times and bStro for your quick responses.

I am in fact using DVD Shrink to extract just a piece of the DVD, as I find ripping the whole DVD takes time to then import in Vegas.

As for SubRip I remember trying it and finding it less than ideal, but as things go it seems it may be the only means to extract subtitles reliably and more easily than other solutions (for instance VobSub). In fact, as we are the author of said DVDs, I actually have access to the original subs most of the time.

However my problem is that I then need to place the ripped text in Vegas MANUALLY in media text boxes. As a web developper (and amateur programmer) I can wrap my head around that fact: it cannot be done by the machine.

Do I really have to position each sub individually or is there a way to rip subs and then import them on a timeline, and have it correspond to the video timeline?

I would even consider learning Vegas scripting rather than the mind numbing task of manually positionning subs.

Am I dreaming?
I may actually be taking the problem completely by the wrong end, so don't hesitate to offer radically different solutions.

Thanks again for taking the time to read and reply.

"Subtitles" came up a short time ago in another thread. You CAN use Microsoft word and vegas's "export regions as subtitles" script to possibly make things easier.

See this thread here.... you may get some ideas out of it:

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=639765

Just did a little experiment for you...

Vegas does not import SUB files.... but of course DVDa does and it will also handle simple cutting, deleting, copying, and shuffling around of subtitle blocks.

So it seems to me that IF your sub title track is in a format that DVDa understands, then you should be able to import the subtitle track (after you have isolated it with dvd shrink or TSmuxer) to DVDa, set up another blank subtitle track in parallel, then cut and paste your required subtitle blocks to the new track and position them accordingly.

Thanks blink3times for the follow-up,

I will read the thread you indicated above, but I have one possibly stpuid question: Am I meant to have DVD Architect installed along with Vegas?

We bought Vegas 7 online and by download. Actually I wasn't here at the time, the person who did left the company. DVDA was installed on his machine but as I re-installed recently I only found the Vegas setup files and I don't think we have a DVDA serial number.

If all you want to do is make a promo of the DVD's contents with burnt in subtitles then there's a drop dead easy way to do this.
Playout the movie in a good DVD player with component outputs and capture it with a matching capture card. Job done.

If you want the subtitles as subtiles that you can work with then it seems to me your first step is to get back to a real sub file i.e. a text file with TC in, out, subtitle text. Once you have that you're 90% there as most of the formats you want to deliver in support subtitles as metadata although I'm not certain if Vegas supports them for all those formats or not.

So perhaps you should clarify exactly which of those routes you need to go down. The later is going to give you the most flexibility and quality.
The problem with burnt in subtitles is they just get encoded along with the video, if the video gets a bit massed up then so do your subtitles.
Sending the subs as data to the player means the player renders them and overlays them over the video. This allows you to change size and font of the subs as needed for clarity.

Bob.

Hi farss,

I would like to have a flexible project in Sony Vegas.
I want to be able to add a logo and fades at the end. I might also need to have the project handy to re-render in higher quality or to other formats.

So the ideal solution is to have the project in Vegas. But not all our DVDs have subtitles, that's why I may be compromising in this case (the capture route) if the only alternative is to manually place text fields on the timeline. Still, this would be a last resort.

My source is the DVD, not the output.

How in the world is DVDA going to help edMon??
He is trying to create streaming content from a DVD!

Bob.

"Am I meant to have DVD Architect installed along with Vegas?"

On the long run..... yes.

As an example, DVDa (pro) contains things like the Dolby Digital licensing which Vegas uses.... so you can't do any real dolby digital work without dvda installed.

Vegas and DVDa were built to work together and although you CAN work them as separate entities..... you limit your options. You DO need the serial number though. If it's a legit copy then Sony will have the number on file.

"How in the world is DVDA going to help edMon??

Bob... I'm just trying to shoot out ideas... Do you have any objection to that????

DVDa has the ability to import and to a limited degree, edit SUB files.He MAY be able to use this to his advantage.

Well if you simply capture the vision the uqlaity will be pretty reasonable and of more resolution than you'd generally need for the formats you're looking to output. You just put the footage from the DVD onto the Vegas T/L and add the extra logo on an upper track.

The problem with getting the actual text back from the DVD is no longer exists as far as I know. When the DVD was originally authored the text was fed into the authoring program and that converted it to video overlays that are multiplexed along with the vision i.e. the file contains the shapes of the letters, not the actual letters themselves. To get them back as text you need to use Optical Character Recognition. This is possible of course but the effort involved to setup such a system could be considerble.

Does you company still have the project files used to author the DVDs?
If so that would be way easier to start from than the finished DVD.

Another way to approach this is if the subtitles are all from the speech you can use programs capable of speech to text. These are available and will give you timecode text. I haven't tried this myself but I believe they can take that text and embed it directly into a Flash file. Don't know about QT or WMV. You can even do the same with logos etc as overlays in FLV I think

On the other hand if you want all of the text and logos burnt into the video then you will have to set that up by hand in Vegas I suspect. That might be OK depending on how much of it you need to so.

Bob.

"that's why I may be compromising in this case (the capture route) "

It should be clear though that this is no longer "SUBTITLES" in the raw sense of the word, but rather a text track permanently overlaid/burned into the video. If you don't mind this... then I would go back up to Bstro's idea of using Subrip.... probably the easiest way.

If you can pull bitmaps back from the DVD and drop that back into Vegas that's going to be a solution, they'd still need to be lined up and the length adjusted.

Which would be dramatcially simplified by capturing the DVD with the subtitles burnt in because then you can line them up visually by putting the track with the burnt in subs on the bottom track, clean vision on the track above and then the subs on the top track or something like that. Maybe start without the clean vision track and add that in after all the subs are lined up.

I just did some research, it seems to create a FLV with real subs means action scripts, forget that :)

Bob.

"I just did some research, it seems to create a FLV with real subs means action scripts, forget that"

Well that's the confusing part here... Subtitles are not video.... but rather data files contained within the vob for use in a dvd player.... which is not streamable (easily anyway). So if you're not going to dvd then you're pretty much reduced to converting to an overlay track and burning.

Which way to go (bmp or capture) I would suppose would depend on the depth of editing involved. If there is little editing to be done then I think your way would be the fastest and easiest. But if some in-depth editing is needed the Bstro's bmp idea may provide more flexibility.

Not quite, subtitles in a DVD are not text data, they're 4bpc + alpha overlays. That's why you cannot get the original text back. In fact a subtitle track in DVDA can contain graphics also. DVDA renders the text from the .sub file to rendered text.

I just found ImTOO DVD Subtitle Ripper, the IDX + BMP part is interesting. If that IDX data is T/C in/out data then somehow that could be used to fully automate the process.


Bob.

"I just found ImTOO DVD Subtitle Ripper, the IDX + BMP part is interesting. If that IDX data is T/C in/out data then somehow that could be used to fully automate the process."

That sounds pretty interesting.... worth a closer look I think anyway.

I just want to say that streaming is not an essential part of my problem.

I will be outputting mainly to FLV but also sometimes to QT or mp4, or even as MPEG-2.

I also want to repeat that for the most part (almost always) I should be able to use the text version of the subtitles in the form :
---



John Smith
Français
23/10/2008
23/10/2008
00:00:00.00
00:00:00.00
00:00:00.00
00:00:00.00
00:00:00.00
00:00:00.00
00:00:00.00
00:00:00.00
00:00:00.00
00:00:00.00

1: 10:00:14.01 10:00:21.07
NOM DU FILM

2: 10:01:01.07 10:01:02.09
Ne faites pas ça.

3: 10:01:02.13 10:01:05.02
- N'entrez pas.
- Vous ne m'arrêterez pas.

4: 10:01:05.06 10:01:08.24
Restez où vous êtes.
Un pas de plus et je tire.

5: 10:01:13.02 10:01:15.06
Vous n'avez pas assez de cran.

6: 10:01:15.10 10:01:16.14
Où est-il ?

7: 10:01:16.18 10:01:19.00
Je ne vous le dirai pas.
---

Now, I just tried DVDA Pro 5 (evaluation version) and I wasn't able to import a subtitle text file in the above format.
I also failed to import a .sub file created with SubRip.

In both cases DVDA says (rough translation) :
warning: An error occured while trying to open the file. Invalid argument specified.

(BTW I'm using the French language version of DVDA so I may not be using the proper English terminology)

I'll be looking into ImTOO DVD Subtitle Ripper right now.

Thank You both for you help.

"Now, I just tried DVDA Pro 5 (evaluation version) and I wasn't able to import a subtitle text file in the above format.

I suspect DVDA can only read one type of subtitle file. If you open a DVDA created sub file you'll see it's not a vanilla text file.
If you do a bit of a Google you'll find a free subtitle editor which can convert between the various formats. The format that DVDA seems to use would appear 'richer' and include font, color and position information. That may solve your problem with DVDA but overall not really advance you closer to your goal.

Bob.

"I suspect DVDA can only read one type of subtitle file."

That would explain it. I'll have a look on Google.
I am really beginning to lose hope that my problem is solveable in the way I wanted.

I really don't think I can justify buying DVDA just for the subtitles...

I'll have a look at the scripting forum, it seems I might be able to generate text media at the correct positions, which would already help if I can just feed it a text file with timecodes.

Thanks

You SHOULD be able to open a subtitle file with Microsoft word by changing the extension to TXT (at least you can with vegas sub files)

Vegas/DVDa sub files should be in this format:
0001(tab) 00:00:00:00 (space) 00:01:58:42 (space) This is the text

DVDa also needs the SUB extension

"I really don't think I can justify buying DVDA just for the subtitles..."

You can't buy the PRO version of DVDa separately. Maybe that's the issue here.... you're using DVDa (studio) and I'm not sure that version works with subtitles.

blink3times,

I installed the evaluation version of DVD Architect Pro 5.0

It really doesn't seem to accept anything but its own format. I managed it by creating regions in Vegas and using the script "Export regions as subtitles".
The file created thus can be imported in DVDA.

However this doesn't help me much.

Here is the approach I am trying right now
I will be using VASST's SubText script
(http://www.vasst.com/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&page=shop.product_details&flypage=&category_id=2&product_id=107&Itemid=57)
to import a subtitle file as regions.

This takes care of the timeline positionning problem.

Then I will have to copy paste the text used as region labels into text media.

Sounds like hell, but still better than manual positionning and typing.

I'll keep this post updated with my results.