Need Help Getting Subtitles to Work With PowerDirector 15 (from MKVs that have internal softsubs).

Anonymous

Solved by

Nov 03, 2016 19:54

Okay, so I'm working with pre-existing videos that have subtitles already in them. To be more specific - Anime from fansubbers that provide torrents of HD anime as H.264 in an MKV container. I'm making a bit of a compilation of battle scenes.

So, these MKVs have internal subs that are turned on by default. They're soft-subs, but they're part of the MKV.

If you open the MKV in PowerDirector, the subs are gone and I have no idea how to turn them on for the video production.

I feel it's probably best to make these soft-subs into hard-subs since the final intent is to upload to YouTube and I have no idea how YouTube handles subs - so best to just hard-sub them I figure.

Is there an easy way to get the subtitles included in these MKV files to become hard-subbed into the final production? A quck-and-easy method would be most preferred since I'm dealing with dozens of these MKVs and it'd be a pain to have to do a bunch of gymnastics to get it to work for every individual video. I'm just hoping PowerDirector has something for it.

Thanks!

This message was edited 5 times. Last update was at Nov 03. 2016 23:14

Jets2011

Senior Contributor Location: Canada Joined: Sep 29, 2006 05:26 Messages: 760 Offline

Nov 04, 2016 03:11

Hi,

There is no way to turn on the softsubs in PowerDirector I don't think. So I'd try using one of the available MKV subtitle extractors and save them as an srt file. Then import the video into the timeline and the srt file in the subtitles room, and produce the file with the subtitles imprinted on the video. You won't lose much quality if you use a similar profile.

Will take some work...wouldn't call it gymnastics though, maybe light cardio

Dave

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Nov 04. 2016 04:41

Anonymous

Nov 04, 2016 03:37

MKV Toolnix can be used to do that. Just wondered if there's any better method.

Alrighty then. If anyone knows anything just let me know. In the meantime I guess I gotta just get cracking with the old-fashioned way.

It's just especially a pain because the subtitles are .mks (in SubStation Alpha format) so I have to convert them to .srt somehow for PowerDirector to support it, and then I'll need to figure a way to make it hard-subs.

What's weird is it seems nothing knows what a .mks file is, can't find any converter that works with it.

This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at Nov 04. 2016 03:54

Anonymous

Nov 04, 2016 04:07

I think I've resolved to just record my screen for it.

Thinking about it - even if I could somehow get it into an SRT file (and it seems no converters will work with an MKS file), the problem would remain that I suppose you can't cut subtitle files in the way that Video/Audio is cut. I only need a specific part of the subtitle file because only a specific scene of each episode is being extracted from the rest.

I thought "why don't I just produce the file I need and then re-mux the subtitles in? Well - because then the subtitle file won't be trimmed to match the video!

At the end of the day it's probably just best I record the screen and leave it at that, I guess.

Jets2011

Senior Contributor Location: Canada Joined: Sep 29, 2006 05:26 Messages: 760 Offline

Nov 04, 2016 04:10

Hi,

Actually, I was poking around and realized that you can extract the subtitles in PowerDirector. Did you try that?

Just put the file in the timline, right click and select Extract Subtitles. See attached screen shot. They actually load right into the subtitle room and the subtitle track.

Hope that works and is an even better solution.

Dave


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Anonymous

Nov 04, 2016 04:39

Quote Hi,

Actually, I was poking around and realized that you can extract the subtitles in PowerDirector. Did you try that?

Just put the file in the timline, right click and select Extract Subtitles. See attached screen shot. They actually load right into the subtitle room and the subtitle track.

Hope that works and is an even better solution.

Dave

Helloooooo what is this? I didn't notice that being in the context menu there - I went straight to the subtitle room.

Looks like that works just fine - lets you play around with them too. The only downside is it doesn't preserve the original typeface/size but meh, guess that just means I get to choose my own.

For anyone reading in the future - After extracting the subtitles you need to right-click and "Select All Subtitles" before doing a mass-edit and press "apply all" when done. Yes it takes it some time to select them all, and then a little while to process the mass-edit.

Edit: Looks like you don't need to select-all, you just need to "apply all" when finished.

Thanks! This pretty well answered me, it was hiding under my nose.

This message was edited 11 times. Last update was at Nov 04. 2016 05:38

Anonymous

Nov 04, 2016 05:20

Looks like it actually does preserve the orignal! I just needed to download the correct font first before using the extract tool. It defaulted to another typeface because I didn't have the correct one is what happened. Size might need adjusted though. I ended up using 12-point OpenSans Semibold.

Also a protip - you should do your slitting/trimming/ moving things around BEFORE you extract the subs. Otherwise you could have sub timing issues. It seems to calculate it when you extract and not move them around after.

Oh, and props to Cyberlink for including this feature. Seems like something that could easily be missed if someone wasn't paying attention to remember folks that might have this scenario.

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at Nov 04. 2016 05:38