Subtitles

Subtitles are textual retranscriptions of audio tracks

Different kind of subtitles

1) Burned-in subtitles (or "hard subs")

Which can be compared to "hot iron cow branding" Now that they're burned in the image, there is no way to make them disappear properly, as they're totally part of the image. These burned-in subtitles won't appear in VLC subtitle menu and there is no way to hide them

2) Soft subtitles

Imagine our movie is a single AVI file. Those "soft" subtitles are hidden somewhere within the AVI file, but they're not burned in the image. You may find different languages for these soft subtitles (for example up to 8 different languages in the same AVI !) Those soft subtitles will appear in VLC subtitle menu (one menu bar = 1 language) and you can tick the one you want (or untick all if you don't want to see any subtitle) At least, you know they are embedded in the movie and you can make them appear or disappear at your wish.

3) External subtitles

These are external individual files: most usual are .srt files (which contain only 1 language) or the couple of files .sub + .idx that may contain up to 32 different languages !)

If you want those external subtitles files to be opened automatically when you double click a movie in Windows Explorer, then you'll have to give those external subtitles files the same name that your movie, for example :

Dark Star.avi <= the movie file

Dark Star.srt <= the external subtitle file

If both names match, then VLC will automatically open the subtitle file and display subtitles, as soon as you double click the movie file name. This 3rd kind of subtitles (external files) will appear in VLC subtitle menu, and you can tick /untick them, at your wish.

For more information see how to enable / use subtitles

Subtitles formats

There are a lot of different types of external subtitle files. Most contain textual data. That is the subtitle and a timestamp at which this subtitles is to be shown. Some of these allow for additional formatting, others don't.

Textual subs

• SubRip
• SubViewer
• SAMI
• MicroDVD
• VPlayer
• Sub Script Alpha
• JacoSub
• MPsub
• USF
• CMML

Pictures-based subs

There are also subtitles which are essentially pictures instead of text. These kind of subtitles are used in DVDs, VCDs and the external VobSub files.

• DVD subtitles
• DVB sutitles
• VobSub
• CVD
• OGT and SVCD Subtitle (OGT) Information

File Format/Container embedding subtitles

There are also some fileformats to which you can add subtitles. These include:

• MOV
• MP4
• OGM
• Matroska
• AVI
• TS

It is not easy to stream subtitles. DVB or DVD subtitles encapsulated in a TS MPEG stream is your best bet.

Subtitles support in VLC

Subtitles Status

Subtitle Name	Extension	Subtitle Type	Character Encoding	Line Break	Text Styling	Metadata Info	Timings	Timing Precision	VLC media player Support
AQTitle	*.aqt	Text-based	None	Yes	No	No	Framings	Dependent on Frame	Yes (0.9.0 and over)
CVD	*.cvd	Image-based	N/A	N/A	N/A	No	Elapsed Time	Don't know	Yes
DVB Subtitles	N/A (in DVB streams)	Image-based	N/A	N/A	N/A	No	Elapsed Time	Don't know	Yes
DKS	*.dks	Text-based	None	Yes	No	No	Elapsed Time	Don't know	Yes (0.9.0 and over)
JACOSub	*.jss	Text-based	None	Yes	Yes	No	Elapsed Time	10 Milliseconds (1/100th sec)	Yes (0.9.0 and over), no styles
Kate	N/A (inside OGG)	Text-based	None	Yes	Yes	No	Don't know	Don't know	Yes (0.9.0 and over), no styles
MicroDVD	*.sub	Text-based	None	Yes	No	No	Framings	Dependent on Frames	Yes
MPEG-4 Timed Text	.ttxt	XML	Don'tknow	Don'tknow	Yes	No	Elapsed Time	1 Millisecond	Yes
MPL2	*.mpl/.txt	Text-based	None	Yes	No	No	Sequential Time	100 Milliseconds (1/10th sec)	Yes, no italic
MPSub	*.sub	Text-based	None	Yes	No	Yes	Sequential Time	10 Milliseconds (1/100th sec)	Yes (0.9.0 and over)
OggWrit	N/A (inside Oggs)	Text-based	None	No	Yes	Yes	Sequential Granules	Dependent on Bitstream	untested ???- Not specified yet.
Phoenix Subtitle	*.pjs	Text-based	None	No	No	No	Framings	Dependent on Frames	Yes (0.9.0 and over)
PowerDivX	.psb	Text-based	None	No	No	No	Elapsed Time	1 Second	Yes (0.9.0 and over)
Blu-Ray	N/A	Image-based	N/A	N/A	N/A	No	Elapsed Time	Don't know	Yes (1.1.0 and over)
RealText / SMIL	*.rt	HTML-based	Unicode (UTF-8)	Yes	Yes (SMIL)	No	Elapsed Time	10 Milliseconds (1/100th sec)	Yes (0.9.0 and over)
SAMI	*.smi	HTML-based	Unicode (Windows-1252)	Yes	Yes (CSS)	Yes	Framings	Dependent on Frames	Yes
Structured Subtitle Format	.ssf	XML	None	No	Yes	Yes	Elapsed Time	1 Millisecond	No
SubRip	*.srt	Text-based	Informally Unicode	Yes	No	No	Elapsed Time	1 Millisecond (1/1000th sec)	Yes
SSA/ASS	*.ssa	Text-based	None	No	Yes	Yes	Elapsed Time	10 Milliseconds (1/100th sec)	Yes, 0.9.0 and over
SubViewer	*.sub	Text-based	None	Yes	No	Yes	Elapsed Time	10 Milliseconds (1/100th sec)	Yes
SVCD	*.svcd	Image-based	N/A	N/A	N/A	No	Elapsed Time	Don't know	Yes
Universal Subtitle	*.usf	XML	Unicode (UTF-8)	No	Yes (XML DTD)	No	Elapsed Time	1 Millisecond (1/1000th sec)	Yes, 0.9.0 and over
VOBSub	*.sub, *.idx	Image-based	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	Elapsed Time	1 Millisecond (1/1000th sec)	Yes
VPlayer	*.txt	Text-based	None	Yes	No	No	Framing or Time	10 Milliseconds (1/100th sec)	Yes
DivX Subtitles (XSUB)	N/A (embedded in .divx)	Image-based	N/A	N/A	N/A	No	Elapsed Time	1 Millisecond	Yes, 1.1.0 and over

Container format

subtitle

VLC can decode this container. The module name to use at the command line is subtitle.

The subtitles module is used to read subtitle text files.

• sub-fps (float)

  Override the normal frames per second settings. This will only work with MicroDVD and SubRIP (SRT) subtitles. Default: 0.0 (get from file).

• sub-delay (integer)

  Apply a delay to all subtitles (in 1/10s, eg 100 means 10s). Default 0.

• sub-type (string)

  Force the subtiles format. Valid values are :

  • microdvd
  • subrip
  • ssa1
  • ssa2-4
  • ass
  • vplayer
  • sami
  • dvdsubtitle
  • auto (default)

Source code

• modules/demux/subtitle.c (input demuxer)

See also

SongSubtitles.org and VLC [to extract subtitles from DVD]