Hunk of Burning Love Needed

October 3, 2009 2:30 PM

How do I burn a dvd on a mac from an iso file with subtitles?

I have folder which contains a film in iso format. The iso includes two folders, AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS. I would like to burn this on dvd. There are also several other files, srt., sfv., md5., and nfo.

I already tried burning it to a dvd using the built in mac Disk Utility but the subtitles do not seem to work.

What am I doing wrong? Please hope me.

posted by cazoo to computers & internet (5 comments total)

You'll have to convert the .srt subtitles into a format which can then be added to the .ifo/.vob files in the VIDEO_TS folder. On Windows there are several tools for this like Subtitle Creator. I'm not sure what's out there for Mac that wouldn't require the DVD to be re-encoded.
posted by zsazsa at 2:38 PM on October 3

(Hmm... I'm sure I posted a reply here earlier?)

As zsazsa points out, DVD subtitles are actually bitmap images that are interleaved as data packets in the MPEG structure of the .VOB. It's actually pretty hard to add subtitles to an existing DVD structure - it can be done if you're replacing an existing subtitle set, but you need to understand the whole DVD structure fairly well.

I haven't tried it (or even seen it until I Googled for something else in my reply earlier), but MovieConverter Studio looks like it can demux a DVD (including existing subtitles) to video / audio / subtitles, convert .srt subtitles to the required bitmap format, and remux everything back together into an .mpg. That'll leave you with a movie file though; you'll lose the DVD structure, menus, etc.

It may be possible to mux the resultant .mpg back into a .VOB and insert it into the original DVD structure, but that's a fairly advanced topic. IFOEdit on Windows, or an OS X app who's name escapes me (but I've mentioned it in a reply somewhere here before), can help if you want to go that path. But, as I said, be prepared to learn a lot about the structure of DVDs…
posted by Pinback at 5:49 PM on October 3

(Ah, myDVDEdit is the IFOEdit equivalent on OS X. But you'll still need to remux your .mpg from MovieConverter Studio to .VOB format, and expect to update the .IFO and .BUP files with recalculated sizes and offsets, if you want to try putting the result back into the existing DVD structure.)
posted by Pinback at 6:09 PM on October 3

I see. Thanks for the information. It's a lot more complicated than I thought.
posted by cazoo at 7:16 PM on October 3

It's really only complicated if you want to keep the existing DVD menus, etc. If you don't, then (I've now downloaded MovieConverter and checked out exactly what it can & can't do):

1. Download MovieConverter, let it install all the first batch of stuff it needs (ffmpeg, etc), but skip the rest - you don't need it for this…
2. Rip your DVD using MacThe Ripper or whatever - Extraction Mode = title only. Rename the resultant .VOB file to .mpg
3. In MovieConverter, click on the gear icon at the bottom-left, go to "demux", open your file, click "Go". It'll complain that the file is not correct, and offer to fix it - let it. You'll end up with 2 files - a video file (.m2v) and an audio file (.mp2 / .ac3 / .pcm / whatever)
4. Go to "Mux", add your video, audio, and new .srt file, click "Go". It just took about 4 minutes to do an hour-long video for me, most of which appeared to be rendering the .srt to the bitmap-based DVD format
5. Go to "DVD-Video", choose your newly-muxed .mpg as the source, set your target directory, press "Go". The same hour long video just took ~ 2 mins.

You now have a DVD structure with the original video & audio, but with new subtitles & a crap new menu. I haven't tried burning this from MovieConverter (my MacBook only has a combo drive), but the VIDEO_TS directory plays OK in DVD player. Note that the unregistered version of MovieConverter will only allow you to do a single-movie video; no multi-episode compilation discs.
posted by Pinback at 9:40 PM on October 3