Path: ...!weretis.net!feeder9.news.weretis.net!news.quux.org!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Geoff <geoff@nospamgeoffwood.org>
Newsgroups: alt.comp.os.windows-10,rec.photo.digital
Subject: Re: Burn caption into video
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2025 09:18:32 +1300
Organization: Dis
Lines: 107
Message-ID: <vpnsuo$2nbfq$1@dont-email.me>
References: <velpnm$1ne4q$1@dont-email.me> <vpmh8p$2fkd6$1@dont-email.me>
Reply-To: geoff@nospamgeoffwood.org
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Injection-Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2025 21:18:33 +0100 (CET)
Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="b4a4e4579b7066053f3b0ebfc978294b";
	logging-data="2862586"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org";	posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+2O0L6NcXYcfhEVkfUUmjWRgRg1d68F+I="
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird
Cancel-Lock: sha1:V/fFVSN1jm+1vIMvG2F2Tc8dvPo=
In-Reply-To: <vpmh8p$2fkd6$1@dont-email.me>
Content-Language: en-US, en-NZ
Bytes: 5649

On 26/02/2025 8:52 pm, Oliver wrote:
> On Tue, 15 Oct 2024 07:12:23 -0600, Oliver <ollie@invalid.net> wrote
>> What's the best way on Windows to offline embed the text in an SRT
>> companion file to an MP4 video before uploading a short video clip to 
>> a web
>> site?
> 
> I want to update this thread given that I've burned in probably a score 
> of video captions since I originally opened this thread, so I want to 
> help get the message out what worked best to do that task with Windows 
> 10 freeware.
> 
> Editing the srt file works only up to a point because you have to look 
> at the video and edit the file at the same time, where the biggest 
> problem, really, is the annoying propensity of Windows to focus on the 
> wrong window.
> 
> So you're always switching your mouse focus between your text editor and 
> your video player as you navigate the video with MPC-BE or VLC freeware.
> 
> It's a bit worse than that with an editor because when you add a caption 
> in between two existing captions, you have to renumber all subsequent 
> indices.
> 
> Obviously that means you need a freeware subtitle editor, the best 
> almost universally being said to be Aegisub, which is functional, but 
> complicated.
> https://www.videohelp.com/software/Aegisub
> 
> The learning curve for Aegisub is so steep that I went back to text editing
> until, in frustration, I tried the "second best" solution, which worked!
> 
> This second-best freeware subtitle editor is the Subtitle Edit tool.
> https://www.videohelp.com/software/Subtitle-Edit
> 
> Subtitle Edit is much simpler and easier to make srt's than is Aegisub!
> 
> One pitfall though with Subtitle Edit is it doesn't play well with MPC-BE.
> Nor did it seem to work well with VLC, even though it's supposed to.
> Nor did it work at all when I manually installed mpv which it recommended.
> https://www.videohelp.com/software?d=mpv-x86_64-20181002.7z
> 
> But when I let Subtitle Edit download mpv on its own, it worked fine.
> https://sourceforge.net/projects/mpv-player-windows/
> 
> Those are lessons learned I wanted to impart into this thread for you.
> Once you have the subtitles, you still need to burn them into the MP4 file.
> 
> For that, Paul's suggestion of ffmpeg has been working out fantastically.
> Lessons learned on burning in the subtitles are just in the frill options.
> 
> Burn subtitles, 30 point font:
> ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "subtitles=input.srt:force_style='FontSize=30'" 
> output_with_subtitles.mp4
> 
> Burn subtitles, 34 point font:
> ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "subtitles=input.srt:force_style='FontSize=34'" 
> output_with_subtitles.mp4
> 
> Burn subtitles, 34 point font, color BLACK:
> ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf 
> "subtitles=input.srt:force_style='FontSize=34,PrimaryColour=&H000000'" 
> output_with_black_subs.mp4
> 
> Burn subtitles, 34 point font, color WHITE:
> ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf 
> "subtitles=input.srt:force_style='FontSize=34,PrimaryColour=&HFFFFFF'" 
> output_with_white_subs.mp4
> 
> Burn subtitles, 34 point font, color RED:
> ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf 
> "subtitles=input.srt:force_style='FontSize=34,PrimaryColour=&H0000FF'" 
> output_with_red_subs.mp4
> 
> Burn subtitles, 34 point font, color GREEN:
> ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf 
> "subtitles=input.srt:force_style='FontSize=34,PrimaryColour=&H00FF00'" 
> output_with_green_subs.mp4
> 
> Burn subtitles, 34 point font, color BLUE:
> ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf 
> "subtitles=input.srt:force_style='FontSize=34,PrimaryColour=&HFF0000'" 
> output_with_blue_subs.mp4
> 
> The only other thing that's often needed is to set the thumbnail.
> What you can do is pick an exact frame you want to be that thumbnail.
> 
> This will extract a single frame exactly 70 seconds into the video:
> ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -ss 00:01:10 -frames:v 1 thumbnail.jpg
> 
> If desired, this will extract a thumbnail every five seconds:
> ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "fps=1/5" thumb%04d.jpg
> Once you choose the thumbnail, this will embed it into the metadata:
> ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -i thumbnail.jpg -map 0 -map 1 -c copy - 
> disposition:v:1 attached_pic output.mp4
> I hope these lessons learned can help someone else, as I very much 
> appreciate the help Paul and others provided to me.

Alternatively you could spend US$49 and buy something like Magix Movie 
Studio 2025 and it would take possibly less time to achieve your aim 
than it did to type your post.


geoff

-- 
geoff