How to create/edit/embed subtitles in videos using Jubler and Avidemux under Windows/Linux/MAC OS |
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 Jubler is a tool to edit text-based subtitles. It can be used as an authoring software for new subtitles or as a tool to convert, transform, correct and refine existing subtitles. The most popular subtitle formats can be used. Preview of the subtitles in realtime or in design time, spell checking, translation mode and styles editing are some of the main features. It is open source under a liberal (GNU) public licence. It is written in Java 5.0 (a.k.a. Java 1.5.0) in order to be really multi-platform. Itis available for Linux, Windows XP/Vista and Mac OS X.
Avidemux is a free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks. It supports many file types, including AVI, DVD compatible MPEG files, MP4 and ASF, using a variety of codecs. Tasks can be automated using projects, job queue and powerful scripting capabilities. Avidemux is available for Linux, BSD, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows under the GNU GPL license.
In this guide I will describe you how to create your own subtitles for a video clip using Jubler and after that how to embed them on the clip using Avidemux. Install jubler from your distributions PMS or download it from here and Avidemux from here or again through your distributions PMS.
The following has been tested on Archlinux but since both applications are cross platform you should have no problem running them in Windows XP or MAC OS X. Lauch Jubler and select either File > New or the New button in the toolbar to start a new project (1). 
Next click on the Enable/Disable Preview button to load the clip you want to create subtitles for. Browse to the location you have the clip (1) and click Ok. If you want you can select to use a different audio stream and work with that (2).
As you can see a video preview window has opened (1) along with a waveform visualization of the clip's audio sound (2). You can use the zoom in/out scroll bar to locate the exact time of the movie you want to add subtitles (3) which I will show you later how to do it.
But first we must set some preferences for the subtitles. Click on File -> Preferences and a new window will appear. In the first tab if you are using Windows or Linux select UTF-8 as First Encoding (1), unless you have some special encoding for your language. If you are using MAC OS X set the First Encoding to “MacRoman”. Next click on the Get FPS from video file button (2), or select your clip's FPS from the drop down menu if you know it.
In the Save tab you can select the format you want your subtitles to be saved to. There are many supported formats such as Advanced SubStation, SubStation Alpha, SubRip. SubViewer (1 and 2), MicroDVD, MPL2 and Spruce DVD Maestro. Here I will use the .srt file format (1).
 In the Player tab you can select the player you want Jubler to open to test your subtitled video. In my system it has recognized mplayer on its own (1).  If you are not good in spelling Jubler uses ASpell speller to check what you are writing. 
When you have finished with the configuration click on Accept to return to main program window. To start creating your subtitles you must select the part of the waveform in which there is voice. To do so grab the left and right edge of the blue part of the waveform (1). The Start and End time of the subtitles will appear (2) and you can know type your subtitles (3). You can also change the font size/type etc. (4) and color (5) of your subtitles. To test what you have done click on the Test Subtitles from current position button (6).
If your subtitle isn't correctly set close the preview window and drag again the two edges until you have the wanted result. Once you have selected the correct length for your first subtitle click on the New subtitle after current one button (1). The time in which the first subtitle appears on screen will appear as green (2) and the program will select next speech for you (3). Again type the subtitle, move its start and ending point to what you think is good and test. Repeat the whole process as many times as needed.
 When you are done click on File -> Save as... to save your subtitles. 
If you give your subtitles the same name as your clip's and put them in the same folder when you'll try to play the clip most media players will automatically recognize the subtitles file and open it. However you might want to embed the subtitles on the clip to reproduce them with a program or with a device that doesn't support external subtitles. Here comes Avidemux. Close Jubler and launch Avidemux. Click the Open button (1) and open your clip. Next select Side from the drop down menu (2) to have both the initial and final video in your screen (this is optional).
Next go to Video -> Filters and from the Available Filters select Subtitles (1). Here you should select the format you had previously saved your subtitles to. For me it's Subtitler (2). Click on the blue cross (3) and in the pop up window browse to your Subtitle file (4). You should also select UTF8 Encoding (5) (or whatever you have choosen previously in Jubler). Click Ok and Close buttons to return to the main program window. Here you must be careful the Font (TTF) file to exist in your computer. If it doesn't no subtitles will appear in your final video. So use the browse button to select a font if the chosen one doesn't exist in your system (5).
Here you can choose the video format you want to save the file to (1) (avi, mpeg, xvid, divx whatever) as long as the audio format (2) (mp3, aac, ac3 etc.). You can also use the Play button (3) to preview your video.
 Click on the the Save button and the encoding will begin. Wait a while till you have your final video file with embedded subtitles!  
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Hits: 16633 Comments (40)
Kev
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Subscribe to this comment's feed| Use this software, how can i translate my subtitles into russian, arabic etc for eg or how can i feed different languages? | |
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axel
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Hey Kev. Select File -> Open and load your english subtitles file. All subtitles text will appear one under another. Now you can translate them one by one either on your own or by using an external dictionary. What do you mean by feed different languages? |
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Kev
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Hi Axel, thnx for ur reply, well what i meant by feed other languages, is like tests other than english like example russian or arabic or asian languages abd is it possible to load two sets of languages at the same time, os that when the file is being played we can see english and its equvalent translation and also when i read the synopsis of jubler, its was mentioned that jubler has a translating option finally im getting stuck at the mplayer bit, when i try to play the video it searches for the executable file, and automatic searching doesn't lead anything and when u go for the manual option, and u find the 'exe file' it says invalid executable file pls help |
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axel
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As far as I can understand you are using Windows. A very good program for Windows that makes translating easy is Subtitles Workshop To load more than one Subtitle files you can use AVIAddXsubs I will soon publish a guide about it although it's a very easy program to use. |
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axel
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Currently neither Jubler nor Avidemux support karaoke effect.  Please for any other question or problem use our Linux DVD and Video Forum |
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Bernarctica
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| and if in case, i try all the options to set the subtitle in the movie, i've got 'em in the preview but when i ask to save, the output has no subtitle??? | |
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axel
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| If you have followed exactly my guide and you don't have embeded subtitles it might be because of a bug in jubler or avidemux versions you are using.. | |
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Ta
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Wow, this guide is a complete lifesaver. However... it's not working for me. The only things in my experiences that differ from your tutorial are 1. My videos are in mp4 and not avi. I can convert if this is what's causing it. 2. The "Test subtitles from current position" button isn't working for me. Does this point to a problem with MPlayer? MPlayer is working perfectly otherwise. When I try to add the titles into Avidemux I can select the right file, I made sure the font and configuration were right like you said, and yet the subtitles just don't show up. You also said "most media players will automatically recognize the subtitles file and open it". That's not happening for me either. I've tried Quicktime, MPlayer and DivXPlayer. If you could help me, I would be thrilled. |
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Ta
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Oh, hey... after messing around a little more, I also can't open the subtitle file with MPlayer... it says I can, but then when I try it just closes. Definitely something up with MPlayer. |
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axel
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Hey Ta, When you press the "Test subtitles from current position" button, mplayer starts playing but it doesn't show any subs or it doesn't start at all? You can also try smplayer, which is a frontend for mplayer, to play the external subtitles, before embeding them on the video. you are using mplayer for Windows, Linux or MAC? |
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Ta
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I've made some progress... turns out that the latest version of MPlayer isn't compatible with Jubler, and I have to downgrade. I haven't had a chance to do that yet, but it still doesn't explain why the subtitles won't show up in Avidemux, not even in the preview. Sorry, should have said earlier I'm running Mac OSX Leopard. |
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axel
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I went to jubler forums to make a little search and I saw your post. Heh. Regarding avidemux the only things that I can think are whether you have select the correct path for an existing TTF font and the correct encoding for your subtitles file. It might be something different than UTF-8. I don't have a MAC so I don't know what is going on there. |
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Bernarctica
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i've got the latest version of avidemux... i'm not using jubler 'cuz the subtitles are already done.. i'll just wait for another version... thnx by the way |
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Lensman
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| i can see the subs in the preview video of the split vie but when i encode the video there are no subs embedded ... | |
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axel
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| Are you using Linux/Windows/Mac? Have you set the path to an existing font in your system correctly? Have you also set the format to AVI or AVI unpack VOP? Try the first one. | |
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Lensman
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| I found out what was wrong. I use Vista and i just wanted to add subs in a video without changing format (didn't want to mess up the quality) so i was leaving the Video to copy. You must specify a video in order for this to work. | |
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axel
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| You are right. Although you can select a filter from Video -> Filters menu this cannot be applied unless you change the video codec. This is a little frustrating for me also since I have to reencode a video when applying a filter. I haven't searched why the copy mode doesn't work. | |
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axel
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| Check image no8. You drag the left and right edge of the blue thing. The bigger it is the longest the subtitles last. | |
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DR
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Need help/suggestions to work with titles in TEXT format. ------------------- Also Posted in the Jubler General Forum ----------- Hello everyone, This is my first post, please bear with me for the introduction, I am a new to video/editing and a new user of Jubler which I downloaded and installed without problems in a Windows XP machine. It works great, so thanks to you all for the great job. My main use of Jubler at this point is to add titles to foreign videos that we need to translate to English, such as conferences, speeches and the like which means pretty much a subtitle every few frames, and my main problem or really a wish, is to find ways to improve the speed of the workflow. I also used AVIDEMUX to add the titles to the video (Sorry to say AVIDEMUX crashed a couple of times; but it reloaded the crashed files again and eventually output an MP4 video) My first tests went smooth, so I will make Jubler my main application for this (keep in mind that I own Premiere CS4 and Ulead; but found out that Jubler is much better for this task). Now the real questions: To test and to learn I exported the titles as text and saw that the text file is actually nothing more than a line for each title, without any time information, so when the text file is reloaded again all the titles are given default time values. Obviously this is not very helpful. 1) Did I miss something when I saved the titles as text or Jubler is actually only saving the titles without time information ? Because I have the conferences and speeches already translated, the text option is very convenient to initially get all the titles into jubler by breaking down the speeches into short text lines, in these cases loading them into jubler without time information is ok and what I need to know is how to put the correct time on each title in an efficient way. In another words how to change the default times that each subtitle gets when loaded into jubler. I guess a convenient way would be while watching the video play, somehow tell jubler the start and end points within the video that correspond to a given subtitle. Can anyone suggest the best way to do this ? Thank you all again. Dave |
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axel
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Hey DR. Let's see. First open the subtitle file (File -> Open). The open the video file ("Enable/Disable Preview", the icon with the eye). And now select Tools -> Synchronize. Choose what you think is best for you. I hope this will help you. |
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DR
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Hello Axel, Thanks for the hint, I tried the Tools-->Synchronize, it works fine and if I only had to correct the timing of few subtitles that would do it; but I might have to correct hundreds of subtitles per video!, so I am looking for a way that actually resembles the option of adding "new" titles while watching the video (I tried that originally and that's why I liked Jugler so much). In this case the subtitles "already" exist, after I import them from a plain text file, they all have default, sequential timings given by jugler, so far so good , now I need to give them the correct timing. The plain text format (without any timing) is very useful for me because I will use it to initially load the subtitles from a plain text file. The reason is that I already have several conferences and speeches translated from foreign languages to English and all I need is to add those subtitle lines to the videos. So what I am looking for is an efficient, quick way to add the correct timing to all (could be hundreds of them) the subtitles. When you load the text lines from a plain text file. jugler creates default timing for each subtitle, sequentially, all with some default duration; but obviously they do not fall in the correct places, so I have to move each individually to the right spot on the video (keep in mind that if I push the first one over the ones that follow to find its place in the video , a mess is quickly made). I need to find a way to do this, I think jugler has the right potential to do it if it does not do it already. It should work something like this: While I watch the video, jugler should be ready to assign the timing to the next available subtitle, and as soon as I see the start of the video for that subtitle I would press a start-button and then wait a little bit until the video reaches the end corresponding to the end of the subtitle, at that moment I would press an end-button and automatically jugler would assign the correct timing to that subtitle. At this point jugler should be ready to work with the next subtitle available....And the whole process is repeated until I reach the end of the subtitles. My point is to let the user do this with the minimum amount of clicks and delays, while the video is continually playing. Jugler is very close to doing that! , the option to add new titles while watching the video has the right flavor so to speak... There are a couple of arrows on the video controller, they says "add first point or last point of synchronization..." which I do not know how to use; but with these buttons it might be possible to do or perhaps implement in the future what I explained. Sorry for the long winding explanation, I would like other people to think about this not just to solve my problem; but it would really make Jubler a superb tool for this type of translation jobs. Any hints, ideas, etc are appreciated indeed  |
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Osama Yousef
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thank you for this guide , that is exactly what am looking for  |
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Gotit
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Hi Axel, I have been searching for an "easy" way to add soft-subs (able to turn on/off while watching) that look good to my videos/slide shows. It seems Avidemux adds nicely formatted hard-subs but not soft-subs. Is there a way to tell Avidemux to add soft-subs and I just missed it? I have used DeVeDe to add soft-subs, but they don't look that great as spumux doesn't seem to use anti-aliasing. If you can't tell, I'm on a linux system Thanks |
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axel
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Hi Gotit, Avidemux can't add soft-subtitles as far as now. Have you tried changing the default devede font? Just replace ~/.spumux/devedesans.ttf with the font you want keeping the same name. There is also mandvd but I haven't tried it. Maybe the result will be better. |
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Gotit
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Hi Axel, RATS! on the soft-subs... Yes, I have learned how to "trick" DeVeDe into using another font just as you indicate above and that works fine. Interestingly, I checked out a couple of DVD's last night just to see their fonts/colors (now that I'm paying attention). It seems many subtitles on commercial DVD's don't look any different than what DeVeDe provides. Thanks for the tip on mandvd, I'll check it out. |
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axel
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Hi again Gotit, you are right, many DVD's don't have very good looking subtitles. When you try mandvd drop me a line here. I also want to check it and maybe publish a guide for it. Happy new year! |
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My10
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hi axel, i got idx and sub file in chinese, in the video filter manager, the preview got sub but when converting , don't have sub? I could only use the Vobsub in the subtitles, i use the subtitler it give me cannot identify subtitle format. Got any clue how to get the sub on? |
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axel
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Hi My10. you can't see subtitles while converting the video or when playing the final video in a media player? From the available filters have you selected VobSub and the correct encoding (Select Language) ? An idx/sub file can contain more than one subtitles so this might be a problem also.. You could try and find .srt subtitles as well. |
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My10
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i can't see the subtitles when playing the final video in media player, yes i select only vobsub and the correct language. it got 4 languages to choice, the chinese srt is a bit difficult to find. the movie is butterfly lovers. |
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axel
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| Which media player are you using? Do all files (.avi .idx .sub) have the same name? | |
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My10
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i using MPC, ya all the name are the same. anyway i manage to use virtualdubmod with vobsub now and hard sub it in. do you know what "Target quantizer" affect in virtualdubmod? cos i want to retain the quality and size of the file. it get ugly picture with sub when i leave everything as default, the size drop from 700mb to 250mb. |
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Spase Vasilevski
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Hi, first of all thx a lot, I learned a lot from this website of how to use jubler and avidemux. Let's start for the beginning: I use jubler Version 3.9.5 and avidemux 2.4.3 (r4276). Now my main question is: WHY WHEN I GO TO PREVIEW ON AVIDEMUX,THE SUBTITLES THAT I LOAD FROM JUBLER ARE ALWAYS IN SOME DEFAULT FONT AND ARE WHITE. Why? I did everything as it need's to be done. I finished them in jubler and i changed the font to 13 and made them yellow and yet here they come in 26 size font and are white? Can this be because I use arial and when i typed the text on the subtitle i used ALT+SHIFT to change the language bar on XP PRO ESSENTIAL WINDOWS from english to macedonian. Can that be? I think I even have them both somewhere english somewhere macedonian? But still on the preview mode it is okey except for the font and color. Any help sooner would be great?! P.S : forgot to say , when i go to play the subtitles on the jubler with mplayer, some of them instead of 2 lines like they are in jubler they are shown on 3 lines on the mplayer when i play them?! WHy? Anyway I use MPlayer for Windows (Full Package) 1.2 2007-08-26 The Award and GNU Aspell (Win32 version). THX upfront!? |
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axel
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@My10 You can try a Target Quantizer of 2 or 3 for best quality. If the final file size it too big increase it. Generally have in mind that Higher Target Quantizer = Smaller filesize but Lower quality @Spase Vasilevski Avidemux has an option for font size and color. You can find it when you select the Subtitle file and font. However I believe you can decrease the size of the subtitles through mplayer as well. Maybe they appear in 3 lines because the are too large to be displayed in 2 lines. PS: I removed your email address so you don't get spammed by bots. |
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frustrated as hell
said:
| subtitle file exported from jubler and no matter what i do avidmux cannot identify it. i have matched the unicode, i've found the right font, and it still won't work. any advice? | |
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frustrated as hell
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| i tried *.sub and *.srt. those won't work. when i did .ass/saa avidmux would take it but no subs would show. | |
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axel
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Do you get any error message? The subtitles don't appear in the preview or only in the final video? Do you use a codec such as mpeg4 or just copy in Video options? |
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