.SRT is a plain text file used for recording movie subtitle information. Each entry in the .SRT file contains the start time and end time during which the subtitle is to be displayed. Using .SRT file, it is possible to display subtitles without actually encoding the text inside the movie. Since the only data required is the play time, this file format is compatible with Divx and other movie formats.

.SRT files are very popular among online movie pirates and are usually released along with the movie torrents. There are a lot Web sites which exclusively host .SRT files (for example opensubtitles.org).

The following shows a sample entry of an SRT file:

6

00:03:24,350 –> 00:03:28,800

She had good looks and coal black hair

The above is the sixth subtitle in the movie and will be displayed between 3 minutes 24 seconds and 3 minutes 28 seconds (note the precision up to millisecs!). The actual subtitle displayed is "She had good looks and coal black hair."

A wide range of video playback software supports .SRT subtitle files. Some of them are - VLC media player, CyberLink PowerDirector, and Windows Media Player (with VobSub plugin). Typically .SRT files are configured in the media player before playing the corresponding movie.

An SRT or Subrip format is a caption file that is read by video player programs such as Windows Media Player and iTunes. Subrip format files are more notably known as subtitles. These subtitles can be opened with special programs that are made to run them in conjunction with the movie you are watching. Nevertheless, it is possible to just open and edit the file with any text editor program such as Notepad or WordPad.

Instructions

Step 1

Locate the SRT file that you want to open and edit.

Step 2

Right-click on the file and go to Properties.

Step 3

Click on the Change button that is in the General tab of the file's properties.

Step 4

Select Notepad or WordPad in the Open With window. Select the Always use the selected program to open this kind of file option to make sure that the program you choose opens all files with SRT file extension.

Step 5

Click OK. Double-click on the file. The SRT file will open up in either Notepad or WordPad. You will then be able to read and edit the subtitles.

Step 6

Save the SRT file and load up the video into your video player and then drag the respective SRT file into the video window. The player will accept the file and assign the subtitles to the video that is being watched.

SubRip caption files are named with the extension .SRT. SRT is perhaps the most basic of all subtitle formats. This format is supported by most software video players and subtitle creation programs. The time format used is hours:minutes:seconds,milliseconds, with the milliseconds field precise to three decimal places.

SRT file does not contain any video data, it is a simple text file you can edit by any text editor (translate subtitles into another language). The purpose of srt subtitle file is to use it with desired movie file together to display subtitles when you play video file by any player supporting srt subtitles.

If your video doesn’t include any subtitles, you can add an SRT file to this video folder, then you will be able to get a video with subtitles by converting this video using Any Video Converter or Any DVD Converter. This guide will show you an example on how to add an external SRT file to an AVI video:

Step 1 : Edit an SRT file.

You can either download a .srt file from website and then modify it, or create .srt format subtitles totally on your own.

To make .srt format subtitles, you can follow below steps:

1. Open Notepad, WordPad or other text editor;

2. Edit subtitles shown as below:

Notes: SRT consists of four parts, all in text.

a. A number indicating which subtitle it is in the sequence.

b. The time that the subtitle should appear on the screen, and then disappear.

c. The subtitle itself.

d. A blank line indicating the start of a new subtitle.

Step 2 : Save subtitles to SRT format.

In Notepat, please click menu File->Save As; change file name to xxx.srt; set Save as type to All Files; set Encoding to ANSI or UTF-8.

Notes:

1. Save .srt file as “ANSI” if using English subtitles;

2. Save .srt file as “UTF-8” if using non-English subtitles.

Step 3 : Copy SRT file to AVI video folder, rename .srt file according to the video name.

Note: If you add more than one SRT files to the AVI folder, you can rename the .srt file name like this: if source AVI file name is “michael.avi”, the .srt file names can be “michael001”, “michael002”, etc.

Step 4 : Drag and drop this AVI file to Any Video Converter/Any DVD Converter.

Step 5 : Select .srt subtitle in Any Video Converter/Any DVD Converter.

Go to the right panel of Any Video Converter/Any DVD Converter; unfold Audio Options, and select .srt subtitle in Subtitle drop-down list.

Step 6 : Change subtitle position, size and font.

Encoding: Please set “UTF-8 (UTF-8)” as the default format for subtitle encoding.

Position: Adjust the slide bar to change the position of the subtitles on screen.

Size: Increase/Decrease scales of subtitles according to movie height, width, and diagonal.

Font: Please follow this directory C:\WINDOWS\Fonts; choose your desired font; right click on the font name to choose Properties; copy and paste the font name, such as “ARIAL.TIF” to subtitle font option.

After you finish edit the subtitle options, please click OK to go back to the main interface.

Step 7 : Preview the video before encoding.

Step 8 : Start converting.

Start converting AVI file to the your desired output format if you feel satisfied with the subtitles.

Have fun!

This guide attempts to explain how to take this Excel file with the translation for the movie that you are interested in. You will then see how to merge it in with the correct timing and save it into the correct format for your viewing plesaure.

Necessary Software: Subtitle Workshop 2.51

1 Open up the Excel file that your translator has given you. It should look something like this

2 Right click on the A column and select Insert.

3 The above action will cause a new column to be inserted before the A column and the new column will be called A and the original A column will be B.

4 In row 1 of Column A, copy or type in the following

a. Dialogue: Marked=0,0:00:09.56,0:00:11.79,Default,NTP,0000,0000,0000,!Effect,

b. Note: You might be thinking why you are filling this in. This is a generic timestamp placeholder that Subtitle Workshop will understand when trying to read this file later on when you are merging the timing with this translation file.

5 Select Column A, Row 1 and then scroll down to the last line and while pressing the Shift button, click on the last line.

6 Press CTRL+D, to fill the entire column down with the same value in Column A, Row 1.

7 Press Ctrl+S to save the file.

8 Now go to the File menu, and do a Save As.

9 Save this file as a Tab Delimited Text file.

10 You might get the following message, just click OK.

11 You might also get the following message box also, just click YES.

12 Close Microsoft Excel, you might be prompted with this dialog box, just click NO.

13 Open up the TXT file that you just saved in Notepad.

14 Press Ctrl+H and do a search and replace for "Dialogue:

Marked=0,0:00:09.56,0:00:11.79,Default,NTP,0000,0000,0000,!Effect," and replace it eith Dialogue:

Marked=0,0:00:09.56,0:00:11.79,Default,NTP,0000,0000,0000,!Effect,

15 Click Replace All.

a. You will know this is done when the hourglass disapperas.

b. Note: You might be thiking why you should do this Search and Replace. This is because Excel added Quotes around this field, and you need to get rid of it before you merge this in with the real timing in Subtitle Workshop.

16 Click Cancle on the replace dialog box.

17 Press CTRL+S to save the file.

a. One thing to note, if this is not an English translation, you might need to do a Save As to save this as a UTF-8 Encoded file.

b. Example of an English text file with ANSI encoding.

c. Select the Encoding to UTF-8 if this is ont an English file. Do not choose Unicode because Subtitle Workshop does not understand this encoding and will toss up an error.

18 Close notepad.

19 Open up the SRT timing file in Subtitle Workshop.

20 Click on the Edit menu, and select Texts, and then Read Text from File or press Shift+Ctrl+X.

21 Select the translated file text from Step 9 and click Open.

22 You will now see that the translated text is now merged with the timing.

23 Press Ctrl+S to save the file.

24 Close Subtitle Workshop.

25 You can then send this file on to your Quality Checker or Editors to check for any translation mistake etc. After this, you can release this as a softsub file by uploading this up somewhere (such as D-Addicts.com) for viewers to download or you can use a software program to hardcode this file with its corresponding episode.

Note: If you are using this as a soft sub, make sure the final SRT file name is named the same as the movie file that you want to watch and that both are located in the same directory. You will also need a program like VOBSub to watch it.

26 This concludes this guide.

When you download and watch a subtitled video on your computer, you may notice that there are two files involved. One is the .avi file, which contains the video. The second file is the subtitle file with the .srt extension. If you want to watch the video on an external player, you can encode both files into a standard DVD format.

Things you will need: Avi2DVD.

Step 1

Open Avi2DVD. Select the radio button marked Avi Mode.

Step 2

Click Load avi/ogm/mkv/wmv under the Step 1 Input tab. Browse to the directory containing your AVI file and select it. It will load with certain information about the file, including the aspect ratio.

Step 3

Click on the Step 2 Output tab and select DVD or SVCD. Make sure the aspect ratio matches the aspect ratio displayed under the Step 1 Input tab. You can customize the audio bitrate and set chapter length. Click on the folder icon to select an output location for your DVD files.

Step 4

Use the default values found under the Step 3 Encoders tab.

Step 5

Click on the tab marked Step 4 Subtitles. Click the button marked Subtitle 1 and navigate to the directory where your SRT file is stored. Select it to add it to your DVD. You can customize the font and size in the Options box on this tab.

Step 6

Click the Add Job button to add this conversion job to your queue. Click the GO button to begin converting your files. When it finishes converting, you will have folders named "VIDEO_TS" and "AUDIO_TS"; these are your DVD files, and they can now be burned to a blank DVD.