How to hardsub East Asian Subtitles to Movies.

Before continuing this little tutorial. I think it is important to mention that today is a semi-official SOPA/PIPA protest day around the web. SOPA/PIPA are nothing more than excuses for the U.S. Government to regulate more of our everyday lives. The excuse is that movie/music/brand piracy must be thwarted. The legislative result is a chilling amount of censorship potential.

 For example, this post could (big emphasis on 'could' even though I assume you own all products involved including the movie) be construed as a guide to thwart copyright. With that interpretation, the site would essentially be scrubbed from the Internet. To learn more, check out this well written summary at Reddit. You can also learn more by visiting the EFF website.

Alright, that said, here is how to hardsub a movie with East Asian Languages.

For this tutorial, I will be using a blue-ray source. However if you are using an AVI source feel free to skip to step 2.

1. Pazera Free MP4 to AVI Converter
Step 1 is to download the Pazera Free MP4 to AVI Converter. As of this writing, version 1.6 is the current release.  Go ahead and install that bad boy. Once it is ready, open it up and load in your MP4 to convert to AVI.

The program is relatively simple to use but offers a nice array of encoding options. I personally chose to keep the original audio and simply use an Xvid encapsulation for this run. In the future I might be more discerning but because it took so long for me to get a working method together (due to a number of issues) I kept it simple. Feel free to be adventurous or use one of the many other options available in the software but when you are ready you need only hit convert and return in about an hour.

2. Prepare your subtitles!

For preparing my new subtitles, I chose to use AegiSub. As of the writing version 2.1.8 was current. So, hop over and download AegiSub. I like this program for two reasons. You can easily set a number of options for how your subs will be displayed when you hardburn them. So, if you like purple subs with green borders, no problem. You like them in the middle of the screen? No problem. The easiest way to make these changes is to alter the default styling scheme. However, if you are ambitious, you can actually go through and apply different styles to different speakers. Pretty cool!

The second reason I like AegiSub is it allows you to use regular expressions (regex) to select lines. This was critical for me because my subtitles had English littered in with Chinese which was very messy and not what I needed. I was able to use regex to erase all the English lines in less than a minute of dabbling. For a quick tutorial on Regex I urge you to take a look at Regular-Expressions.info which is a well written source.

I don't want to reveal the movie so no screenshots of this step. However, trust me when I assure you that it is quick and easy to clean up your subs in AegiSub.

3. Convert your subs to the proper encoding.

This may already have been a problem for some people in step 2. If so, here is the solution. Download NJstar Communicator. Unfortunately this software only has a thirty day trial, so you may have to purchase it eventually or locate an alternative for this step. Next, open the program and click on the left side of the box on the character. That should open a menu and allow you to select " universal code converter.

                                              

Click to add text from file.

At this step, the choices you make will depend upon your source and your language. It may take some trial and error but you will choose an encoding format so that the software in the next step properly displays your subtitles. For Korean I believe it should be Johab encoding for the output. For Chinese, Big5. However, if those don't work, come back and try again.

4. AVI ReComp (the final step)

This is the final step. Albeit, relatively simple since you have already completed the preparation. Once you install AVI ReComp. You can open it up and take a look. This program is a sort of ringmaster for a crew of other programs. That said, it is relatively straightforward and simple to use. Make sure you preview your subtitles once you add them on the second page. If they don't appear properly, you must alter the encoding or change the font. 

In fact, the font is so important I feel I need to repeat this. If you see no subtitles appear in the preview, this is likely because you have chosen an incompatible font. For Korean, you will choose Batang or Batang Che. However, if you see garbled nonsense, that is an encoding issue and you must return to step three and try a different encoding method. 

Once you have a preview that looks satisfactory. Jump to the tab labled queue and click add to queue. Then, sit back and enjoy some Coffee. In a few hours, you will have a copy of your movie with burned in subs!

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I wrote this tutorial because it took me three days for a task I thought should be achievable in an afternoon. Despite this being what I would consider a solved problem, the solutions were all rather piecemeal and inadequate. Many of the blogs pointed to programs not updated in 4 years. Others suggested programs that were unable to properly handle non-Anglo languages. Further, the formats of both subtitles and videos seemed to be a recurring roadblock not to mention weird codec issues. 

That said, this solution should work and after the first time, it is a piece of cake to run through. 

That is all great but why hardburn subs in the first place?

Soft subs are great but they can be difficult to use if you are playing media off a digital storage device. Be it an IPOD or a thumbdrive plugged into a dvd/tv. Any number of encoding problems can arise. So,  sometimes hardcoded subs are the only applicable solution. 

/rant about the ridiculous inadequacies of current subtitle solutions.