hardcoding srt subs into flv video - line breaks not working

[sascha]

Hallo:-) I want to hardcode subs into an .flv video I got off youtube. The subs are in the .srt format. My problem is: every timeI encode them, even though I ticked the "Auto Split" option in Filters/Subtitler the sub is not fit on to the screen, half the sentence gets cut off. Any idea where I might go wrong? I have no idea about video editing. Maybe I entered something wrong in the video format thing? there is no flv option there...

[Jan Gruuthuse]

Use a freeware subtitle editor, and pre-format lines.

[sascha]

A subtitle editor I have already used: Gnome - subtitles. But that doesn't hardcode anything, it just creates an .srt file. I would like to use Avidemux to do it

[Jan Gruuthuse]

make a test line:

Code Select Expand

012345678901234567890123456789012345679
This one is 40 positions long. Use it in avidemux preview screen. It will show where the line cut off is. Use this length as max line length for subtitle editor.

Check if the player you use needs burnt in subltitles in the video picture! I found out my video player is supporting external subtitle .srt files (samsung flatscreen tv): download sample video: 22 MB with external .srt subtitle file.
1st part (filename must be indentical) like:
Myvideo.mp4
Myvideo.srt
Check documentation of video player what container + video/audio codec supports .srt (SubRip)

[sascha]

Thank you. I have managed to do it using Mencoder. Reediting my subtitles to a maximum number of letters is not an option as this must depend on what is being said, not on the software.
This is the commands I entered into mencoder using the terminal:

mencoder ./movies/moviewithnosubs.flv -o desirednameafterencoding.mp4 -sub ./Desktop/mysubtitles.ssa -ovc lavc -oac faac -subpos 15

[Jan Gruuthuse]

Glad you solved the issue to your liking. In avidemux you have three lines available over an available screen width.Thats what you have to work with.
Made a small screen capture of it and included the .srt as attachment.
In this example screen length is at max 74
18 MB screencapture

[sascha]

Awesome, thank you very much Sir. I'm sure this will help others in the future:-)

[sascha]

addendum:

I got even better results with mencoder using this command: earthling@earthling ~ $ mencoder moviewithnosubs.flv -o moviewithsubs.mp4 -sub sutitlefile.srt -ovc lavc -oac faac -subpos 15 -sub-bg-alpha 255 -sub-bg-color 0

das kommando -subpos gibt die prozentuale höhe an in der senkrechten (desto niedriger die Zahl, desto höher steht der untertitel)

sub-bg alpha 255 means highest possible color intensity
sub-bg-color 0 means white

without these the subs where too translucent, so that one had a hard time reading them.

i keep getting the error "video aspect not defined". I'm sure it would be great to define it - problem is I dunno what it is and how to do it, but it worked fine despite the error