FFmpeg and subtitles

[Raptor399]

I am trying to see what FFmpeg can do with subtitles. The howto is concise:

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -i test.mkv -vf "ass=test.ass" out.mp4

However, when I open the resulting movie with VLC, I see no subtitles.

Googling mentions some other options, but none of them seems to be able to burn the subtitles on top of an mp4 video. Some old articles mention the "-newsubtitle" flag, but that no longer exists according to the FFmpeg documentation.

I am using our homebrew FFmpeg on Mac OSX, which should be able to understand quite a lot of flavors of subs:

Code: Select all

> ./ffmpeg -codecs
ffmpeg version 1.0 (PMS2) for PS3 Media Server Copyright (c) 2000-2012 the FFmpeg developers
  built on Nov 11 2012 09:59:47 with llvm-gcc 4.2.1 (LLVM build 2336.11.00)
  configuration: http://git.io/ZHdseg
Codecs:
 D..... = Decoding supported
 .E.... = Encoding supported
 ..V... = Video codec
 ..A... = Audio codec
 ..S... = Subtitle codec
 ...I.. = Intra frame-only codec
 ....L. = Lossy compression
 .....S = Lossless compression
[...]
 DES... dvb_subtitle         DVB subtitles (decoders: dvbsub ) (encoders: dvbsub )
 ..S... dvb_teletext         DVB teletext
 DES... dvd_subtitle         DVD subtitles (decoders: dvdsub ) (encoders: dvdsub )
 ..S... eia_608              EIA-608 closed captions
 D.S... hdmv_pgs_subtitle    HDMV Presentation Graphic Stream subtitles (decoders: pgssub )
 D.S... jacosub              JACOsub subtitle
 D.S... microdvd             MicroDVD subtitle
 DES... mov_text             MOV text
 D.S... realtext             RealText subtitle
 D.S... sami                 SAMI subtitle
 DES... srt                  SubRip subtitle with embedded timing
 DES... ssa                  SSA (SubStation Alpha) / ASS (Advanced SSA) subtitle (decoders: ass ) (encoders: ass )
 DES... subrip               SubRip subtitle
 D.S... subviewer            SubViewer subtitle
 ..S... text                 raw UTF-8 text
 D.S... webvtt               WebVTT subtitle
 DES... xsub                 XSUB


Has anyone been successful in burning subs into an mp4 using FFmpeg?

[shagrath]

working fine here but stumbling on this ffmpeg bug: https://ffmpeg.org/trac/ffmpeg/ticket/2067
(no seeking = no dice :p)

[shagrath]

and while I'm thinking about this, this other bug https://ffmpeg.org/trac/ffmpeg/ticket/1398
should unfortunately prevent the dts muxing, whenever mencoder is deprecated for ffmpeg

[SubJunk]

and while I'm thinking about this, this other bug https://ffmpeg.org/trac/ffmpeg/ticket/1398
should unfortunately prevent the dts muxing, whenever mencoder is deprecated for ffmpeg

FFmpeg DTS works when using tsMuxeR (which we already always use for DTS)
P.S. Welcome back to the forum!

[shagrath]

hey
well now ffmpeg has (somewhat) working subtitles rendering, I was thinking about ditching tsmuxer, but those bugs are hard to workaround

[ExSport]

Wow shagrath!
Welcome back, hope you will stay longer

[mazey]

i just wish TranscodeFastStart=true worked with ffmpeg it takes 12 or so seconds to start the video instead of 3 secs with the option enabled and mencoder. is this fixable maybe a flag isnt being set for ffmpeg or doesnt the option exist for ffmpeg.

[SubJunk]

i just wish TranscodeFastStart=true worked with ffmpeg it takes 12 or so seconds to start the video instead of 3 secs with the option enabled and mencoder. is this fixable maybe a flag isnt being set for ffmpeg or doesnt the option exist for ffmpeg.

TranscodeFastStart does work with all engines, but FFmpeg just takes a little while to start. It's the same with all media servers that use FFmpeg (which is most of them)

[mazey]

it takes about the same time as mencoder without it thats why i assumed it never worked, its a very long time and a kinda a deal breaker for me.