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Subtitles for video's on iPhone, iPad, AppleTV and the Mac.

Adding subtitles to a movie is beneficial if English is not your mother language and/or you want to improve your language skills. Certainly when you are hearing impaired, it will add to the fun of watching a movie. If you follow the steps below, you will find it’s easy to do, even on a video you copied to your iPad.

  1. Finding a subtitle file:
    You will need a .srt file, which you can find on internet for example on Subscene. Usually they come packed as a .zip file. Preferably find one for your movie, that matches its format, but that’s not a must. Put both files (movie and .srt file) on your Desktop.
  2. Check the synchronization of the .srt file and the movie:
    Give your .srt file the same name as your movie file. Open the movie in VLC Player (freeware from videolan.org). When the movie plays, the subtitles are shown now. Check the synchronization at one of the first sentences spoken by an actor, and at one of the last ones. If in the beginning as well as the end of the movie, the matching subtitle pops up when the actor first moves his lips, continue with step 4. If not, move to the next step.
  3. Proper synchronization of subtitles:
    If the subtitle pops up too early or too late, we need to correct the timing in the .srt file. Restart your video from the beginning, and note down precisely the time  the chosen subtitle pops up and the time when the actor just first moves his lips for this subtitle. Calculate the difference in time. Calculate the same at the end of the video. Usually  the time lag between lips movement and subtitle pop-up is larger at the end of the movie than at the beginning. This can be corrected easily with the freeware program SubFix (Internet). Open the .srt file in SubFix, find the two subtitles you selected, and correct the time. I would recommend to subtract in addition about 0.1 second to compensate for your speed of reaction. Save the .srt file, and recheck the synchronization with VLC Player. If it is satisfactory now, move on to the next step, else repeat this one.
  4. Turning your movie file into a file for iTunes, QuickTime and or the AppleTV:
    If you haven’t done it yet, convert your movie file into a file (like .m4v) for these players. I would highly recommend to use the program Handbrake for this conversion. It can be downloaded freely from the French website handbrake.fr and is available for Apple and Windows. Toggle the presets in Handbrake, and select in the right hand window the conversion you need. Leave the proposed settings at default. Please be aware that the conversion (or remuxing) can easily take 1 - 2 hours, even on a fast computer.
  5. Converting your .srt file to Apple’s tx3g format and adding it to your movie:
    If you don’t have it yet, download the freeware Subler from the Internet. Open your movie file in Subler. Hit the + button and browse to your .srt file. Hit OK, save your file in Subler and quit. You are done in a few seconds.
  6. (Optional) Grabbing metadata for your video:
  7. When in Subler, it’s easy to add metadata (names of actors, a short description of the plot and artwork) to your file. Just click the Button image button at the top righthand corner. Your file will look professional. And iTunes will show this information in the list of movies. Cool!
  8. Tip!: If your original video happens to be an .mkv file, also Subler can convert it into a .m4v file. In this case, Subler is much faster than Handbrake and needs quite often only half an hour or slightly more. Just open your .mkv file in Subler, add subtitle file and metadata and click save in Subler’s menu.

    Playing:

    Playing movie and subtitles in QuickTime:
    Play your .m4v or .mp4 movie file in QuickTime. Make sure to checkmark the subtitle file in the QuickTime menu: View → Subtitles.. and enjoy your subtitles in QuickTime.

    Playing both in iTunes:
    Open iTunes, and import your movie into its library. Now play your movie in iTunes. Subtitles can be turned on and off in iTunes menu: Controls → Audio and Subtitles.

    Playing your movie on the AppleTV:
    When your AppleTV is running, go to ’Settings’ → ‘Audio and Video’ → select subtitle language and checkmark ‘closed captioning’. Next open your movie in iTunes, select AppleTV for output and enjoy your movie with the whole family! If there are no subtitles shown, recheck the appropriate setting in iTunes.

    Final Remark:

    For those of you, who want full control over subtitling, I would like to suggest using the freeware program Jubler that you can find here. The best program I could find is Subtitle Edit, which can be downloaded here. Be aware that Subtitle Edit only runs under Windows!  
    For example you may want to remove annoying remarks in your subtitle file. Or you have a better translation, or something is said in the movie that was not translated at all.
    And for the adventurous ones: if you cannot find subtitles in your own language, it is possible (with the help of Jubler and Google Translate) to translate the English subtitle file into your own language.