Did you already notice how Quicktime sometimes displays subtitles, and sometimes not? Yesterday I enlightened another mistery of Apple software. The information given hereafter may only apply to Quicktime 7.4.5 (QT), older (or future) versions may behave different.
For subtitles there are various formats and flavours. For digital movies, these are mostly plain text files with a file type .srt or .sub, usually associated with VLC. (Get a more complete overview on wikipedia)
Apparently QT understands only the SubRip dialect of subtitles, file type .srt. To view the file contents drag it onto the TextEdit icon in the Dock or use your favourite text editor.
1
00:00:37,920 --> 00:00:40,800
Love's a bitch
In order to associate the movie and the subtitle file, QT needs the subtitle file to begin with the movie name, i.e. film_name.avi will be matched with film_name_subtitles-whatever.srt. Unfortunately there seems to be no way to disable the subtitles once the movie is opened, except for closing the file, rename the subtitle file, and reopen the movie.
Now sometimes QT won't show the subtitles even if a .srt file is present and correctly named. Then it is possible that the file is in the also very popular MicroDVD format, which usually ends in .sub, but sometimes erroneously is named .srt.
{1271}{1343}Love's a bitch
To convert a format into another, there is a very handy Java application named Jubler which lets you open the subtitles in whatever format, edit, and export to whatever format you like. Enjoy!
Oh, and Jubler might ask you for the framerate (fps) of the respective movie. This is necessary since some formats are frames-dependent, and some are time-dependent. Open your movie in QT, press [CMD-i], and read the FPS indication.
Web resources: subtitles download site, deutsche untertitel platform, subtitles generator app
Update: This only works if Perian is installed. Check the next post for more information.
© Perian Project
"Amores Perros" in QT
