#this was an mp4 so the subs are the same as my softsubs

[everglowstardust]

OFF THE RIP

Lyrics, composition, and arrangement: KJ

Album: Next Destination

[yujachachacha]

How do you burn the subtitles in the video using HandBrake?

Is this the anon from before who was asking about subbing/fonts/Korean? If so, hi again! :D And if not, well, hello there, new anon! It seems like I’m slowly turning into a “how-to” blog lately, haha. Probably because I’ve been busy with RL lately, so my online productivity has taken a hard hit.

In fact, I’m actually going to get two of my wisdom teeth pulled out today…and if it’s anything like when I had my first two removed, I’m going to be miserable for the rest of the week. (´；ω；｀) I’m hoping that it actually leads to me having some more free time since I’ll be staying at home to heal (I have vivid memories of certain things splattering from last time). Knowing me, I’m more likely to end up binge-watching Aqours niconamas while whispering “i must be insane why did i agree to let some person saw my gums open” as I rock back and forth in a blanket cocoon and cry over Shukashuu’s cute face…

…uh, enough about my boring personal life, lol. As I mentioned in a previous ask, I’ve actually been using ffmpeg lately to mux and burn my subbed videos instead. In fact, the recent video that I edited for Shukamod’s comeback post was processed with ffmpeg. ffmpeg is handy because it can both mux and burn in subtitles, and can be used to fiddle with a variety of video/audio/subtitle options for files as well. For serious encoders, I’d recommend going with ffmpeg because of this versatility.

However, I do know that ffmpeg isn’t quite for everyone since it’s a command line tool. That means it requires typing stuff into Terminal (if you have a Mac) or Command Prompt (for Windows users) that looks like this -

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf “ass=subtitle.ass” output.mp4

- at its simplest, which can be off-putting to some people. HandBrake, on the other hand, is probably a bit more user-friendly since it has a GUI - meaning there’s an actual window for the program with ~buttons~ and stuff. I know that some subbers out there use HandBrake, and this program is fantastic because it also gives you a lot of encoding options, plus it’s very easy to navigate.

The major downside is that unlike ffmpeg, HandBrake can’t do muxing - your video has to already have the subtitles muxed for HandBrake to burn them in. Luckily, there are plenty of programs out there for this step. I personally use MKVToolnix since it also has a great GUI and comes with command line tools like mkvinfo, mkvmerge (which is basically what the MKVToolnix GUI does), and mkvextract. For the purposes of simple subbing, all you really need to know is that MKVToolnix is a very fast and powerful tool for creating the muxed files you need for HandBrake! :)

Ah, and for HandBrake, basically all you have to do is check off “burned in” for the encoding options and you should be set, lol. So even though you’re using 2 programs instead of 1 for hardsubbing (MKVToolnix for muxing, HandBrake for burning in those subs), it won’t take very long. For example, if your subbed video is only a few minutes long, the mux/burn process should take mere seconds! It’s quite simple, but I’ve also picked up a few things that might make the process even easier, so I’ll share those with you!

(Side note: I have no idea if HandBrake looks drastically different on Windows/other OS, so everything I say here might only apply to the Mac version of the program. Hopefully, they’re not too different.)

tl;dr version of how to use HandBrake:

1. Mux subs into a video with MKVToolnix or program of your choice.

2. Open up the file in HandBrake and navigate to the “Subtitles” tab in the middle of the HandBrake window.

3.Click the drop-down under the “Track” heading and select the option with “(SSA)”, which should be the Aegisub file (.ass) that you muxed into this video. Check off the “Burned In” option.

4. (This step isn’t always necessary, but is kind of a “just-in-case” measure.) On the “Picture” tab, make sure that the “Cropping” option on the right is set to “Custom”, and that the numbers are all set to 0.

5. Under the “Destination” section (2nd bolded heading in the window), set the file name and destination for your finished product.

6. Hit the green “Start” button at the top and wait for HandBrake to work its magic! It should send you a desktop notification when it’s finished.

That’s basically it! Detailed instructions under the cut~

Softsubbing (muxing) with MKVToolnix

Before we get into HandBrake, we need to deal with this step of the process. Unlike ffmpeg, which can create a hardsubbed .mp4 right off the bat, Handbrake requires a softsubbed file in order to create a hardsubbed version.

Softsubbing means that there’s a subtitle file associated with the video that you can “turn off” or “turn on” when watching from a video player on your computer, versus hardsubbed files where the subtitles are “burned in” and inseparable from the video. Advantages of softsubbing includes being able to, as stated, “turn off” the subtitles when watching a video, and being able to choose from multiple versions of subtitles for a video.

This doesn’t just mean multilingual support - it also includes subtitle styles as well. So in one video, you could have a Spanish subtitle file, a Chinese subtitle file, an English subtitle file from one fansub group that uses Open Sans font, an English subtitle file from another group that uses Lato and animated karaoke effects, another English subtitle file from a different group in Helvetica Neue along with a markedly different translation style, and yet another English subtitle file that’s styled in god-awful rainbow colors and Comic Sans or something, lol.

Of course, the downside is that if you’re playing the file with anything but a decent video player, the subs won’t appear at all. For example, if you upload a softsubbed file to YouTube, you won’t see any subs show up on that video. Hardsubbing is the go-to method for uploading files onto video-sharing sites to ensure maximum coverage, so that viewers on all platforms can see the subs.

So, we’ll be using a program called MKVToolnix to generate a softsubbed version of the video that’ll later be used as the base for the hardsubbed video we’ll make in HandBrake.

(Ah, by the way, what I said before about HandBrake possibly looking different to non-Mac users applies here as well. Again, I’m tentatively guessing that things will look pretty much the same. Fingers crossed.)

At the time of this post, the most current version of MKVToolnix is 12.0.0. Windows and Mac users can download the installer from this page - Linux users should go to the MKVToolnix homepage for download options. The install shouldn’t take too long, so you’ll be able to get going pretty quickly.

MKVToolnix is real simple - drag and drop files into the window, and click start. Bam, there’s your muxed file! :)

You can add files by either dragging and dropping them directly into the “Source files” window, or through the “Add source files” button on the left-most side of the bottom of the GUI. You’ll be dragging two files here - the video file and the subtitle file. As you might have guessed from the name of this program, softsubbed files are in .mkv format, so that’s what your output is gonna be in. On the bottom, where it says “Destination file”, the box will automatically fill in with an identical name and file location as the source video.

Let’s say our input files are named “testvideo.mp4” (the video that we want to add subs to) and “testvideo.ass” (the subtitles created for the video on Aegisub). The output will be named “testvideo.mkv” by default. I’ll usually rename the output file to something like “testvideo_muxed.mkv”. Even though it’ll be obvious that this is the muxed video without renaming (since it’s .mkv rather than .mp4), I still like going through with this for the sake of order. It’s up to you whether you want to do this or not - you only really need to rename the file if your source video was a .mkv file as well. Also, if you want the muxed file to be saved in a different location than the original video, you can click the button next to the text field to browse for your desired place.

You don’t need to mess with anything else after that - just hit the “Start multiplexing” button at the bottom and the job should be done in seconds (or minutes, if for whatever reason you’re subbing a 1 hr+ video).

If you find a different program for softsubbing that you’re more comfortable with, feel free to use that one instead! All that matters is that you have a .mkv softsubbed file to use as an input for HandBrake.

Hardsubbing (burning in) with HandBrake

When you open up HandBrake, it should automatically open up a window for you to browse through your files. Go ahead and select your muxed video file (the .mkv you just muxed, NOT the raw .mp4 file!) now. If you happen to accidentally close this window, no worries - you can just click the “Open Source” button located on the top-left corner to navigate to the file you need.

Once you’ve selected a file, HandBrake will read the file and load the appropriate options. There are a lot of options you can mess around with on HandBrake - feel free to explore them on your own, if you’re interesting in encoding and the like. However, since our goal here is just to burn in subtitles, I’m just going to skip to the basics.

Feel free to do these steps in any order you want, since the order doesn’t matter. I’m a simple gal, so I like to start at the top and work my way down. The first thing I usually do is go to the Destination section (second from the top) to set the name and destination for the finished file. If the file destination is already right where you want it, then you can just type directly in the space where you can edit the file name. If not, click the “Browse…” button on the right and find the location you want to save the file to.

Since the encoded file is going to be a .mp4 rather than a .mkv, you don’t have to change the file name if you don’t want to. Well, you do kinda have to if you didn’t rename your .mkv before since you’re gonna end up with two .mp4 files and you probably don’t want the raw video and the finished product having the exact same file name, but you get what I mean. I personally like having the .mp4 that I’m eventually going to upload be named appropriately, so I’ll usually name the file something like “testvideo_FINAL.mp4” so that I can easily pick it out from my cluttered hard drive. Use whatever you’re comfortable with!

Next, we’re going to determine the settings of the actual output.

By default, the output format should be .mp4. If for whatever reason you want your hardsubbed file to be in .mkv format instead, you can do that through the drop-down menu next to “Format”, under the Preset heading. Speaking of Presets, you can also decide what quality you want your video to be in. There should be a “Toggle Presets” window on the top right of the GUI - the Preset window should already be sticking out of the right side of the Handbrake window, but if not, go ahead and click that toggle button so it does pop out.

The default setting, IIRC, is “Fast 1080p30” (meaning “fast encoding at 1080p and 30 fps”). I haven’t used any other preset, but I assume the “Very Fast” options will sacrifice quality for a smaller file size and fast encoding speed, and the “HQ” and “Super HQ” options will create higher quality files that’ll take longer to process. Feel free to choose whatever you think is appropriate for your video here (e.g. the 720p preset might work if your original video was in that resolution).

The most important step is in the “Subtitles” tab. Take a look at the drop-down under the “Track” heading - by default, it should currently be on something like “Foreign Bitmap”. Click the drop-down and select the option that says “(SSA)” at the end, which should be the Aegisub file (.ass) that you muxed into this video. Then, check off the “Burned In” option. Don’t touch anything else.

It probably helps to have an illustration at this point, so here’s a screenshot of what I had on my screen back when I made a silly video for an ask:

Fair warning - since this is from October 2016, the window looks slightly different now since the program has gone through a few updates. Off the top of my head, the changes include: (1) the “Picture Settings” on the toolbar has migrated down to become one of the tabs along with “Video/Audio/Subtitles/Chapters” in the main workspace, (2) the “Start” and “Pause” buttons have swapped places with the Queue buttons, and (3) the “Normal (Default)” output setting has become a Legacy preset. Other than those few minor differences, I don’t think the window should look significantly different, so hopefully this image still helps.

Make sure you complete these two steps (selecting the .ass file and checking off the “Burned In”) properly, or else your output file will not have subs burned in. If you don’t see the SSA option in the drop-down list, then you either loaded the wrong file into HandBrake, or you somehow didn’t properly mux your video and subs. Either way, you’ll have to open up a new source file and start over (which isn’t that bad, since all we’ve done is rename the output file and select the subtitles we want to burn in).

Barring any mistakes, that’s pretty much all you need to do before you begin the final step. However, I personally have one more thing I do before I proceed.

Something I observed in the first few times that I tried using HandBrake was that my finished product was oddly cropped. That is, the video looked like it was resized, so that a good chunk of the visuals were cut off. After a few puzzled minutes of looking through the Handbrake settings, I realized that it was because HandBrake has automatic “cropping” enabled in its picture settings. All it took for me to fix that was to switch from “Automatic” to “Custom”. On the “Picture” tab in the middle of the HandBrake window, make sure that the “Cropping” option on the right is set to “Custom”, and that the numbers are all set to 0. This should ensure that no cropping occurs on your final product.

I have no idea if the current version of HandBrake still does this by default, since I always use custom Picture settings when burning in subs with HandBrake. If you find that HandBrake processes your file just fine under the default settings, then go ahead and skip this step.

Once you’re sure that you have the subtitle options and correct file name/destination down, hit the “Start” button at the top and HandBrake will get to work. Depending on the length of your video, HandBrake should be done encoding either in a few seconds or a couple of minutes. If you have desktop notifications enabled, HandBrake will alert you when the encoding is done, so you’re free to navigate away from the window to do other stuff on your computer in the meantime.

At the end of this process, the folder containing all your output files might look something like this:

testvideo.mp4 (raw video)

testvideo.ass (subtitle file created through Aegisub)

testvideo_muxed.mkv (softsubbed video created through MKVToolnix)

testvideo_FINAL.mp4 (hardsubbed video created through HandBrake)

Do whatever you want with the other files - it’s the final .mp4 that you want for uploading onto Tumblr/YouTube/video-sharing platform of your choice.

And that’s it! Hopefully this answers your questions. If this still seems unclear to you…then my bad, I probably should’ve inserted step-by-step screenshots and explained myself more clearly, but this post was already getting quite long. :’)

In the end, keep in mind that this is not the only way to softsub/hardsub videos - for example, I migrated to ffmpeg because I was too lazy to use two programs, lol. You can find various methods scattered all over the internet, from tutorials on fansub group homepages to even the Aegisub manual. There are plenty of people out there far wiser than I am, so feel free to hit up Google to satiate your curiosity. I personally found the MKVToolnix + HandBrake process suitable for beginners using a Mac, so it’s up to you if you want to stick with this way or if you want to explore other methods!

If you want, you can come off anon and chat with me on Tumblr Messenger. I usually answer a lot faster there, so if you ever have any quick questions, that’s always an option~