Newbie Here

[dunstop]

Hi fellow users of Cowon,
I've just bought a 2nd hand Cowon A2 last week and I must say it's a brilliant product. Hope that the product will get even better with every firmware upgrade.

However I have a few questions. I have a few DVDs that I wanna put in my A2. So what I've done is that I've converted the VOB files to AVI files using JetAudio VX utility. The video is excellent but what seems to be missing are the subtitles.
I have heard of people using Subrip, AutoGK.... But may I know the what are best ways/practices to get the subtitles in the easiest & direct way? Or are there any software that can do the VOB->AVI conversion and "bundle in" the subtitles? My current firmware vesion is 1.61E

Thanks in advance.

[MCSmarties]

Hello dunstop, congratulations on your purchase and welcome to the forum!

There are basically two ways to use subtitles on the A2:

1. "hard" subtitles (encoding them directly into the video stream)
2. "soft" subtitles, where you rip subtitles from your DVD and save them to a text file, which will be displayed alongside the video.

Method 1 can be achieved for example in AutoGK simply by selecting the subtitle stream to add from the original IFO.

Method 2 involves ripping the subtitles from the VOB using Subrip (Webpage, Guide) and then converting them to .SMI
(this can be done using for example SRT2SMI or Subtitle Workshop)

I would strongly suggest using method 2 for two reasons:
- you can turn subtitles on and off ("hard" subs are permanently displayed)
- adding text to video often results in lower overall quality for a given file size, as the text has to be encoded as well.

Use the "search" function in this forum to find more information.
I also recommend you take a look at the guides on http://www.doom9.org if you are new to the whole movie ripping / encoding process.

Good luck!

[dunstop]

Hi MCSmarties,

Thanks for replying to my post. I've just downloaded & installed AutoGK on my laptop.

After Selecting the Input File ("Q:\VIDEO_TS\VTS_01_2.VOB") & specifiying the Output file, I couldn't select any subtitles tracks in the drop-down list for selecting subtitles tracks.

Am I missing out on any steps or is there something wrong with the DVD?

Regards.

[MCSmarties]

To use AutoGK properly you need to select the IFO file, not the VOB(s)!
(make sure you rip the DVD in "IFO mode", assuming you use DVDDecrypter).
Note: this applies whether you are going to use subtitles or not.

However, I can't emphasize enough that you should use "soft" subtitles (eg. text-based).
Using subrip is really not all that difficult, check out the guide.
"Soft" subtitle support is a specific advantage the A2 has over its concurrence, why not use it?

And trust me, there WILL be a day when for whatever reason you'd rather switch the subtitles off...

[dunstop]

Thanks for the advice.

As of last nite I've successfully tried out ripping using AutoGK & Subrip & SRT2SMI 2 dvds.

However I have a DVD (LOTR1) which after I start the ripping job with AutoGK, it gives me an error


Too many pictures per GOP(>=500)
DGIndex will terminate.

Any idea why this msg occurs. And how do i solve it?

Regards.

[MCSmarties]

No idea, sorry. Did you check out the forum at www.doom9.org?
They are the real pros, not me