How to add subtitles to a movie or TV series

Subtitles are one of those things that most people initially scoff at. However, once you start using them, it's hard to stop. Nowadays, I never watch movies or TV shows without subtitles because the experience is just unsatisfying without them.

Reasons to start using closed captions include:

• Translations. Obviously, if you're watching anime or a movie in a foreign language and you don't speak the language, you'll need a translation. For most people, subtitles are less jarring than dubbed audio, and therefore the preferred way to view them.
• Inaudible dialogue. I love British dramas, but as an American, it can be hard to understand characters with thick accents. Problems with audio mixing are also common, such as when sound effects are too loud and dialogue is barely audible.
• Narrative comprehension. If you watch a lot of science fiction with invented names of their own or a series like Game of Thrones With hundreds of names, subtitles can make it much easier to follow and understand what the characters are actually talking about.

Unfortunately, when you download movies and TV shows over the Internet 5 Tools to Download or Capture Streaming Video from Any Website 5 Tools to Download or Capture Streaming Video from Any Website Streaming video can be expensive with limits of data. The solution? Capture videos in real time and download them to your computer! Read More This is actually a lot easier than you think, so don't worry too much. This is what you have to do...

Where to download quality subtitles

Before you can turn on subtitles for a video, you'll need to find and download a subtitle file that has been synced with that particular video file. This can be easy if, for example, you downloaded a movie from a torrent site 11 Online Sources to Find Legal Torrents 11 Sources to Find Legal Torrents Recent events have seen known torrent directories such as BTJunkie closing their doors or threatened with closure, many people wonder about the legality of torrents and which directories are still open to find them... Read More However, you may not find the available subtitles if you download a clip from YouTube.

When looking for subtitles, we only recommend these two sites:

• Subscene - My personal favourite. Unless the movie or TV show you're trying to watch is underground or decades old, you'll almost certainly find subtitles that work. Subtitles are sorted by title, language, and whether or not they include tracks for the hearing impaired.
• OpenSubtitles - This database is quite large and the subtitles work, and you will even find some that cannot be found on Subscene, but be aware that this site contains many ads. Grabbing the subtitles here can feel like a game of elimination as you try to figure out which download links are the right ones.

Once you have the relevant subtitle file for your video, you can add them using one of two methods. I definitely recommend the easy method because it's faster, more reliable, and involves less work, but the hard method is also fine if you prefer to complicate things.

The easy way:overlay subtitles during playback

Most modern video players support file-based subtitle overlay. If yours doesn't, then you should consider switching to one of these Windows video players, Mac video players, or Linux video players. They are all free and packed with nifty features, with subtitle support being the least interesting feature.

For this, we will demonstrate the use of VLC Media Player, as it is free, open source, cross-platform, and the most widely used video player at the time of this publication. But again, most other video players operate the same way.

Subtitle auto overlay

If you name the subtitle file exactly the same as the video file (excluding the format extension) and keep both files in the same folder, VLC will automatically load the subtitle file as soon as the video loads. Or, in other words, when you start playing a video file, VLC will search the same folder for any subtitle file with the same name.

So if you have a video called:

The.Shawshank.Redemption.1994.BluRay.1080p.x264.mp4

Then the subtitle must be named, for example:

The.Shawshank.Redemption.1994.BluRay.1080p.x264.srt

Manual overlay of subtitles

If you want to keep the file names separate, if VLC doesn't recognize the subtitle file you want to use, or if you have multiple subtitle files and want to load a specific one, there are two manual methods you can use.

First, you can use the menu and select Subtitle> Add subtitle file... to browse and select the one you want to use. Second, you can simply drag the subtitle file from File Explorer (or Finder or whatever file manager you're using on Linux) and drop it into VLC after the video is loaded.

The hard way:record subtitles in the video file

Using the parking brake, this is relatively simple. It's just not as quick or easy as the overlay method above. But since Handbrake is free, open source, cross-platform, and supports almost all modern video formats, don't be afraid to try this method.

All you have to do is start Handbrake, select the video file as Source, switch to the Subtitles tab, click Add External SRT and select the subtitle file.

Using this method, you have two options:The “Forced Only” mode will burn the subtitles into the video data, while if you turn the “Forced Only” off, the subtitle will be embedded as a separate track that can be toggled and selected at any time. video player used to watch it. (With the latter option, you can embed multiple subtitle tracks in a single video.)

Why do you use subtitles?

Now that you know how to add subtitles to a TV show or movie, hopefully you'll never have to watch anything without subtitles to guide your viewing experience. That said, I'm curious:for what reasons do you personally use subtitles? Are they reserved for foreign translations only? Or do you use them 24/7 because they help in narrative comprehension?

Please let us know in the comments below! And if you know of other websites to download subtitles or methods to add subtitles to videos, feel free to share them too!