How to use SRT file with MP4

The reason you see SRT soft subtitles in AVIs is because it's the Perian component that's drawing subtitles. QuickTime itself has no capability to read any external subtitle files. When you open up a MP4 file, Apple's own codecs kick in, and not Perian; therefore, you don't see any subtitles.

There's not a lot you can do:

1. You can wait for Apple to implement SRT support. I wouldn't hold my breath.
2. You can talk to/beg/threaten the Perian developers and see what they can do. Note that this feature request is already filed in 2007 ( http://trac.perian.org/ticket/56 ), and they haven't acted on the request for three years.
3. You can extract the video and audio tracks from the container and put it in a Perian-compatible container. MKV is the best option for this, I think. Note that you do not want to directly export your video to a new format, or to re-encode the tracks -- that will cost you quality. You need to find a program that lets you extract the MP4/AAC/whatever tracks from the container and remux them into a different container, such as MKV or AVI. If you can get Perian to handle the video, rather than Apple's default decoders, you'll get the SRT in QuickTime Player.
4. You can use a different player. Honestly, I agree you with that most of the alternative players out there have absolutely atrocious user interfaces (I'm looking at ya, VLC). In the end, though, I just want to watch the video, and not fight with various video/audio formats.

Apple supports SRT's don't they? I just muxed an SRT into an m4v container and QT iTunes and my aTV all recognize and can display the soft subtitle and it looks beautiful.

What I want to know is what to do with an SRT when the container is an mp4. The codec is supposed to be exactly the same but my muxer won't right the SRT to the mp4 properly. If I change the extension by hand to m4v another muxer WILL right the SRT in - but iTunes can't see the subtitle still.

Is there a direct method to get to a valid m4v container from a mp4? What doesn't happen when I simply change the file extension that makes the process fail?

After reading this thread, I tried using the mp4 file with the srt subtitles file in VLC Media Player 1.0.5 and the subtitles work perfectly fine. No bad shadowing issues, the subtitles appear fully opaque on the background of the movie. Anyone did this?

Larger file, lower quality, you say. Right! So QT Pro is utterly useless in that respect.

That 's where MPEG Streamclip comes in. It doesn't, like you put it, "export" stuff (i.e. re-encode), it simply *changes the container format* into avi. No change in file size, no loss of quality, no re-encoding whatsoever.

From then on QT (Pro) does indeed do exactly what your initial post asked for, with a little help from Perian.

best of luck,

PS. Now, when all is said, the above been done, by you, what does one make of that last paragraph's advice of yours to others?

yliu wrote:

3. You can extract the video and audio tracks from the container and put it in a Perian-compatible container.

A much easier way is to make a dummy avi file and just NAME IT the same as your movie (or name your subs the same as the dummy avi file). Open the dummy avi (Perian will now load the subs file), copy the subs track and add it to your mp4 or mov movie document (requires QuickTime Pro).

I did this with a 2-frame avi file (scaled out to longer than movie-length) exported from QTPro, and it weighs in at 16 KB. I can re-use it forever on new movie titles.

I'm writing this workaround into my movie-player app (metadata hootenanny) and it should be transparent shortly... stay tuned. But in the mean time, anyone can do what I described above in about 5 minutes.

Moof666 wrote:
I want to know what method can ACTUALLY allow QuickTime (not VLC) to play MP4 (not AVI) with soft (not hard) subtitles.

If you can settle for MOV instead of MP4, then here is the method:
1. Open the mp4 in this program: http://metahoot.3ivx.com and it will add the external sub files from the same folder
2. Save the movie (it will be saved as MOV)
3. Play the saved MOV in QT or any other player

Benefits: takes no time, requires no re-encoding or quality loss, soft-subs are retained, QT-native playback, not dependent on any particular player.

Subler really really works...
Fast, effective and it does what it says on the tin...

Nice one...
Thanks

THE SOLUTION - MAC PLAY .MP4 movie file with .SRT subtitles in QUICKTIME

1. DOWNLOAD Metadata Hootenanny
http://www.applesolutions.com/bantha/MetadataHootenanny18.zip
2. Move your .srt subtitle file into the same director as the .mp4 movie
3. Rename the .srt file to the identical name of the .mp4 movie. Only the file extension should be different. e.g. movie.mp4 & movie.srt
4. Launch Metadata Hootenanny
5. Open your .mp4 movie file
6. On the interface window - click the "i" information icon on the bottom right hand corner
7. On the new window click - [Select Languages] and select the Subtitle languages you wish to use
8. Below this click [ Copy all selected languages on save]
9. Press the play button to preview your subtitles in the movie. when your happy - press stop.
10. Goto FILE / SAVE
11. Select [Save in Source Folder]
12. Select [Save As Reference Movie]
13. Click [SAVE]

IMPORTANT!!! In the simplest terms ...
This process does not re-encode the video file so it maintains the original video and audio quality. It just creates a reference file (in this case a .mov file) that QUICKTIME can open and see where the Subtitles are.

The process will only take a few second and you will here a chime! - That was bloody Quick!

Now you should have 3 files in your movie folder.
movie.mp4
movie.mp4.mov
movie.srt

Go to Quicktime Player and open the movie.mp4.mov file

Quicktime will now play the movie using the original .mp4 source file with the Subtitles

Wow! How easy was that!

Now lets hope that APPLE or PERIAN update the .MP4 codec to allow selection of SUBTITLES in Quicktime.

Cheers : )

A bit complicated, wouldn't you say? What if he wants to sync his .mp4 to his AppleTV?

How about this: Use Handbrake to make a new file in which the subtitles are hard-coded in. The program actually allows you to import an external .srt file (under the Subtitles tab), so once it's all done encoding you'll have your movie, in whatever format you prefer, even mp4, with subtitles intact.

Oops, sorry, OP, I see that you're not after hard subs at all. My mistake. I came to this forum with the same issues as you, but my thing is I'd like to be able not only to watch the movie in question with subtitles intact and without the various problems that VLC and even Movist enter into the equation (Movist seems great except it's got this audio-lagging or -outrunning-the-video problem), but also to hard-code the subtitles from the .srt file into the video (i.e., creating a new file) so that I can then load the movie onto my phone/iPod/PS3.

Subler (free) http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/31647/subler
iSubtitle (shareware) http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/30853/isubtitle

Just add .srt to .MP4 and save. Both completly solve the problem.

I tried Subler, and it worked, but only if I play the mp4 with QT Player 7 (Pro), it didn't work with the new QT Player.

Well, it looks complicated, but your instructions are very clear and it works. Thank you very much. I spent a couple of hours trying different things, fianlly I have a working solution.