Converting H.264, keeping subtitles

Janin

I've got a video in H.264 format, stored with Vorbis audio and VobSub subtitles in a Matroska container. I'd really like to watch it on my laptop, but it's an old Powermac, and it can't handle H.264 decoding. Does anybody know of a way to convert just the video portion of the file to something like MPEG4, without mangling the rest of it?

I've tried mencoder, but I can't figure out how to preserve the subtitles without rendering them into the video itself - which is bad, because mencoder's fonts are really ugly. I've also tried using mkvextract to rip out the video, re-encode that, and then merge it all back together, but I can't get mkvmerge to read the video stream from mencoder's output dump.

A free solution would be preferred, and I run Windows, Linux, and OS X so OS choice isn't really a problem (preference for Linux, since that one is my fastest system).

Raere

Can the old Powermac read Matroska containers? If it can't, your only other option really is to put the subs into the stream itself. Forget mencoder, it's too complicated. Use mkvextract to extract everything. If you want to hardsub the subs into the video, use VirtualDub to encode the stream into Xvid or whatever MPEG-4 ASP codec you want. VirtualDub should be able to handle that, along with the Vorbis audio, which you should encode into MP3 if you want maximum compatibility. VobSub also has a filter for VirtualDub which will let you take the VobSub subtitles and hardsub them into the video. You can encode it all into a standard AVI file. If your old Powermac can read Matroska files, just re-encode using VirtualDub or any program you want (meGUI is pretty easy) then re-mux everything with mkvmerge like you had already tried. It looks likes mencoder is your problem.

Janin

Raere wrote: »

Can the old Powermac read Matroska containers? If it can't, your only other option really is to put the subs into the stream itself. Forget mencoder, it's too complicated. Use mkvextract to extract everything. If you want to hardsub the subs into the video, use VirtualDub to encode the stream into Xvid or whatever MPEG-4 ASP codec you want. VirtualDub should be able to handle that, along with the Vorbis audio, which you should encode into MP3 if you want maximum compatibility. VobSub also has a filter for VirtualDub which will let you take the VobSub subtitles and hardsub them into the video. You can encode it all into a standard AVI file. If your old Powermac can read Matroska files, just re-encode using VirtualDub or any program you want (meGUI is pretty easy) then re-mux everything with mkvmerge like you had already tried. It looks likes mencoder is your problem.

Yeah, it can read MKV and Vorbis just fine. I want to avoid hardsubs if at all possible, since those cover up parts of the video. I'll try meGUI + reuxing.