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Doramas: Downloading and Sharing, Subtitles and Encoding, Enjoy.

As a former torrent junkie, I’ve enjoyed my shared of peer-to-peer filesharing. Originally, WinMX was my choice. Limewire, etc., just didn’t cut it for me. Then came Kazaa – the ad free version. It was around this time that I’d heard of bittorrent, but just failed to understand the whole .torrent stuff. That was until I finally got to using Bittornado. However, it tended to be a resource hog on my Windows PC, and could lead to instabilities. This was especially so when handling multiple torrents over an extended period of time. uTorrent resolved this for me. For my Linux box, I stuck with qTorrent for a while. The ncurses interface of bittorrent was nice and simple. However, with KDE’s Ktorrent, I finally found something I liked. While not as feature-full as uTorrent, it was just enough, and doesn’t eat up CPU cycles like a PAC-MAN on steroids.

So what now. Having downloaded X number of Linux ISO files, etc. I also had my share of videos. Not to enrage those of the RIAA et al. These are actually dramatic serials produced in Japan. The kind that’ll never make it here to North America for airing nor on DVD – except for the pirated kind.

At first watching these dramas (aka “doramas”) on my PC was a joy. But being able to watch them on TV would be better. The problem with burning them to DVD was the subtitles. Many are released as RAW files with accompanying subtitles in the SRT format. These kinds of videos are known as having soft subs.

My preference was to find doramas that had hard subs. The subtitles are encoded into the video file itself. Unfortunately, this is rarely ever the case.

After a lot of Google research, I found a simple solution. A freeware solution that didn’t require the use of pirated software. First though, there are a few pre-requisites.

The Codec

For the time being, I’ve found the Xvid codec the best and simplest one for encoding video. Seemingly less complicated then Matroska, it offers great compression. This is especially so for video files encoded in DivX.

Subtitle File Conversion

SRT subtitle files can be a pain in the Windows world. While you can open them up – and even edit them – in Notepad, you have to make sure that they are saved in ANSI format, not UTF-8. If not, you may start seeing some weird characters where the subtitles should be, or no subtitles at all. This is where Conversor comes in. It’s a very simple, straight-forward SRT to SSA convertor for Windows.

Subtitle File Conversion for Encoding

There is a video filter for VirtualDub (more below) called Subtitler. It prepares the SSA subtitle files to be encoded into the video file itself.

The Encoder

VirtualDub. This genius little piece of programming does a lot of things most people usually end up paying for. Just get it. It won’t break your machine. The documentation is good…

Now, this isn’t meant to be a guide. Nor is it meant to be definitive. Just how some simple FREE software that has made my life a lot more enjoyable in front of the Tube.

Aside: the player itself. In my search for a region-free DVD player, I discovered the sub $30 variety at the local super hardware store. A “Made In China” Magnasonic. Of course the box specifically states that it only plays Region 1 discs. Somehow, I can’t imagine the Chinese manufacturer willing to bother spending the extra money for the region-locking chip. To my joy the thing plays Xvid files. However, it does not play DivX files. It doesn’t have a beautiful interface, and the loading tray is made of what appears to be the cheapest plastic on earth. The remote is interestingly small in size, while profuse with little rubber buttons. Anyway, the thing works.