Is there a way to add subtitle streams to rendered files?
My camcorder (Sony DVD106 - ok its old) creates mpeg2 files with an embedded subtitle track (as a bitmap) with the date and time.
This can be switched on and off when viewing the recorded video by the use of the subtitle on/off in the player (dvd player).

When editing the video with Kdenlive, this subtitle information seems to get lost. It would be nice to keep this, obviously the subtitle stream would need to be edited in line with the video (in the same way as the audio stream).

Whilst not quite the same and using text rather than bitmaps
I know that subtitles can effectively be hardwired into the video using a 'title' track but this is permanent in the rendered in the video track and therefore not selectable.
regards
Brian

Unfortunately, not even mlt supports this :/

I might be a little confused...but I'll try to at-least point you in a general direction.

quick answer is that ffmpeg (probably avconv's (fake) ffmpeg as well) should handle this with a -timestamp option or with subtitle encoding. I do subtitling on my youtube videos but the encoding is handled by youtube, I just have to create a transcript.

I think you are trying to have video with burned in time and date stamps... so it would need to be run through ffmpeg first to burn it in.

If you are talking about actual dialog subtitles like closed captioning and translations then I use Subtitle Editor http://home.gna.org/subtitleeditor/ to create the .srt file... which I then upload to youtube... but should be encode-able by ffmpeg.

What CorrosiveTruths points out is this: MLT is the rendering/playout engine that pulls frames and audio from sources (through ffmpeg, for instance) and then renders the final composited frames. As MLT doesn't do what you need it doesn't help that ffmpeg does. MLT is a separate project, so you may want to ask the MLT developers to integrate substream video handling?

Hi guys,
Many thanks for your replies.

zekthedeadcow
In my last paragraph I referred to "hardwired into the video", I guess the correct term to have used here was "burned into the video stream". I have had great success in doing this with handbrake, but it's permanently on screen, not really what I was looking for in an edited version of my holiday videos. I was hoping that the original RLE subtitle could be kept so this could be turned on selectively. As it's home video there are no "subtitles" as such, the RLE subtitle track only contains date & time.
I've not had much success in getting ffmpeg or avconv to copy the RLE stream - but handbrake does this OK for me.

TheDiveO & CorrosiveTruths
Bummer! I'd forgot that KdenLive uses MLT, so I guess what I'm looking for aint gonna happen.

I've subsequently found out that if I edit my tracks then the subvob information would be incorrect because the original timestamps would remain and not be adjusted to the new runlength of the video. Also if adding multiple clips the timestamps from each clip would be from 0 and not their new position thus creating errors in the subtitle stream.
I guess my only option is to manually create a separate srt file, related to my final edited video using a subtitle editor "subtitle composer or gnome subtitles" and mux this into my finished project.

Brian

bstewart wrote:I guess my only option is to manually create a separate srt file, related to my final edited video using a subtitle editor "subtitle composer or gnome subtitles" and mux this into my finished project.

At this point I believe this is the case. Is this a big deal though? Does your raw footage already come with subtitles? To me this seems unlikely. Surely you are better off adding subtitles at the end of the process - since you will have far less material to subtitle at this point.

edit: Ok so yes your raw footage does have subititles - of a sort. But it is just the date and time. When I want the date and time in my edited footage I just look it up in my raw footage and add a simple title to a spot in my edited footage. Does not seem worth the hassle of being able to edit raw footage that has subititles in it because it is going to be very rare to have raw footage with actual real subititles - ie translated dialog - in it. Kdenlive is a video editor. Not a subititle editor.

The only other solution I can imagine is to have two versions of the video, one with subs burned in and one without and swap them around when needed, but I don't know what your deliverable is supposed to be.