How to Add Soft or Hard Subtitles to Movie Videos with Handbrake

February 12, 2014

Movies come from all over the world and such flicks are usually accompanied by their original language. For instance, a movie from French naturally goes with French subtitles while an anime is often embedded with subtitles in Japanese. So for exotic people who are unable to make out what the character says, watching those movies becomes intolerable. In this case, people would turn to add subtitle they prefer to the movie so as to have a better understanding of it. Since the highly-acclaimed Handbrake is to this point, we provide detailed solutions on how to use Handbrake to add subtitle to movie files, in both hard and soft ways.

Note: Handbrake attaches subtitles to the movie file in two approaches including hard burn and soft subtitle. The former indicates that subtitles are written on top of the image permanently and cannot be turned on or off like on the DVD while the later means subtitles can be added as a part of the movie and can be enabled or disabled as you want.

Way 1: Add Hard Subtitles to Movie Videos with Handbrake

As is mentioned above, adding hard subtitle with Handbrake ensures the subtitle is a permanent part of the movie and it cannot be switched into other language. Such method guarantees the synchrony of subtitle and movie even it is edited and is commonly used for DVD movies. One thing needs to be specified, Handbrake will be at loss when facing DVDs with copy protections. So you shall first seek for third-party software, like VLC or DVD ripper, for help before using Handbrake to embed movie subtitle.

First, locate the source DVD with Handbrake that can read this file. Second, click the "Browse" button to choose the path where you want to save the output file in. Third, press the "Subtitles" button and select the preferred track from the drop down menu of Source. Tips: if there are more than one tracks, you are suggested to test the one you choose to ensure whether it is the right one you want.

Way 2: How to Use Handbrake to Attach Soft Subtitle to Movie Videos

In a general way, you can play the movie with a media player like VLC or Quicktime player and display subtitles upon putting the subtitle file in a way that both movie and subtitle file are saved in the same name. E.g. if your movie is Star Trek Into Darkness.avi, then you subtitle file will be named as Star Trek Into Darkness.srt. But this may pose a problem that the subtitle and the movie file will go out-of-step if the movie is edited.

As the latest Handbrake V0.9.9, the 64-bit build, features soft subtitle adding power, you can display subtitles is by making part of the movie video with option to turn on or off the subtitle.

Step 1: Search the Subtitles You Prefer
Just google to find and download your preferred language subtitle from the web. Please note that subtitle files can be easily found on the internet but there is no 100% guarantee for the existence.
Generally, the subtitle files are saved in.srt and.sub. But Handbrake only accepts SRT as the subtitle input. For an effective subtitle file searching, you can put "movie title" + "your preferred language" + "subtitle" as the search strings and select the subtitle file saved in .srt.

Step 2: Load Source Video
Just open Handbrake and Choose the source video or movie as you like.

Step 3: Insert Subtitles into Movie Using Handbrake
Hit the "Subtitle" tab on the main interface of Handbrake. Then press "Import SRT" button to embed .srt subtitle to the movie file. You can attach more than one subtitle to the movie with Handbrake. Then choose the output format you want from the side window and click "Start" to finish subtitle adding to your movie. Then you can enjoy movies with subtitles in your favorite language.

Tips: there are some video files like MKV contain multi language tracks, some of which are inutile and even enlarge the output file size. So you'd better find a Handbrake Alternative to cope with these multi-track videos. Luckily,MacX Video Converter Pro is the way to go. Supporting 370+ video and audio codecs, it can convert among any HD MKV, MTS, M2TS, AVCHD and SD videos such as MP4, MOV, WMV, AVI, FLV, etc for playback on iPhone 5S/5C, iPad 4, Galaxy S4, HTC One, etc that Handbrake cannot handle.

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