VobSub Language Editing Guide

You have a movie which is 695Mb and your VobSub file is 20 MB and contains 6 languages. You can't burn the subtitles on the disc because of the disc space. Does this sound familiar? What you can do is to remove a couple of languages from that subtitle file to make it smaller.

Step 1: Strip out unwanted subs

Start up VobSubStrip, select the .idx file.

VobSubStrip will show a list of all the subtitle tracks present in your .sub file.

Check all the subtitle streams you want to keep (the description in the software is wrong, checked streams are kept, not stripped!), then edit the output name and / or path if you are not satisfied with the default, and finally press Process to start the stripping.

Step 1a: Editing the *.IDX (Alternative for step 1)

Locate the folder where you got the *.IDX and the *.SUB file. (Maybe a *.IFO as well but it doesn't matter.). Open the *.IDX file in your favorite text editor, notepad is just fine. The first 55 lines contains settings such as frame size and alpha blending. Below that you'll find timestamps for every language, like this;

# Deutsch
id: de, index: 0
# Decomment next line to activate alternative name in DirectVobSub / Windows Media Player 6.x
# alt: Deutsch
# Vob/Cell ID: 1, 1
timestamp: 00:00:38:520, filepos: 000000000
timestamp: 00:00:40:680, filepos: 000001000

[a couple of houndred lines like this...]

# English
id: en, index: 2
# Decomment next line to activate alternative name in DirectVobSub / Windows Media Player 6.x
# alt: English
# Vob/Cell ID: 1, 1
timestamp: 00:00:38:520, filepos: 00046c000
timestamp: 00:00:40:680, filepos: 00046d000

[and so on...]

Now just delete the part that belongs to the language you want to remove from the sub. Make sure you remove everything from the first to the last line! If you would want to remove Deutsch from the sample above, you would remove everything from "# Deutsch" to the blank row above "# English". Do NOT touch anything else, do not modify anything else at all! Save and close.

Step 2: Subresync

Open Subresync and open the modified .idx file from step 1. Notice the dropdown button, now you should only see the languages which you left. Select the language which you want as default (this can't be a XX -(Not Detected)). Then just press "Save As..." and save to a new folder. Finished! In your new folder you'll have the new, modified *.SUB and a new *.IDX. Now just sit down and watch the movie =)

Thanks Gabest for creating such a good software and helping me with my questions.

This guide was originally written by Goose and has since been updated to make use of VobSubStrip to simplify matters.

This document was last updated on March 18, 2005