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How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

Posted September 30, 2009 at 1:01am by iClarified
These are instructions on how to add multiple subtitle tracks to your iTunes movies and videos using iSubtitle.

By not hardcoding the subtitle into the video you add the ability to select from different languages during playback on your iPhone, iPod, Apple TV, QuickTime or iTunes.

Step One
Download iSubtitle from here and save it to your desktop.


Double click the downloaded dmg file to mount it.
How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

Drag the iSubtitle application into your Applications folder to install it.
How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

Step Two
Double click the iSubtitle icon in your Applications folder to launch the program.
How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

Step Three
Select Open from the File Menu.
How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

Step Four
Select the movie or video you would like to add subtitles to, then click the Open button.
How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

Step Five
A video player will appear with your movie already loaded.
How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

There should be a Settings side panel to the right of the video. If its not visible click the Settings button on the toolbar to open it.
How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

Step Six
To add subtitles to the video click the + button at the bottom of the Subtitles tab in the Settings side panel.
How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

Select the subtitle file you would like to add then click the Open button.
How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

Notice a new subtitle track is added to the list. iSubtitle will try to guess the language and encoding of the subtitle file. Make sure these are correct then play a bit of the movie to see if the subtitles are in sync with the dialog.
How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

If the sync is off you can use the Time Offset up and down buttons to correct it.
How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

Step Seven
You can use the + button to specify additional subtitle tracks in different languages. Sometimes iSubtitle might not be able to detect the language or encoding. For example, middle eastern languages occasionally pose a problem.

Click the + button to add another subtitle.
How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

Select the subtitle file then click the Open button.
How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

Notice the subtitle is detected as French. In this case the subtitle is actually in Hebrew so lets change the language dropdown to Hebrew.
How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

When we preview the clip the text is still displayed as garble even though the language is set correctly.
How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

If iSubtitle is still not able to guess the encoding with correct language set, try looking through the encoding dropdown to find the proper setting. Its okay if it's not there because thankfully iSubtitle includes a much more extensive list of encodings in the Preferences.
How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

Step Eight
Click to select Preferences from the iSubtitle Menu.
How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

Click to select the Encodings tab.
How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

Scan through the extensive list of encodings and select the ones you frequently use then close the Preferences window.
How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

Step Nine
Now return to the garbled subtitle track and select the correct encoding from the dropdown. In our example the correct encoding was Hebrew (ISO 8859-8).
How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

Now notice the preview shows the correctly formatted text.
How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

Step Ten
If your video is already in an iTunes compatible format simply select Save from the File Menu.
How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

Name the file and make sure Save as a Self-Contained Movie is selected.
How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

It won't take long to add the subtitles to the video.
How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

Step Eleven
If your video is not in an iTunes compatible format iSubtitle offers converting capabilities as well. Click the Export button on the toolbar then select the device you wish to convert formats for from the popup menu.
How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

Step Twelve
Drag the saved file into iTunes to add it to your library.
How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

Step Thirteen
Notice while playing the video you now have a little text bubble in the controller. Click this bubble to enable subtitles and select the language of your choice.
How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies

How to Add Soft Subtitles to Your iTunes Movies


*iSubtitle is developed by bitfield. If you try it and like it, iSubtitle can be purchased for $19.
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Comments (2)
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Nono Ono
Nono Ono - August 28, 2013 at 3:35am
After several days' efforts, including attempts with subler that did not work, I followed these simply perfect instructions. Worked quickly and perfectly. Thanks a bunch.
drag0n
drag0n - October 24, 2009 at 1:43pm
subler is just as good (if not better) at adding soft subtitles, and is free. http://code.google.com/p/subler/
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