FFmpeg Drawtext Filter for Overlays, Scrolling Text, Timestamps on Videos

Re:FFmpeg Drawtext Filter for Overlays, Scrolling Text, Time... by cm2187 on Friday October 23, 2020 @06:05AM (#24867757)

Is it that a separate subtitle file is not supported or subtitles are not supported at all? Otherwise you can use ffmpeg to merge the srt file and the mp4 file into either a single mp4 or mkv file without re-encoding the video (using the -c copy flag). Many players support subtitles embedded into a .mp4 file.

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Re:FFmpeg Drawtext Filter for Overlays, Scrolling Text, Time... by e12e on Friday October 23, 2020 @06:30PM (#24875008)

^this. I'd be curious what player gp has found that can playback the mp4, but not read embedded subtitles. There are a few that have poor support for external (separate file) subtitles.

See eg: https://mutsinzi.com/add-srt-subtitles-to-quicktime/

TL;DR:

ffmpeg -i yourVideo.mp4 -i yourSubtitle.srt -c:v copy -c:a copy -c:s mov_text -metadata:s:s:0 language=eng yourOutputVideo.mp4

I'm uncertain if there are some metadata you could toggle to hint at default subtitle language and/or default to subtitles on (or off). I generally use vlc, so this isn't much of a problem for me.

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Re:FFmpeg Drawtext Filter for Overlays, Scrolling Text, Time... by cm2187 on Saturday October 24, 2020 @04:34AM (#24877794)

You can hint the video player with metadata.

To make the first subtitle track default:

  -disposition:s:0 default

Or you can make it forced:

  -disposition:s:0 forced

And to clear the disposition of the second subtitle track (if it was default in the source stream)

  -disposition:s:1

The problem is that video players are inconsistent in term of how they honour these parameters.

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