Tuesday, February 10, 2009

How to add soft subtitles to a DivX movie


Sometime back I showed you a way to add permanent subtitles or hard subtitles to a video using Subtitle Workshop and Virtual Dub. Hard subtitles are etched permanently on the video and cannot be turned off. But some people prefer soft subtitles that can be turned on and off on a player. DVDs support soft subtitles – you just need a DVD authoring tool to create a DVD with subtitles. But how do you add soft subtitles to a DivX movie that can be turned on and off at will on a DivX player, just like a DVD?

This is made extremely easy by a free tool called AVIAddXSubs. AVIAddXSubs allows you to embed subtitles to a AVI movie which can be played on almost any DivX supporting DVD player.

To use the application, at first you need to make a few preparation.

1. First copy the AVI movie file and the subtitle file to a folder. The subtitle has to be in the SRT format. If it’s not, use Subtitle Workshop to convert it into SRT and also sync it to the video if necessary, as described on my tutorial.

2. Rename both the AVI movie and the SRT file with the same name. For example, movie.avi and movie.srt.

3. Now open AVIAddXSubs and select the video file. You can also drag the video file to the program’s executable without launching the program. You can also drag multiple AVI files at the same time to this program and incorporate subtitles into them in single session. Each of these AVI files should have a similarly named SRT file. Additionally, you can add up to 8 different subtitles to the same video file.


4. Customize the font size and other parameters of the subtitle by clicking on the configuration tab.


5. Once you are done, click Create and you get a DivX file within a few minutes. AVIAddXSubs does not re-encode the entire video file – the subtitles are inserted in the AVI as an additional stream and work the same way as the subtitles offered in normal DVDs. This is why the process happens fast. Also the resulting file is just 2 to 3 MB bigger in size.


The resulting DivX file is capable of playing on a DivX player and no additional subtitle file is required. Simply turn on subtitles on the player to enjoy it. This file can also be played normally on a media player like VLC or GOM Player.


  1. I imagined how to do this, to have switch on subtitles and switch off them as per the need. I will try this. Thanks a lot for this good information.

  2. if you have a divx dvd player, you dont need to have any special softwares as such... the + point in DIVX player is exactly the same... it reads the file exactly as your computer might read it.. so if you just write the avi file and the srt file along with it (as long as they are in the same folder), your divx player will read the subtitle file as well and so you will have an option to ON/OFF subtitles using your DIVX DVD player remote.... its that simple... this method is too complicated!!! (appreciate the effort though)

  3. It seems like not all DivX player supports this feature. Anyway, thanks for the info.

  4. What I your Divx Name **Anonymous** :)

  5. Hi, thanks for the nice instructions.

    I tried the AVIAddXSubs and it seems to work, it creates the file. I'm using vlc and the subtitles can be selected from the subtitles menu, then an error appears that says that it does not have an adequate decoder that supports the format "DXSB". and that there is no way to fix this... Am I doing something wrong?

  6. I never got this error so I'm not sure what is wrong. Probably you lack proper codec, because VLC natively does not support DXSB. Install K Lite Mega codec pack and it should work.

  7. @Dagahss : it's because you have to set the configuration on idx subs instead of xSubs

  8. Anyone has trying playing the movie (after being injected with .srt) at your mobile? I have Omnia, and hope it will work like a charm..

  9. Does anyone know how to add multiple subtitles? I mean for instance, I want a movie to have selectable spanish and french subtitles... How do I rename the video file and subtitle files?

  10. @Raytheon: I haven't tried this but I hope it works. Rename the subtitles as movie.spa.srt and movie.fr.srt.


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