Turning subbed videos into RAW ones

[Bunkaru]

Hi,

Since it seems to be more and more difficult to find RAW Anime episodes, I started looking for a way to hide/delete the subtitles of subbed episodes. Sometimes I was just cropping them out, but I hate it to cut my AMVs like that.

I remembered reading somewhere that there is an option to hide subtitles in some toolbar, but after searching through all the options of VirtualDubMod and Vegas 9 (The two programs I use to make my AMVs), as well as those of the video files themselves, I couldn't find such a toolbar or option.

I'm kinda desperate about this because I searched for RAW episodes of multiple series for months, without any success.

[mirkosp]

1st off, you should refrain to use downloaded footage whenever possible. We encourage the use of DVDs/BRDs and otherwise material bought or obtained through legal means. >_> Not only for the legal reasons, but also for quality reasons: downloaded footage ain't be as high quality as ripped footage - unless you've downloaded iso or vob files, in which case it's pretty much the same. However, it seems it's not the case here.

As for what you actually need, subtitle removal in the way you're asking is only possible if you're using softsubs (often the case as of the last few years). Softsubs are generally .mkv files with a .ass or .srt stream for subtitles. If that's the case, loading the subs through the avisynth comman ffvideosource will do. Another solution is loading them through directshowsource and then hiding the subtitles through the vobsub icon in the task bar (it's a green arrow symbol). If however you are using hardsubs, then your only solutions are cropping or painting, more or less.

[Bunkaru]

Hmm, I opened one of my files through "DirectShowSource" in VirtualDubMod and searched for a green arrow icon, but found none. And I don't really know how to use Avisynth commands.

By the way, how can I tell if the subs are hard or soft ?

[mirkosp]

Hmm, I opened one of my files through "DirectShowSource" in VirtualDubMod and searched for a green arrow icon, but found none. And I don't really know how to use Avisynth commands.

By the way, how can I tell if the subs are hard or soft ?

When you playback the file with Media Player Classic, right click on it, and go to the Navigate > Subtitle Language menu. If there are various tracks, it's softsubbed, if there only is No Subtitles, it's hardsubbed. As for the avisynth solution, get the ffmpegsource 2 beta 10 from here and call the video like this

Code: Select all

ffvidesource("C:\path to file\filename.mkv")

and you should be fine. If you need audio, you could call it like

Code: Select all

ffmpegsource2("C:\path to file\filename.mkv", atrack=-1)

however it's buggy, so my suggestion, if you need the audio, is to call it like

Code: Select all

video = ffvidesource("C:\path to file\filename.mkv")
audio = directshowsource("C:\path to file\filename.mkv")
audiodub(video,audio)

and you should be fine.

[Qyot27]

Hmm, I opened one of my files through "DirectShowSource" in VirtualDubMod and searched for a green arrow icon, but found none. And I don't really know how to use Avisynth commands.

Note: VSFilter (i.e., the green arrow) needs to have the subtitles disabled before calling the video with AviSynth at all. On my computer that's as simple as telling it to 'Pre-buffer subtitles' (disabling it allows me to hardcode the subs, enabling it makes them not appear - I think it has something to do with how DirectShow handles the prebuffering, as when that's turned on, I have to click on the timeline to get the subs to appear).

If you use ffdshow instead, then in the Video decoder configuration dialog, just uncheck the Subtitles option in the list on the left hand side.

If you need audio, you could call it like

Code: Select all

ffmpegsource2("C:\path to file\filename.mkv", atrack=-1)

however it's buggy, so my suggestion, if you need the audio, is to call it like

Code: Select all

video = ffvidesource("C:\path to file\filename.mkv")
audio = directshowsource("C:\path to file\filename.mkv")
audiodub(video,audio)

and you should be fine.

If FFmpegSource2 is too buggy, then 1.21 is still perfectly fine for most things. I still use 1.21 99% of the time rather than the 2.00 betas, and virtually never have problems. The differences between them are mainly that the 2.00 series has newer versions of ffmpeg compiled in, somewhat more recent container routines, and VFR support (aside from the fact it's also practically a total re-write of the source filter, IIRC), but the audio methods in 2.00 are more experimental than in 1.21. Also, the only method of input in 1.21 is FFmpegSource("video.mkv") - if you don't need audio then just leave out the atrack parameter.

About the only two instances where I don't let FFmpegSource parse the audio are in cases of HE-AAC and Multichannel AAC, in which instances I pass them over to faad2 and then manually load the audio back into the script (HE-AAC) or process in WaveWizard if necessary* and then encode directly to AC3 with aften (Multichannel). Stuff with audio is usually only necessary when I'm authoring DVDs, though.

*for those multichannel streams that are 44.1kHz instead of 48kHz.

[Bunkaru]

I'm sorry, but I hardly understand anything of what you two are saying. I'm really not used to professionnal video stuff.

I just tried to see if my files are soft-subbed but when I right-click on the video in Media Player, all I get are options to change the screen size...
I couldn't find the "video decoder configuration dialog", either.

The avisynth solution looks sort of complicated from what I could read in the post you linked, maybe the directshowsource solution is easier ? How exactly does it work ?

Are there some kind of illustrated guides to these things ? Because I'm kind of confused with them.

[Qyot27]

Ok, let's start over from the top:

A) What container does the file use? Is it AVI or MKV? If it's AVI, 99% of the time you're just going to have to crop them out. If it's MKV, then you'll only have to do that, say, 15-20% of the time, if that. This is because MKV can easily do softsubs; AVI can do them too, but it's hacky to put them in AVI and practically no-one releases videos like that.

B) When you open the video in VirtualDubMod, what does show up in the Windows' taskbar (where the clock is)? If it's a little red icon that says FFV in even tinier letters, then ffdshow is handling the decoding. If you double-click on that icon, the Video decoder configuration dialog will come up. Alternately, you can get to said configuration by clicking on Start, going to the Programs menu, finding the ffdshow section, and using the Video decoder configuration link there. If neither one of those things can be found, you don't have ffdshow installed, and can download it here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfile ... _id=173941

C1) DirectShowSource, as the name implies, uses DirectShow (one of three main Windows-based media frameworks, along with Video For Windows and as of Vista/Win7, Media Foundation). AVISource uses Video For Windows to do its dirty work. I don't know of anything that uses Media Foundation yet. Basically what this all means is that if you can play something in Windows Media Player, you can use DirectShowSource to open it. If you can open it in VirtualDubMod without using a script, you can use AVISource*.

*if the file is actually an AVI, anyway.

C2) FFmpegSource, on the other hand, uses FFmpeg (another media framework) to handle its decoding. The difference is that FFmpeg originated on Linux instead of Windows, but is pretty much cross-platform. There are versions of FFmpeg on Windows and OS X in addition to the many different distributions of Linux you could call its 'home turf'. The difference between FFmpeg and the Windows solutions described in C1 is that all of FFmpeg's decoders are built-in, and the work to support additional ones is closely monitored by the development team. The two main cores of FFmpeg are known as libavcodec (the actual video decoder), and libavformat (the part which works with the containers). libavcodec has been used as the core of several media players such as VLC and mplayer, and was ported to DirectShow as ffdshow. The major benefit here is that if you make a program with libavcodec, it's all self-contained. FFmpegSource, both the old 1.21 version and the new 2.00 beta versions, use libavcodec to do their decoding, and don't require anything else to be installed (so in other words, if VLC can play the video, FFmpegSource can more than likely work with it too - it just doesn't require VLC be installed first). Unlike DirectShowSource and AVISource, though, it doesn't come with AviSynth by default. You have to go and download it from the page mirkosp linked to, un-RAR it, and place the plugin (FFmpegSource.dll or FFMS2.dll) in AviSynth's plugins folder.



A2) I put this down here because it has to do specifically with MKV files, and while this is pretty much cut-and-dried, it's more wasteful of hard drive space than simply using AviSynth to open the file with FFmpegSource.

If the file is an MKV, you can go and get MKVToolNix from the official website. After installing it, open the MKV file in it. It will show you the various things (video, audio, subtitles) that the MKV holds. Uncheck the box next to the subtitles and audio, or just the subtitles, change the filename or location in the Destination box, and then click Start muxing. It will create a new MKV file that simply doesn't have those streams in it anymore. If you open that new MKV with DirectShowSource in VirtualDubMod like you'd done before, then you won't have any subtitles (or at least, you won't have the subtitles contained in the stream you disabled; there is still a trend to hardsub karaoke effects in OP/ED sequences or random signage inside the episode, and unfortunately you'll just have to crop those out if they're still there).

[Bunkaru]

It worked, thanks a lot for your help !

[xPiikanyaa]

Well, softsub MKV files don't work with the video editing software I use, so there's no point in me doing it that way. But if you don't want to crop it, you could always put a nice border or something around the video to hide the subs. At least it looks a bit more interesting than just cropping the video.
But you know, you should really use DVD footage wherever possible - like mirkosp said, it's legal and the quality is much better. (I'll admit, I use downloaded footage, but there's a reason for that. My laptop has no disc drive, so I can't rip DVDs.)

[xPiikanyaa]

Sorry for the double post, but I discovered an easy way to remove softsubs.

Softsubs are generally .mkv files with a .ass or .srt stream for subtitles. If that's the case, loading the subs through the avisynth comman ffvideosource will do. Another solution is loading them through directshowsource and then hiding the subtitles through the vobsub icon in the task bar (it's a green arrow symbol).

All you need is an .mkv softsubbed file and a program called Any Video Converter. (If you don't have it, download it from here:http://www.any-video-converter.com/prod ... ideo_free/ Don't worry, it's free and safe.)
All you do is convert the .mkv file to an .avi with a Huffyuv codec, and the converted file will become RAW. It works for me, anyways.