Subtitles are an often overlooked part of one’s enjoyment of a movie that is not in their mother tongue. They are supposed to be an accurate reproduction of what is being said in another language in clear, unobtrusive text. But this is not always the case; they could be too big and take up too much of the screen, not timed properly, thus becoming incomprehensible or, they could be a very bad translation.
That’s when I, personally, like to extract the subtitles from DVDs with such issues and fix them. Yet, this is not the only reason why I would want to rip subtitles from a DVD. I might want to use them on another video file of the same movie, translate them into my language (Some movies are available in more languages than their original one mainly thanks to volunteer translators) or, in the case of videos of concerts, rip the lyrics.
If your goals are the same as mine, read on. In this article, I will show you how you too can rip the subtitles from your DVDs whatever their intended use may be. So long as said DVDs are unprotected. But even if your DVDs have copy protection on, there is still a solution.
Menu
- How to rip subtitles from unprotected DVDs using Subrip
- How to extract subtitles from copy-protected DVDs
- How to rip DVDs with echoshare DVD Ripper
- Conclusion
How to rip subtitles from unprotected DVDs using Subrip
Subrip is an open-source application that you can use to extract the subtitles from any source (DVD-5, DVD-9, folder or video file.) and have them in a text file with their timestamps.
This is how you can use it to rip subtitles from unprotected DVDs.
Step 1: Download the app from their website
- To find it look up “Subrip download” on Google.
- Run it after you’ve extracted the folder from the compressed file.
Step 2: Load your movie and rip the subtitles
- Insert your movie disc.
- Go to “File”.
- Select “Open VOB” (to load DVDs. VOB is the default DVD video format), “Open image sequence” (to open slideshows and the such), or “Open Hard subbed video files” (to open any video file that has hardcoded subtitles. That is, subtitles that are burned onto the picture itself and cannot be removed.)
- Click on the “Start” button to start extracting subtitles.
After a while, you will have your subtitles ready in a .txt file.
How to extract subtitles from copy-protected DVDs
Subrip should be able to help you with most subtitles you want to extract. However, what can you do when you have a DVD ISO, a video file, or a DVD that Subrip cannot read? Or worse, what if you have a copy-protected DVD? Unfortunately, Subrip cannot extract subtitles from copy-protected DVDs.
This is when you will need a DVD ripper; An app that you can use to rip the video files from any DVD, video folder, or DVD ISO and convert it to another video format removing the copy-protection in the process. And there is no better option than Tipard DVD ripper.
Tipard DVD Ripper
If you are going to go the “Ripper” route, you may as well opt for the best one there is. With Tipard, worrying about speed or efficiency is a thing of the past. It will not slow down your computer (even low-end machines will be able to handle it) and will still produce amazing results consistently.
You get:
- Over 500 formats.
- 30 times faster ripping than with any other app.
- Video editing capabilities.
- Rip from any source including DVDs with copy protection on.
How to rip DVDs with echoshare DVD Ripper
Step 1: Download echoshare DVD Ripper
- Download the installer from the button below.
- Run it.
- Launch the app upon completion.
Step 2: Load the DVD onto echoshare DVD Ripper
- Place your DVD into the computer’s disc tray.
- Click on the big blue plus symbol and it will load immediately.
- Or, go to “Load DVD“>”Load DVD Disc” and select your drive manually.
Step 3: Set up the DVD ripping
- Click on the “Full Title List” button to preview and choose the video clips you want in your ripped video.
- Select the audio and subtitle tracks you want from the relevant drop-down menus. Make sure to select the correct subtitle tracks. If you pick the wrong ones, you may have to start all over again.
- Edit your video using the video editor. To open it, click on the star (edit) or scissors (cut) buttons.
- Select MP4 as the output format from the drop-down menu on the far right.
Step 4: Rip your DVD
- Set the destination for your videos.
- Click on the “Rip All” button to start the process.
You will get a video file that you can then extract subtitles from with ease, using Subrip. Or, watch it as is on your computer or any other device.
Conclusion
Sometimes we are not happy with the subtitles on our DVDs, or we need the text for some use or another. When this happens, we need a subtitle extraction tool to rip the subtitles from our DVDs. In this article we gave a detailed guide on how to do that exactly giving a solution both for protected and unprotected DVDs.