When a video is ripped from a DVD including the subtitles, it’s generated in IDX+SUB format. While most of the subtitle files are in text format, these VOB subtitles in IDX format are not text, but images that are just a repacked file from the DVD and are given the extension of .SUB file. When compared to the normal SRT files, the combo of the SUB and IDX file tells the player where to place the subtitles on the screen and also give them various format and colors like bold, italics etc. This way, the subtitles can be placed near the person who is speaking the dialog and you can get to know who’s speaking.

While the combo of SUB and IDX file can be used on modern day players like GOM, POT Player, and VLC, they might not be compatible with your phone, handheld, casting devices and your TV. They just need the good ol’ text format subtitle in .SRT format to work and we often download them from many online sources.

After confirming, you can extract the subtitle from the „new file“ and exit the app. This also works great if you have image based DVD/Blu-Ray subtitles. Subler will apply OCR to convert those into SRTs. Extract subtitles from a video (mkv) file with a script.

But then, there’s the issue that has always haunted subtitles and that’s perfect syncing. Most of the online sources that you download the .SRT subtitles from are not perfectly synced and even when you sync the beginning manually, it might go out of sync till you get to the end. In such scenarios, the best way to get the perfect subtitle is by converting. The only problem is that the IDX/SUB files are not text but images and needs a bit more effort in conversion. So let me give you a step-by-step guide to getting things done.

Converting IDX/SUB Subtitle to SRT

1. Hi guys.I convert my DVD to DivX and I know that before ripping I can select to rip with which subtitle.But I want to have DivX (.avi) file and a subtitle (.srt) file seperately.Is it possible to extract subtitle from a DVD and save it in a srt file?
2. The disc does not contain an srt track you can extract. DVD’s have vobsub subtitles and blu-rays have PGS. These are image based subtitles. If you want an SRT, you will need to convert these.

Step 1: Download the latest version of Subtitle Edit tool from Niesk.dk. The program is available as a portable ZIP file that can be extracted to a folder and executed or saved as an installer. I would recommend you to go with the portable version. Subtitle Edit is a powerful tool with a lot of features but in this article, I will only concentrate on converting the IDX files to SRT files. But feel free to explore the tool on your own.

Step 2: When you launch the application, this is the screen that you will see. Here, click on the Open button and load the SUB subtitle to the app. Also, make sure that the .IDX file is in the same directory and has the same file name as that of the SUB file. If that’s not the case, you will get errors while importing the subtitles.

Step 3: After the subtitle is imported, the tool will load the OCR module to convert the images to text from the subtitles. There would be many settings to configure in this page, so make sure you have a look at the screenshot and replicate the exact settings at your end. This will make the process seamless and take care of words that are not from a dictionary. Once everything is done, click on the Start OCR button.

Step 4: The tool will start the OCR process and it might take some time before it goes through the entire time codes. The OCR is almost perfect with minimum errors, but still if the tools feel that it might need review, it will highlight the particular line for you to have a check after the conversion has finished.

Step 5: After the entire process completes, you can review the subtitle (if you really have that patience) and then save it as an SRT file format. As the time codes are taken from the DVD subtitle itself, the new SRT file will be perfectly in sync and you can now enjoy the movie on your TV set.

Online IDX/SUB to SRT Converter

If you are looking for an online tool that can convert IDX/SUB file to an SRT with minimum effort, you will run out of luck. Before trying the Subtitle Edit tool myself, I looked for online tools using which the conversion can be done easily, but I failed. None of the online tools were able to convert the IDX file to an SRT file as you would hope for.

Subtitle Edit is your best bet to get things done with minimum manual work (or errors). But still, if you are able to find a better tool which can take care of the conversion online, has a bulk conversion feature and above all, is easy to operate, please let us know through the comments section or our forum.

ALSO READ:2 Cool Tools to Find and Fix Missing Movie Subtitles In Your Movie Collection

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Summary: follow this article to free rip and extract subtitles from DVD disc and save as .srt file.

You plan to play DVD movie with your player, which, however, needs the files to be separate to begin with. That means you need to extract subtitles from DVD as a separate .srt file. Another case, you wanna use the memorable quotes of some DVD movies into your DIY videos, but you don't find the subtitles online and fail to download subtitles from online site. In such case, ripping subtitles from DVD is your ultimate solution.

Prior to extracting subtitles from DVD movie on Windows/macOS, you'd better have some basic knowledge about what kind of subtitles can be extracted and what can't. Here we mainly talk about the most common soft subtitles, hard subtitles, forced subtitles and closed captions.

Table of Contents

Part 1: All Subtitles can be Extracted from DVD?

Convert Dvd Subtitles To Srt

Soft Subtitles: soft subtitles are subtitles that are not IN the actually video. The DVD video file and subtitles are separate as individual files. You can rip soft subtitles from DVD as separate .srt or .ssa file.

Hard Subtitles: opposite to soft subtitles, hard subtitles (aka. burned-in subtitles) are rendered INTO the actual video, which means you can NOT extract hard subtitles from DVD as separate files. To put it in another words, the subtitles and video images are melt into one.

Forced Subtitles: forced subtitles are commonly on movies and only display subtitles when the characters speak a foreign or alien language. For instance, if the movie uses English for most part, interspersed with some Spanish language, then the forced subtitles only appear in English when the Spanish dialogue shows up. Hence, you're also able to extract forced subtitles from DVD.

Closed Captions: closed captions are essential for people with impaired hearing and are different from the common DVD subtitles. Usually, DVD subtitles are decoded by the DVD player, while Closed Captions are decoded by the TV. Generally, there is hardly no closed captions used in common DVDs.

To sum up, when it comes to strip DVD subtitles, it mainly refers to soft subtitles or forced subtitles, not hard subtitles/closed captions.

Part 2: How to Extract Subtitles from DVD on Windows PC

From the first part, you know what kind of subtitles can be ripped from DVD disc. And now it's time to show you how to remove soft subtitles, forced subtitles or closed captions from DVD as separate .srt, .ass or .ssa file. Generally two steps to go: rip DVD to VIDEO_TS folder and extract subtitles from VIDEO_TS folder via subtitle extractor tool.

Step 1: Free Rip DVD to VIDEO_TS Folder

For Windows PC, you can consider to use free DVD ripper DVD Shrink to free rip DVD to VIDEO_TS folder first.

1. Free download DVD Shrink on Windows PC and fire it up.

2. Click 'Open Files' button to load VIDEO_TS folder or alternatively click 'Open Disc' to load DVD disc. Followed by a tap on 'OK'.

3. Adjust DVD compression settings. Click 'Main Movie' and you can see the titles under main movie. The compression settings is on the right column, where you can freely adjust settings to compress DVD file size at 58.4% compression ratio.

4. In the compression settings zone, the subpicture means DVD subtitles. If there is no subtitles, right click on the Title > tap 'select default streams' > click 'Display the Following Subpicture Streams' > choose subtitle streams that you wanna rip DVD with subtitles.

5. Choose 'Hard Disk Folder' as backup target, browse to choose destination folder, tick 'Create VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS subfolders'. Tap 'OK' to call it begin.

Step 2: Free Extract DVD Subtitles on Windows by SubRip

To rip DVD subtitles on Windows PC, the DVD subtitle extractor highly recommened is the well-known SubRip. Certainly, there are also some other DVD subtitle extractors like SubtitleEdit, DVDSubEdit, etc. you can try.

Rip Subtitles From Dvd

1. Free download SubRip and install it on your Windows. Launch it after the installation is over.

2. Click 'Open VOBs' or tap 'VOB' icon and then click 'Open IFO' icon to import your VIDEO_TS folder on the pop-up window. Here you can also directly load VOB file after you choose the file type as 'VOB, vobsub'.

3. Click 'Open Dir' to choose the individual VOB files from VIDEO_TS folder.

4. Select 'SubPictures to Text via OCR' under 'Action' at the right side of the interface. You can also choose 'Save SubPictures as BMP' (BMP - bitmap subtitles), 'Save SubPictures as SUP Files' (SUP - image-based subtitle format) or 'Only Show SubPictures'.

5. Click 'Start' button to begin free extracting subtitles from DVD as SRT text subtitle format, bitmap subtitle, or SUP file.

If you wanna know more about the difference between image based subtitles and text based subtitles, bitmap subtitles and text subtitles, etc, please read the below Q&A.

SubRip tips shared by user mats.hogberg on forum.videohelp: he explains the reasons why sometimes SubRip doesn't work for you. As he said, SubRip doesn't know an A from a Z when it starts looking at the subtitles at the first time (much similar to the infant, know nothing), so it will ask you once for each first time it encounders a character it hasn't seen before. As long as you tell it a Z is really a Z, it wont ask you again about Z.

Indeed, SubRip also has its first learning process and man-machine interaction inside (regarded it as intellectual robot if you like). So for the first subtitle, you're suggested to pay more patience to SubRip. Soon later, it won't bother you any more once it masters most characters and decodes (OCR) to text skillfully.

Part 3: How to Free Rip DVD Subtitles on macOS

This part is specially for those who are running on MacBook Pro/Air, iMac, Mac Mini or iMac Pro with macOS operating system. Still, there are two steps to go: rip DVD to VIDEO_TS folder and extract DVD subtitles. Now let's cut to the chase.

Step 1: Free Copy DVD to VIDEO_TS on macOS

For Mac OS X, you're suggested to try on Mac The Ripper to free rip DVD to VIDEO_TS folder on macOS.

1. After downloading tool, launch it on your MacBook Pro/Air, 5K iMac or iMac Pro.

2. Insert your DVD disc. Then toggle 'RCE Region' to 'OFF' if Mac The Ripper displays 'DISC RCE: -CLEAR-' after scanning the DVD in the drive. (RCE Region means region code enhanced, the stronger encryption of Region Code protection)

3. Click 'Extract' to start to free rip DVD on Mac. And the output DVD file will be saved as VOB, your desired format for your later DVD subtitle extraction.

Note: the free version of Mac The Ripper is only available for Mac OS X Lion or earlier to rip unencrypted DVD, CSS DVD and Region Code DVD. As for users who plan to rip copy protected DVD like Disney DVD, Sony, DVD, Lionsgate DVD on macOS Sierra or High Sierra with subtitles, MacX DVD Ripper Pro is up to the mark.

Step 2: Free Extract DVD Subtitles on macOS by D-Subtitler

1. Free download this DVD subtitle ripper on your MacBook Pro/Air, iMac, Mac Mini or iMac Pro. Afterwards, fire it up on your macOS.

2. Open your ripped DVD VIDEO_TS folder with D-Subtitler.

3. Opt for the subtitle track to strip and tap on the green button.

Note: in some cases, your DVD subtitles track can't be completely extracted when you work with D-Subtitle from some VIDEO_TS folders. If unfortunately you meet this case, please keep in mind that you rip DVD to VOB file first and then use D-Subtitle to rip DVD subtitles again.

Also learn how to add subtitles to DVD movies in the language you want.

FAQ

What is the difference between text subtitles and image subtitles?

How To Extract Subtitles From Dvd As Srt Free

Usually, the subtitles in DVD are text based subtitles, which can be extracted from DVD and saved as .srt, .ssa or .ass. and easily edited. The common soft subtitles and forced subtitles are text based subtitles. As for image subtitles, there are two different types of image-based subtitles: hard subtitles (burned-in subtitles) that can't be extracted from video folder and extractable image subtitles that is only displayed on video image (not into) and can be extracted from video folder. Hence, for the image-based DVD subtitles, some can be stripped from DVD movies and some (into video) can't be ripped.

Could you tell me what are the common used subtitle formats?

For image-based subtitles, the common used subtitle formats include .sub, .idx, .sub, .svcd, .cvd, .bmp, .jpg, .png and more.
For text-based subtitles, the common used subtitle formats cover .srt, .ssa, .ass, .txt, .dks and more.

What is the difference between bitmap subtitle and text subtitle?

Extract Subtitles With Handbrake

Bitmap subtitle is a subtitle list with all text items as encoded bitmaps. All subtitle lists that the editor read from a video file or a DVD movie are bitmap subtitles.For a bitmap subtitle, the original texts are usually inaccessible, and as the result, they are all blanks in the text list display. Text subtitle is a subtitle list with all text items in their original text forms, and this is easily identified from the text list display. Quoted from womble support.

What is OCR?

Optical character recognition (also optical character reader, OCR) can be understood as a standard or medium, with which you can use the third-party subtitle extractor to successfully rip or convert subtitles to machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo of a document, a scene-photo. Especially when you need to rip subtitles from DVD as .srt text subtitles, you need OCR. For more detailed info, visit OCR Wikipedia.