How can I rip japanese subtitles from a DVD to srt?

[keitaro696]

Does someone know how to rip "Japanese" subtitles from a DVD to srt?. I can't rip it without obteining a srt with extrange symbols.

[XrayMind]

I hope you know how to type/input Japanese characters on your computer. Because, the subtitles on DVD are image bases. Meaning, the Japanese text are pre-render as image video. The subtitle images are then overlay on top of the regular video when you turn on the subtitles. Anyway, if you rip/extract the subtitles to idx/sub format, you can then use the OCR function of subrip. Where you teach subrip how to recognize each Japanese characters from the subtitle image file. Compare to Latin base characters, where you teach only the upper and lower case ~26 letters and 10 digits, you have to teach it any of the hiragana, katakana, and kanji that the subtitles will have in it.

[keitaro696]

And could you tell me how to rip the subtitles to idx/sub? I tried with subrip but I couldn't.

[groink]

As XrayMind explained earlier, subrip does not automate the subtitle ripping process when it comes to pictoral characters, such as Kanji. You need to train subrip to recognize every one of potentially thousands of characters. I tried to do this just to see what it involves, and let me tell you it is NOT worth the time. I actually find it faster to enter the Kanji directly into a subtitling editor, and then do my own timing.

To be more specific, each DVD manufacturer may use a different Kanji character set. NHK, for example, standardizes their Kanji typeset on all the DVD releases I've seen. But, it may differ from, for example, a TBS or TV Asahi DVD release. This is why I find subrip to be a total waste of time - once you complete a library of Kanji characters for one DVD, more likely it will not work on another DVD. I tried searching all over the place to see if people actually collect these subrip OCR libraries, but so far I haven't found any uploads.

--- groink

[keitaro696]

I know that and I agree with you, it' a total waste of time to try to rip them to a text file. But what I'd like to do is to rip them to idx/sub format. Is it possible with any program?

[XrayMind]

I haven't really use this programs. But VSRip should rip the DVD subtitle image layer to idx/sub files.

[keitaro696]

The program worked perfectly, thanks XrayMind ^^