Saki’s Blog

How to Convert DVD to iPhone Video with Subtitles and Chapters on Linux

iPhone can play video that contains multiple streams and chapters:

• video
• multiple audio streams (languages)
• multiple subtitles (languages)
• chapters for easy navigation

After some googling and many trials and errors I found a multiplatform software that can create videos with all the above features. The software is HandBrake. HandBrake for (openSUSE) Linux can be downloaded from Packman.

Let’s convert our DVD to the iPhone video. For that insert an original DVD in the drive, start HandBrake and select source.

Select iPhone & iPod Touch preset and type the file name and the destination directory.

There is not too much to set on Video tab, however, you can play with quality if you want.

In Audio tab, add as many audio tracks as you want:

If you want to “burn” subtitles into video, just select one from the original DVD and you’re done. More difficult is if you want Closed Captioning subtitles (that can be turned off on iPhone). For that you need external files with subtitles in srt format. You can download them from opensubtitles.org. The problem can be that the downloaded subtitles may not be in sync with you video. I haven’t found a better way only to encode the DVD and, if subtitles are out of sync, use Subtitle Composer to adjust the timing(s) and re-encode.

Default settings in H.264 tab do not need any change.

Rename chapters if you want. Names are sometimes on DVD covers, sometimes not.

Start encoding, wait an hour or so and then download the resulting video to your iPhone with iTunes.