Creating my own subs for avi & editing subs of ogm & mkv

[retroborg]

Hello,
I have a selection of Japanese Anime & movies (Xvid, DivX & Mpeg2 encoding) primarily saved as *.avi file extension. I use Media Player Classic & Regular WinXp Media Player 11 to watch them.

I have the following 3 queries:

1. I would like to translate them my self and create my own subtitles from scratch in English as well as in Greek. I noticed that the soft subtitle file types supported by DirectVobSub, are *.srt & *.sub. Both have a different timing structure. What is the best tool to create my own software subs and the right timing so that the subs will be in sync with the voice speech of the Anime?

2. What is the best subs file type to save as, *.srt or *.sub? Or are they equal?

*.sub look like this:
{600}{850} text
{1932}{2030} text
{2032}{2115} text.
{2117}{2213} text

And *.srt look like this:
01
00:02:40,327 --> 00:02:51,421
text
02
00:03:01,014 --> 00:03:02,266
text
03
00:04:00,991 --> 00:04:04,995
text
04
00:04:13,378 --> 00:04:14,838
text


3. I Also have quite a few Japanese Anime in *.ogm & *.mkv file extensions that feature built-in soft subs in English which you can enable or disable using DirectVodSub.
What I would like to do is add another set of subs in Greek which I will translate & type my self. So, the Anime will feature both English & Greek built-in subs which I’ll be able to enable or disable via DirectVobSub.
Alternatively, I would like to edit the existing built-in subs of the ogm & mkv video files.
Again what would be the best tool for this tasks?

Thanks in advance.

[directhex]

i'd use srt for preference. generally i use ksubtile for editing, and subrip for the original OCR (though its unicode support is somewhat dodgy)

editing streams in mkv and ogm files generally involves demultiplexing the files (i.e. splitting out all the audio, video, and text componensts into their constituent elements) then remuxing later, optionally with an extra text stream

[retroborg]

i'd use srt for preference. generally i use ksubtile for editing, and subrip for the original OCR (though its unicode support is somewhat dodgy)

Will ksubtile and subrip create the right timings in the *.srt file in order for the text to be synchronized with the audio of the film?

editing streams in mkv and ogm files generally involves demultiplexing the files (i.e. splitting out all the audio, video, and text componensts into their constituent elements) then remuxing later, optionally with an extra text stream

How do I do that exactly?

[pepsi_max2k]

I've not written from scratch but edited a few, and personally I use .srt just as it's what's compatible with my DVD player. Also SubRip and Subtitle Workshop to edit things (the later you can use to manually sync with audio/video).

For demuxing you should be able to use ProjectX for MPEG2 though I dunno if it re-muxes them too. I also use Avidemux a lot for general video editing, though no idea if it'll be any use for you.