How to watch a DVD video with external subtitles in Windows?

Question

Some DVD movies contain no subtitles - or some subtitles that are not on the DVD may be needed.

Is there a way to see external subtitles when watching a DVD movie?

Solution

Use Media Player Classic - Home Cinema (MPC-HC)

Go to View-Options (or press O), then Output.

Select one of the two options under DirectShow Video indicated in the image below:

Apply, then open the DVD and add the subtitle - even drag and drop works.

Chances are that the subs you find are not synced - but for that MPC-HC can help, as shown in this answer..

I have found this answer here.

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PotPlayer and KMPlayer are both able to accomplish this right away (I would recommend the first, which looks to me like a non-bloated fork of the second.)

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DrakaSAN gave an answer saying that VLC also plays DVD with external subs, but after more testing, the VLC solution seems very unstable, it sometimes does not work for parts of the video, and especially subs disappear after seeking back or forth. I keep it here for reference and in view of further findings.

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BSPlayer PRO seems to be able to accomplish the task.

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A different approach (useful with a player that cannot play external subs with DVDs) is to display the subtitles over the video with a separate specialized program, like Greenfish Subtitle Player. Of course, this works with any playing video, not just DVD.

Comments

[PJ17]

yes, i just found about the answer, and in fact i just created the question in order to provide the answer. it is what you say, and i'll show exactly how in the answer that i was just editing when you posted - thanx

[Admin]

I was not able to use VLC in this way, at least not with the default settings in VLC. do you use a special setting for video output? i think it works with other video output setting than the Default one, have you tested?

[DrakaSAN]

I don t remember setting anything, but it work well for video file. Didn t tried with DVD since a long time ago.

[DrakaSAN]

It was indeed me, I ve deleted my previous answer as I didn t known about the video setting to make it work for DVD. Thanks for noticing me. Undeleted it to add the info.

[FearlessHyena]

I tried PotPlayer and was able to load the external subs properly. However I had another problem where the default DVD subs were showing up too and I just couldn't disable them. To fix this go to Preferences->Devices->DVD/Blu-Ray and uncheck 'Display DVD Subs' (restart player or changes don't take effect). hope this helps someone. also kudos to this thread for pointing this out techsupportalert.com/freeware-forum/multimedia/…

[Admin]

UPDATE: In fact the video output is not the issue: VLC works with some glitches (subs may disappear from time to time or appear for a too short a time each time) as long as seeking back/forth is NOT used