Adding subtitles to a video file.

So I'm looking to hard-encode subtitles to a video file. It's a compressed .mpg rather than uncompressed .VOB so I don't believe I can use a program like VobSub or SubRip to automatically extract subtitle data from it.

Despite not having a damn clue whatsoever how to accomplish this, I managed to get so far as attempting to re-encode the video with the attached subtitles; except the exported .avi file that comes out is all screwy and doesn't necessarily play.

Is there an alternative to doing this, or is there a way I can encode this damn .avi and have it play normally and smoothly, or... something?

I was using Subtitle Workshop to create/sync up the custom subtitles, and VirtualDub (along with VirtualDub Subtitler) to make an attempt to combine the two together. It involved saving the subtitles as a .ssa (SubStation Alpha) file and having VirtualDub try to recognize it, and I don't even know if I did that right.

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Well, it seems as though I had no real need to make this thread, as I got pretty well all my answers through VideoHelp.com, similar Google searches or just plain toying around with a billion programs I ended up downloading.

In the end, I ended up just renting the DVD that I wanted to make a video out of, ripped it to .VOB, compressed to .avi with Dr. DivX, and did all my editing and preparation with Windows Movie Maker (I am seriously considering using another program next time, because fuck their movie saving options). Ripped the subtitles with SubRip, edited those in Subtitle Workshop as a .srt file, and I combined the two with the regular version of VirtualDub with VobSub's TextSub supplement. That came out as a 13GB file, so I compressed it down further with Any DVD Converter.

All in all, the whole process and figuring everything out was brutal and painful, but I got it done. =/

Thanks anyway for the replies, you two.

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